I did grow up next door to Steve McQueen, who was a very famous movie star at the time, but as a kid it didn’t impress me. We always had great fun with him. He would take us out on Sundays on his motorcycles, riding around in the desert he was like a second father.

Herb Ritts (1952–2002), later celebrated for his fashion and celebrity photography, grew up in Los Angeles in a milieu where film-industry figures were part of the neighborhood landscape. In this recollection he describes living next door to Steve McQueen (1930–1980) during Ritts’s childhood, when McQueen’s stardom and public persona—especially his love of motorcycles and desert riding—were widely known. The remark frames McQueen not as an untouchable celebrity but as a familiar adult presence who spent time with local kids, taking them riding on Sundays and functioning, in Ritts’s memory, as a quasi-parental figure. The quote is presented as a personal anecdote rather than a formal statement about McQueen’s career.

Ritts’s point is that celebrity is partly a matter of distance: what awes outsiders can feel ordinary to a child who encounters the star as a neighbor. By stressing that McQueen’s fame “didn’t impress” him, Ritts shifts attention from public image to private character—playfulness, generosity, and mentorship. The motorcycles and desert rides evoke freedom, speed, and a distinctly Southern California masculinity associated with McQueen, but here those motifs are domesticated into childhood memory and affection. The line “like a second father” suggests how informal, non-biological bonds can shape a young person’s sense of adulthood and adventure, hinting at how Ritts’s later comfort around famous people may have been formed early.