steveb leatherworks: the blather

Tommy - our friend.1993

You know how sometimes you see a picture and a flood of memories come back, and things seems as vivid as they were 16 years ago. I’ve been on this tear for a few months now…scanning as many of the images I have in my many, many photo albums as possible. I don’t know exactly what is possessing me to do this, but regardless of the motivating factors, it is a good thing. I have alot of albums, and not every shot is being digitized – I am trying to be discriminate even though storage is cheap.

So in thumbing through each album, i have myself a good chuckle – I’ve been with same posse now for a real long time, so i have a timeline of brown to gray hair, old hardtail choppy bikes-morphed to new lardass baggy bikes, skinny guys to fat guys. And then I have a bunch who haven’t made it to this leg of the race.

This is one of those guys…and this picture so captures Tommy’s spirit – it stops me every time. I used to be in the habit of shooting all of our rides with a point & shoot (film – remember that?) cheapie. This shot was taken on the slab if i recall, on a nice summer day when we were heading up to a lake to go swimming as a group. Tommy had one of the few new bikes and he beat the crap out of that beauty of an FXR, man he spanked it hard every single time he got on it and it never snivelled once. That bike was a champ and took it all, burnouts, hi-speed runs ..in stride.

Tommy was a dangerous (if he didnt know you) tortured soul, was all alone in the world with no family and  our crew as his only friends, fought his demons hard, and had some crazy, unbelievable stories. The phrase for which he will always be remembered was “eye toe huh”…..in English = “I told her”. He had such an amazingly thick Bronx accent, no one could understand him when he first came around..

His demons overtook him and he was found dead, alone and surrounded by people who didnt know or care about him. A fucking waste, stupid and senseless. I liked him, he made me laugh and showed me his soft/vulnerable side on occasion, making this alligator of a man – lovable.

RIP Tommy, your friends remember you *clink*.
Hope things are working out for ya.