steveb leatherworks: the blather

Got an update from Jason, Northernmost operative of the steveb global worldwide network. He was checking snowpack and moose tracks …a vital and important aspect of our global warming thing…and J is on it..like stink on a dog. I love getting updates about the goings on all around…makes the world a great and smaller place…please send your reports my way…

Jason wrote:
Steve, We hiked Sugarbush yesterday… great sunny day – perfect snow. We spotted 2 moose on the way home a few minutes up the road from our house.

You’ve all heard me rant and rave and carry on about how we should support our local business. I think it is really important if we want to retain some semblance of uniqueness to our individual towns and villages. I would hate to see this country keep on the path of developing and approving the building of strip malls and other bland stretches of commercial stuff in our towns, killing off the “taste” of a place. BK’s and Mickey D’s, Friendly’s might be the fare we prefer – but it is turning our world into a crap fest.

Well this is one of those little local places that has had its days in the sun…and they are long past. I have passed by here for years, never seeing the Circle Dot open… Finally stopped  with camera in hand when i saw a for sale sign on the front of the property. i know that can only mean one thing. ..a back hoe and a bulldozer. I walked around found a door open captured a few images and went on my way. I am sure it wont be here when i pass by next time. 

16 years is a pretty long time insofar as looking in the rear view… and alot of water has passed under the proverbial  bridge. In these images, I welcome you to another “typical” 1993 Sunday morning ride with the standard crew at the time. Some of these folks are no longer amongst the living or have fallen off the radar… making the images here even more poignant to those in the know…What were you doing in 1993

Well here today, we got some weather folks – yikes. Who cranked the dial up so far, so quick? I thought we had one of those plastic lock boxes over the thermostat so the jokers couldnt prank us. Ha – well the jokes on us..I think it got to 90 today. Time wise, it feels like first snow of the season, last December, was just yeterday.. know what I mean? Crazy & scary all at the same time..  Everybody is bitching about the sudden heat, ha – get over it…summer is here folks.

Here for your viewing pleasure is a Simple Fin, stitched with red thread accompanied by a cool fob and brass chain. Not alot to say other than in situations like this, you can really appreciate the quality and grain of the leather I work with. There is no substitute for good material. 

Saw a good show with the nephew the other night. Well, actually half the show was good.
The Edgar Winger half of the show absolutely rocked.  The Johnny half was not so impressive with Mr. Winter being seated, obviously not well and really not performance ready. I saw him years ago and he was great, super high energy, bar stomping sloppy drunk rock and roll – good stuff.

Edgar on the other hand was a complete surprise and rocked the house this night with his first set. He is one hell of a multi-instrumentalist. It is also really cool going to shows with my nephew. It wont be long now till I am too old, he will be too cool and our cultural paths will diverge… or maybe not -perhaps my immaturity will prevent that for the foreseeable future!

Here’s a tasty bit for your Friday! Ran across this red headed cutie. I love the older British bike look… spindly frames, massive drum brakes with vents, tight, small complex-but precise leak prone gadgetry… very cool. Maintaining anything more than 60mph for an hour on a stock bike will exhaust both rider and machine – so they aren’t really practical for todays “main” roads. Get them on a nice country road though and you will be rewarded with an agile, super handling fun machine that has just enough power to make it really exciting… and having drum brakes insures it will be even more exciting in the case of a quick stop. 

Arrgh! Ya want a hot dog in Southern Connecticut? You are not going to find a street meat cart to satisfy your craving, no no no…your going to need to identify a restaurant or deli (a hens tooth for sure round these parts) that’s got the goods. This poses a challenge to the newbie, unitiatied and those not in the general know.

Well your man B is in the know, having scoped every hi-toned lowbrow solution round these parts – and you can bet, I will be bringing you the very best of the most modest fare we bourgeois like to consume. In that vein, let me introduce you to Overton’s – a fine waterside shack in Norwalk, CT that serves up some pretty decent hamburgers and hot dogs. Personally, I really only go for the Burgers and Fries @ Overton’s, saving my hot dog consumption for more notable landmarks. Don’t forget the tables out back where the gulls dive bomb you (and your food) for sport.

Support your local greasy spoon folks…if you don’t they will go away…and so will a piece of your local culture.. and that would suck.

Made this handsome Wallet with a sweet brass chain & matching fob. The flower is a 100yr old western saddlemakers stamp..you’ll not see another like it. The coloration is super rich. Who needs black when you can get this?

IPA & friend

 Freddy & I met up at the Duck on a recent Sunday afternoon.
Enjoyed some adult beverages, watched some crap on the TV

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!

Shout out and major props to Elisa and Bobby for getting Genuine Motorworks open and off the ground. You’ll find all kinds of really cool stuff at this Brooklyn store including Jeff Decker castings, cool clothes and books and my leather work.

