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 [...]

In which The Gay Recluse responds (in italics) to reader comments.
Dear The Gay Recluse: I also live in Washington Heights, and was led to your blog through curbed.com. I read your parody post On Our Eulogy for Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage with giddiness and glee!
We like you already; this has been a [...]

In which The Gay Recluse documents the exceedingly beautiful ruins of Washington Heights.
Location: Audubon Terrace
Address: Broadway between 155th and 156th Streets
Remarks: Of all the exceedingly beautiful ruins in Washington Heights, perhaps none is more heartbreaking than Audubon Terrace. Not quite dead, it is like a great whale stranded on a beach; as much as we [...]

First, it’s a great title for a documentary; just to say Gay Sex in the Seventies makes us a little more forgiving than is perhaps our natural tendency. Plus you get to see some great shots of vintage Big Apple; the west-side piers, the notorious truck bays across the highway, the Upper West Side when [...]

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

Dear readers: we invite you to submit any particularly inspiring (or any particularly uninspiring) examples of subway graffiti to us at thegayrecluse@gmail.com.

In which The Gay Recluse ponders a sampling of recent search terms used to find the very pages you are now reading. Note: All search terms listed are in the exact form provided by WordPress.com, which is the host (at least for a while) of this blog. Hyperlinks to relevant posts included.
Search: rambo gay
Comment: [...]

Let’s imagine that your name is Rex Cole. You were born in 1887 in Port Huron, Michigan. You drop out of school at the age of 16 to become an electrician. Dissatisfied with the provincial life, you fight the tide of many millions and head east to New York City, where you save enough money [...]

We have long suspected that “Modern Love” — the weekly column in the Sunday Styles of The Times — has been a startlingly barren landscape for gay writers, particularly when you consider its location in what is undoubtedly the “gayest” section of the newspaper (and — oh yeah — the gayest city in the world), [...]

Dear ESPN, we wanted to take a few seconds to let you know how much we hate your pottery-themed ad campaign. It might not even be running anymore; we first saw it in the back of a cab two months ago, or maybe it was even longer than that, but we saw it again last [...]

Given the long-ascendant Manhattan real-estate market, people are often surprised to learn the extent to which abandoned, burned-out property still plagues Harlem and Washington Heights. On our block alone — which is not even close to one of the worst around here — there are three completely annihilated townhouse “shells” and several other larger buildings [...]