In which The Gay Recluse rather quickly gets lung cancer.
Time of Photographs: May 10, around 8:30.

The oily black smoke of 100-year-old boilers disperses daily across the rooftops in Washington Heights, heedless of those who suffer from pneumonia, asthma and tuberculosis. Officials and politicians? Not even footnotes in this story, which is about the aggregation of [...]

In which The Gay Recluse suggests a link.
The most beautiful ads are always for dead companies.

Like this one we recently took on 35th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue.

Does this company still exist? We hope not, because we don’t want to have to think about buying anything.

New York City is filled with ads for dead [...]

In which The Gay Recluse takes a trip to the suburbs.
Last weekend we went flower shopping and on the way back stopped into a brand new Home Depot that was recently built somewhere in Westchester, which is this large land mass north of New York City; sometimes desolate and sometimes beautiful, it is criss-crossed with [...]

In which The Gay Recluse sees you on the dark side of the moon.
We’d like to put forth the case that the most random graffiti can be found uptown.
Exhibit A: Spotted on the southbound platform of the 163rd Street subway station:

The cock is stupid, but we have to admit that the Roger Waters part made [...]

In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship.
This week’s piece: Was I on a Date or Baby-Sitting?
Subject: For some reason a “Scary Sadshaw” [...]

In which The Gay Recluse rather quickly gets lung cancer.
Date of Photographs: April 18, 2008

We’ve noticed that almost every chimney in Washington Heights is spewing thick, black smoke these days.

It’s definitely a lot worse than it’s ever been, which leads us to ask: Does it have anything to do with the rising cost of [...]

In which The Gay Recluse again laments the suffocation of the gay voice in American literature.
If you’re like us, when you scanned through the list of books included in New York Magazine’s recent “New York City Canon 1968-2008,” you had one reaction: wtf! where are the gays? In every other format, gays are represented [...]

In which The Gay Recluse rather quickly gets lung cancer.
Time and date of photographs: March 26, 10am (ish). [We would have posted earlier but had a backlog of hot gay statues to attend to. (Plus we had to go to Pittsburgh for the weekend for a celebration.)]
We’ve repeatedly documented the monstrous plumes of black [...]

In which The Gay Recluse rather quickly gets lung cancer.
Time and date of photographs: April 2, 2008, 7pm (ish)

Although the worst offender seems to have abated after we called 311 a few weeks ago, there are regular emissions of nasty-looking black smoke from almost all of the rooftops.

At least when it gets dark it’s [...]

In which The Gay Recluse posts love letters from crazies.
Remember a couple hundred years ago when Arthur C. Clarke died and we made fun of him for being a closet case? And how not everyone thought it was funny and we laughed at them too? Well, some people are still upset and can’t resist [...]

In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship.
This week’s piece: How We Got from Grief to Pancakes
Subject: A woman finds a new [...]

In which The Gay Recluse reads a book five years later and says wtf.
Last fall, after we posted our thoughts on the suffocation of the gay voice in American literature, a reader suggested that for the sake of comparison we check out The Yacoubian Building, by Alaa al Aswany, which said reader described to us [...]

In which The Gay Recluse explores mythology.
In response to our post on the nasty black smoke seen snaking around the rooftops of Washington Heights, reader David writes:
FYI - asthma is caused more by a bad diet than by the air we breathe.
Love your site, but the “asthma is caused by dirty air” myth should be [...]

In which The Gay Recluse provides a gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love offering in The Times.
Mom, It’s Me, Your Gay Son, Finally
By PETE MacDONALD and THE GAY RECLUSE
Published: March 22, 2008
A YEAR after my partner Alan left me, and on the day before my estranged mother would have turned 77, I [...]

In which The Gay Recluse rather quickly gets lung cancer.
Time and date of morning photograph: March 21, 2008, 7:54am.

Time and date of evening photograph: March 21, 2008, 7:34pm

The oily black smoke of 100-year-old boilers disperses daily across the rooftops in Washington Heights, heedless of those who suffer from pneumonia, asthma and tuberculosis. Officials and [...]

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 becomes increasingly obsessed with The George Washington Bridge.
Time and Date of morning photograph: March 20, 2008, 6:54am.
Notes: Seriously, don’t these clouds look a little “Poltergeisty”?

Time and Date of evening photograph: March 20, 2008, 6:54pm.
Notes: We appreciate the black smoke, which is so good for our asthma.

“The George Washington Bridge over [...]

In which The Gay Recluse provides a more accurate obituary for Arthur C. Clarke than the one that just appeared in The Times. (For the AP version, click here.)
Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90

By GERALD JONAS and THE GAY RECLUSE
Published: March 18, 2008
Arthur C. Clarke, a writer and long-time closet [...]

In which The Gay Recluse provides a more accurate version of Arthur C. Clarke’s obituary than the one that was just released by AP. (For The Times version, click here.)
Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS and THE GAY RECLUSE
Published: March 18, 2008
Filed at 6:41 p.m. ET
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) [...]

In which The Gay Recluse provides a postscript to our gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love piece in the Times by Kayla Rachlin Small. (For those looking for our informal-but-telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, click here.)
Dear TGR,
I loved your riff on “The Steep Price of Your Forbidden Kiss” (a
title which, for the record, [...]