Good thing there are still some low-budget, no-frills greasy spoons left in this town.

Ask Bags, he knows.

Sometimes I look up at the Empire State Building and am filled with pride. Being a New Yorker is dope.

[Photo Credit: Adriano Neves]

Via Ego Trip, check out this Life photo gallery of a 1972 Bronx street gang.

Nice.

Still Number One.

Check out this photo gallery on the construction of One World Trade Center over at the Atlantic.

[Photo Credit: Gary Hershorn/Reuters]

Missus Cab Driver…

[Photo Via: Retro New York]

Take the A Train.

We said it before but I’ll say it again. Nothing says New York like our watertowers.

[IPhone finger painting by Jorge Columbo]

Audio Tours at the Modern, narrated by kids.

[Photo Credit: Social History of Art]

Yeah, the kids are back on the train today. Look out, now.

[Photo Credit: Roger Kisby]

Meanwhile, back at the MET.

The New York Times presents a history of New York in 50 Objects.

Sure, summer is just about over. But it’s hot today. Hot enough for this.

Dig the gallery by Giovanni Savino.

The stillness of New York at the end of the summer.

And a passage from E.B. White’s Here is New York:

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something…Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. ”

Picture by Bags. 

Guy on the train next to me this morning. Paper folded the old-fashioned way. Don’t see that much anymore. Like my grandfather used to do. I asked him who taught him how to fold the paper that way and he said, “My father.”

He sounded apologetic. “It’s just the way I do it.”

I told him it was a beautiful thing.

It’s dead in town this week. August dead in New York City is a beautiful thing. Only a few days left.  Summer is almost over.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

[Pictures by Bags]

I’m that dickhead who gives dirty looks to people wearing Red Sox gear in New York. It’s a private game I play and yeah, it’s pitiful. I haven’t seen as many Red Sox hats this summer, though. And when I do see them, my instinct is not to sneer but to be impressed. These are your Red Sox fans, not the bandwagon variety. Plus, there is little pleasure to be had in busting chops when a team is lousy. It’s just too easy.

Which isn’t to say that I’m not happy that the Red Sox have been awful. I just won’t crow about it.

[Photo Credit: Bags]

Yeah, it’s a rip-off–one of the biggest rip-off joints of our lifetime–but let’s take a moment to appreciate the passing of Colony Records. You don’t have to like a place to miss it.

Gothamist has the details.

What’s the last book you bought on the street? I can’t remember myself, but I know I picked something up this spring. My cousin found a copy of Pauline Kael’s State of the Art on a brownstone stoop near his home in Brooklyn earlier this year and sent it to me. Twenty minutes after he found it a thunder storm hit. Book would have been ruined. I’m glad it’s got a good home here in the Bronx.

[Picture by Bags]

A city scene circa the late 1920s, early 1930s from the great Walker Evans.

Man, you ever walk over an open grate or sewer with your keys in your hands and then get the Willies like, Whew, I could have just done something mad stupid there?