steveb’s leatherworks: daily blather

More random images from my rambles through Manhattan. Grand entrances, mysterious/odd store fronts and the absolutely normal, as ingested every day seen through my lens. Hope you enjoy these utterly common and mundane images as much as I do….a celebration of our ecosystem.

Two wheels in NYC take some work, some dedication and grit - be your conveyance a bicycle or motorcycle.

I know - I need to stop picking on the Smart Car, but I cant help myself. I am sorry, I know it is wrong and that I should be loving it..but i dont. Can’t they get Jonathan Ive in to take a look at the design and the weak way this stinker is branded and named? 

NYC folks love Tasti D, we love our art and we sure love our free papers…

Eyes wide open walking around the city you see some sweet street meat and then ya see specimen’s of hardship, gestated in the NYC petri dish.
Do you think this bike has seen love? coddling, a waxing and detailing or two, do you think it is a poodler?
I think this machine tells a story of hardship, [...]

it kills me - people will pretty much eat any damn thing if it is served on the street, even better if it is served from a rather unsanitary cart. Makes one wonder, don’t it? In the city with the worlds best food,  so many choose to basically eat…in a word…s-h-i-t.  If you knew where these [...]

I hate when people abuse the little bit of authority that their job gives them, or should i say, lends them..

Although i am a Harley fan and devotee, i am no hater of metric brands… at all. Owners show pride the same as the HD riders.. and here is a fine example…You can only imagine it is not easy to keep a nice bike in the city or keep a bike nice in the city - but [...]

I am a big fan of the Japanese two-wheel street scene. There is a cut&paste art component attached to this culture and i think it is great. These guys are so rowdy, smart and subversive - i cant help but smile when i see their work! We need some more  of this in NYC, methinks… The art [...]

Just in case you were wondering, a close second to the oft imitated Grays Papaya is Papaya King. You can get a pretty good dog and a whipped papaya drink here. There, now you can begin your week!

The price of parking in NYC… in a word, brutal. 

Three random images from a recent day in NYC. Holding a camera forces you to see the world a slightly different way if you tale the responsibility seriously. Welcome to Monday  - I invite you to see your world through a slightly different lens today - let me know how it feels. Send me the [...]

I have been a huge fan of Alexander Calder’s work, since i saw it in a museum when i was a kid. I think it was one of the huge mobiles he had installed in MoMA that floored me on a 3rd grade class trip. Maybe you’ve see his work, and if so, I can only hope [...]

Check out these worn granite steps outside of Grand Central Station. This is a back entrance used primarily by commuters. That is some serious wear, or maybe not considering those steps are probably 75+ years old.  If you stood at this spot from 515p to 730p, Mon-Fri, you’d think you were in the middle of a human salmon [...]

Saw this car type thing on the street, just the other day…call me crazy but I don’t think that this is so “SMART”. Driving around NYC streets in one of these silly little electric death traps is plain dangerous.. especially when the going gets tough and metal meets..ahhhh.. plastic and foam rubber. Talk about “Unsafe at any [...]