In which The Gay Recluse watches the sunset, craves a gin-and-tonic and converses with a higher power.
Time and Date of Photographs: 7:15ish, March 20, 2008
Notes: All sunset photos are inherently cheesy — obviously — but sometimes we have to get in touch with our inner tourist.

God: Don’t let your youth go to waste!
Us: Ughh — [...]

In which The Gay Recluse rather quickly gets lung cancer.
Time and Date of morning photograph: March 20, 2008, 6:54am.
Notes: One benefit of living in Washington Heights is that it’s truly like the 19th century, not only in the architectural grandeur that splays across the rooftops, but the daily emissions of 100-year-old boilers in apartment [...]

In which The Gay Recluse holds a contest. Sort of.
Today we received this submission from Ed, a reader in Murray Hill who writes:
Dear Gay Recluse: Since you launched your competition I have kept my eye open for hot gay statues in Murray Hill, which is my neighborhood (32nd and Lexington, to be exact). But as [...]

In which The Gay Recluse applauds the news of uptown development.
Curbed has reported that the city’s plan to rezone 125th Street — a plan we fully endorse — has passed the important hurdle of the Planning Commission, and will now move to City Council for final approval. Curbed also links to local coverage of the [...]

In which The Gay Recluse shares a letter.
Robert from Ohio writes:
“I saw the article you wrote on the Corsican Mint. I live in North East Ohio, which is just as harsh a climate as NYC. I have planted the mint at several folks’ homes and it does come back every year. Sometimes the [...]

In which The Gay Recluse ponders New York Magazine’s “Best of New York” Special Double Ish.
Recently, through a series of startling but ultimately mundane machinations we’d rather not get into because it involves that most hideous of modern chimeras (i.e., frequent flier miles), we happened to receive in the mail (we know, gross) a copy [...]

In which The Gay Recluse thinks about shit on the daily commute.
As we walk through midtown each morning and each afternoon, we often pause to observe a fading silhouette on a wall; while somewhat decrepit, it provides comforting evidence — of a sort we are always on the lookout for — that Andy Warhol did [...]

In which The Gay Recluse poses a question to a condominium development in Harlem.
Yesterday Curbed posted an update (via Joe Schumacher) on the Kalahari, a controversial — aesthetically speaking — condominium development on 116th Street in Central Harlem that appears to be nearing completion. We recently observed the Kalahari on a field trip to the [...]

In which The Gay Recluse agrees with a reader.
As regular readers know, we recently took a field trip to Harlem, which led us to make the case that the city should “aggressively” rezone 125th Street. Of the many responses we received — some of which (as expected) were caustic to the point of incoherence [...]

In which The Gay Recluse unveils the hidden assets of Washington Heights.
For those of you who have grown fatigued by the unceasing onslaught of “hot” photographs, videos and movie clips featuring live male actors and models, why not take a trip to Audubon Terrace in Washington Heights? Here you can reconnect with 5000 years of [...]

In which The Gay Recluse takes a field trip to Harlem and makes the case that the city should rezone the shit out of 125th Street.
Lately there has been a lot of press — from Curbed, The Times and others — about the city’s proposal to rezone 125th Street in Harlem. Much of this unfortunately [...]

In which The Gay Recluse contemplates an uncommissioned masterpiece from the walls of an uptown subway station.

In which The Gay Recluse contemplates an uncommissioned masterpiece from the walls of an uptown subway station.

In which The Gay Recluse considers a broken traffic light in Washington Heights.
Glancing up, we were momentarily confused; what had once been familiar and comfortable seemed unclear and possibly dangerous. (Of course we took a photograph.) Is this not the story of your life, too?

In which The Gay Recluse would like to think “outside the box.”
Heating bills keep getting higher and higher, and despite global warming, there are days when it’s still very, very cold. Freezing air rushes through open windows, and we wonder: what can we possibly do about it? Any complex problem would seem to require [...]

In which The Gay Recluse ponders a photograph of the George Washington Bridge and provides an interesting (and possibly depressing) fact.
Date of photograph: February 24, 2008
Notes: We were rushing out to buy donuts and didn’t notice the reflection of the window to the right. (Oh well.)

Interesting (and Possibly Depressing) Fact: The George Washington Bridge opened [...]

In which The Gay Recluse reads the usually dependable City Room and says wtf.
Yesterday City Room crapped out an astoundingly bad (and factually inaccurate) propaganda piece called “Should All of 125th Street Be Declared Historic?” in which they discuss a “proposal” — until now, completely unheard of (and for good reason) — being put forth [...]

In which The Gay Recluse appears on the back of a tattered subway poster in the post-apocalyptic dungeon that is the 163rd Street subway station.

In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times.
Bob Herbert/Cruel and Gratuitous
The Short Version: Those kids who were arrested in Brooklyn last year are perfect angels and the police should apologize.
In his words: “These are not gangsters. These are not drug dealers. These are kids who were trying to go to a [...]

In which The Gay Recluse looks at the suffocation of the gay voice at The New York Times and other hallmarks of the new dark ages.
For those who missed it, we would like to point you in the direction of a recent post by Jeff Weinstein, in which he compares a truth about Jasper [...]