Over at Curbed New York, Hana R. Alberts takes a look at New York City’s ballparks.

Something you don’t see everyday. Dozens of boy scouts waiting to get on the subway.

It rained early this morning. It was still dark out when I heard the rain drops smack off the air conditioner in my bedroom. Later, when I walked to work the streets were wet and the sky was dark. Still warm but less so. The whole scene was welcome.

Picture by Bags.

I lived in Brooklyn from 1994-2000 and I remember this bookstore. Odd dude ran it, smoked cigarettes–which was kinda nice, really–but the place was closed all the time. Never knew when you’d stumble past and it’d be open. Still, glad to see it’s still there.

Picture by Bags.

My wife and I were standing on the subway platform at Chambers Street last weekend when I saw a guy holding something familiar.

“That guy’s got a bullworker,” I said.

“Excuse me?” said my wife.

“A bullworker.”

“I don’t understand what you are saying.”

I told her to hang on and went over to talk to him. Sure enough it was a bullworker.

My father had one back in the early 1980s in one of his periodic attempts to be fit. I said as much to the guy who said he bought his off some guy on the street. Showed me the model–made in 1969. He said it’s indestructible and that he uses it all the time. Said it’s making a comeback.

The Bullworker. I’m not kidding.

[Photo Credit: Martha Cooper]

Painting by Dima Dmitriev.

Tar Beach.

The weekends are quiet in town now. You can park–if you’ve got a car–and you can get to that restaurant you’ve been meaning to try. Or you can just enjoy the space afforded us now that folks are on vacation.

It’s civilized, man.

[Photo Via: I Want Change]

Nice piece by Jim Dwyer in the Times on Louis Requena, a fixture of the New York sports scene for decades:

“When I met Pop at the old stadium, he had a booth in the back of my pizza station, Main 11,” Alva Robinson said. “We got to be friends — swapping pizza and pictures. I do popcorn now. I’m the popcorn lady. But I always made sure Pop had his ice water, soda.”

Pop went by other names at the stadiums where he took pictures for most of the last 55 years. Señor. Magic (Lens). Or simply, Lou. In the backstages of the city’s ballparks, which run on a barter economy of small favors and easy smiles, scores of people who didn’t know what else to call him were part of his everyday life for decades.

Many of them turned out at the Greenwich Village Funeral Home on Tuesday where his full name and the dates that staked out the 93-year span of his life were listed on a digital display: Louis Requena, Dec. 12, 1919 – June 20, 2013.

“Eleven years ago, first day I’m shooting a game for The A.P., and I’m pretty anxious, and my editor says, ‘find this older guy,’ ” said Frank Franklin, a photographer for The Associated Press. “He showed me around, made everything smooth. First inning, there was a play at the plate, runner sliding under the tag. That was the picture, and he nailed it. He was in his 80s.”

[Photo Credit: N.Y. Times]

Last night in the Village.

A 1955 PSA by Milton Caniff. Via the most cool site, The Bristol Board.

[Featured image by Sy Kattelson]

North Brother, the abandoned island in the middle of New York City.

Over at Gothamist dig these pictures from the 2013 Mermaid Parade out in Coney Island.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

Over at WNYC here’s Stephen Nessen on the black surfing scene that’s taking over in the Rockaways:

Locals say [Brian] James was one of the first black surfers on the scene when he began catching waves here in 1997. And even though the shores are thousands of miles away from the once-exclusively white beaches of California, where the sport was popularized in the U.S., James said he faced racism here too.

“It was tough in the beginning,” he said. “Lot of racial epithets hurled out in water. Lot of arguing. But me personally, I let them know I wasn’t going for it. They got a problem we can settle it on the beach.”

Sauntering down the crowded beach on a recent Saturday with the top half of his wet suit hanging down, is another staple of the local surf scene: Louis Harris. The 41-year-old personal trainer from Long Island said it was James who inspired him to try surfing.

“I was like, ‘Wow, people surf out here.’ I then I saw BJ and I was like, ‘Wow black guy surfing?’” Harris said. “And they were all crowding around him like he was freaking Mick Jagger or something.”

But Harris said when he walks with a surfboard, he still gets chastised.

“It’s the black people that say ‘Black people don’t surf. Yo man, what you doing with a surf board man? Black people don’t surf.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, are you kidding?’ Harris said.

Three nice pictures by Robert Herman via This Isn’t Happiness.

From Humans of New York.

From our pal Diane Firstman comes This Technology Has Been Disconnected:

Saul Leiter: “I started out as a fashion photographer. One cannot say that I was successful but there was enough work to keep me busy. I collaborated with Harper’s Bazaar and other magazines. I had work and I made a living. At the same time, I took my own photographs.

“I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. I was always very happy that way. Being ignored is a great privilege. That is how I think I learnt to see what others do not see and to react to situations differently. I simply looked at the world, not really prepared for anything.”

A Leiter gallery over at On-Line Browsing.

Beautiful gallery of NYC subway photographs over at Magnum Photos.