I love black and white photography. I find that some black and white shots tell so much more of a story than a colour one. I actually wrote a blog post about Paris with just black and white shots of the city. You can see it here:

http://methodicallymuddled.wordpress.com/2013/04/28/paris-the-city-of-boulangeries-patisseries-and-criminal-dazzlery/

There's a bunch of black and white street stuff in a post about New York in there somewhere too if you're interested.

I use a bunch of lightroom presets by VSCO for my black and white conversions. They have a heap of film filters and I really like the inky blacks that the black and white films give you. Might be worth a look: http://vsco.co I like the ilford delta filters the best.

Ben