So you all read my crap about the belt buckle that i findingled from every one’s favorite sculptor, artist, collector of all things motorcycle, Jeff Decker. If you didn’t, go back and read it here, fer cryin out, loud:http://steveb.biz/2008/?p=2149 we must have continuity in the storyline.

So I finally got the decks clear to knock out a Scrapper for Jeff. Now this belt might be made from”scraps” , but really they are not scraps at all. I use a hot stuffed motorcycle veg tan (I buy it black for this one application) for the billet and buckle ends and the back piece,  i make from a select piece of veg tan saddle skirting. This is serious top-shelf stock and i use some burly weight leather.

I do all my edging and whatnot and then line all the pieces with mission grain pigskin. When that is done, i buff all the edges, do some stitching, riveting and some more stitching and then  – like magic – you have a Scrapper.

It is a hell of a lot of work, really like making 3 separate belts, but the end result is cool, unique and depending on the choice of buckle, allows the belt to be worn with anything, jeans, khakis, dress pants, etc. really makes for a very practical belt. I wear my prototype Scrapper about every day and it is a great piece. I get lots of compliments and now that it is paired up with my All Seeing Eye buckle from Jeff, it is a standout, but alas no longer suitable for khaki or dress wear with that big honking buckle on it…lol..that’s ok with me.

So Jeff got his belt and I get this:
S,
the belt is really neat.
the rivets work with levis & the black & brown combo make it versatile, for shoe color.
bravo.
it fits perfect.

How cool is that?

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

I have some crafty customers. This one supplied a “buck” in the size and shape of his phone for me to use to make the case. It came out nice and i like the color.

Saw this bike parked in the morning and then out sweeping corners later in the day. The owner, obviously not a newbie cleaned and neatened up his VTX to be quite a respectable low buck custom hot-rod. Nice job.

Knocked this beauty out just the other day,  made it from a thinner stock than “normal” in an attempt to lighten the load, from both karmic and mass perspectives.Came out really nice, the stamping is deep and clear and feels great to the hand and looks good to the eye. The color is my off the hook, deep an complex tobacco sunburst coloration, super tasty and will wear in great. Chain is brass, the fob is another mini piece of art.

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 results.

The new Harley xr1200 is a sweet bike. I had a chance to get up close to one today and thought it was realy well done. If I was a young guy starting out  – this is a bike I’d check into.

Hey now – didnt I call this like 2 months or so ago – Freddy’s wood is still sitting in his driveway. If you dont stack the damn wood when ya get it – this is what will happen… it will season in your driveway…lol

I am telling ya  – the only reason any of it has been touched since it was dumped there, was because he realized the wood is on top of a bunch of bulbs that need to come up. Ha!  

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 you have the same reaction as I do – amazement…followed by a smile. His work always makes me feel good, it is optimistic in its riotious color and motion. Even dinosaurs like this sculpture on Lexington and 57th Street outside the IBM Building, are filled with motion.

Take minute and sniff around Calder’s work a bit – I bet you’ll dig it. 

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 spawn, it gets that crowded with people exiting the building  in the morning and entering at night.

We’ve got 2 cats at the secret location. I’ve always been a cat guy and the Boss is a cat gal – so in the many years we’ve been cohabiting , we’ve always had house cats as part of our life. They suit my disposition and they are great company, really adding alot to the overall ecosystem of our household.

yea, a little heavy – but believe me, people do some sick shit to animals – and I just cant handle it, it makes me nuts that people do things like abuse animals.

So Beano came to us as a save some 12 or so years ago as a kitten. She’d been saved as a tiny kitten by a cop who had seen a few kids kicking her after lighting her on fire. She’d gotten separated from her family and damn near killed.

She was brought to a vet by the cop, miraculously saved , gotten to a half way house where she was nursed back to health and then landed at our house as a small kitten, healed from her burns – but with a funny scar on her lip where she’d been kicked.

Beano is a funny cat, super affectionate only to the Boss and I,  in her own way, in her own space, in her own time. She has a definite personality and is very catty, in an aloof sort of way. Clumsy as hell, she is funny to watch play..as she really does’nt know how to. She’s not so big on kids….. wonder why.

More than most cats I’ve known, she loves her routines and rituals, and we are happy to oblige, because in a way – they are our rituals and routines now.

Beano is going to come back, reincarnated as an Animal Control officer… I am sure of it.  
Don’t fuck with the Bea-niss.

Beano

I’ve said on these very pages that one rarely sees a HD parked on the streets of NYC. it is true, but alas, today we had the nexus of timing and happenstance, allowing the capture of this rare occurrence. For your pleasure, I present to you – one over baked RoadKing with handlebar speakers..I hope those puppies work great – cuz man – they sure are fugly. Other than that, the owner sure has put some cake into his pride and joy: fancy wheels, paint …where will it end?