We’re celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of the next by thanking BSA Readers, Friends, and Family for your support in 2025. Picked by our followers, these photos are the heavily circulated and “liked” selections of the year – shot by our Editor of Photography, Jaime Rojo. We’re sharing a new one every day to celebrate all our good times together, our hope for the future, and our love for the street. Happy Holidays, Everyone!

“When I watch people holding their smartphones, I often ask myself: are they holding their phones because they want to, or because they have to?”

This year, conceptual street artist Leon Reid gave that question physical form with a sculptural image of digital servitude that felt unsettlingly precise. The work struck a nerve with BSA readers, prompting a strong and immediate response. Reid’s question cuts to the core of behaviors that increasingly appear compulsory rather than chosen—habitual, addictive, and largely unexamined—and raises the issue of how deeply these technologies are reshaping society. It also invites a more complicated question: how many systems that began as entertainment or convenience will soon become unavoidable, even mandatory?