Archive for the ‘Communism’ Category
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 […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Communism, Gentrification, Government, Infrastructure, Knockbusters, Landscape, Letters, New York City, Politicians, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: 125th Street, Amanda Burden, City Council, City Planning, Community Board 10, Community Board 11, Community Board 9, Harlem
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 […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Communism, Drivel, Gentrification, Knockbusters, New York City, Retail, The Gay Recluse, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Tags: Adam Leitman Bailey, Audubon Ballroom, City Room, Crap, Harlem, Knockbusters, Lawyers, Malcolm X
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 […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Literature, New York City, Nostalgia, Pessimism, The Times, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Food, Jasper Johns, Jeff Weinstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Roberta Smith, The Gay Voice, The New York Times
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 banner day at […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Communism, Decay, Gentrification, Government, Infrastructure, Knockbusters, Letters, New York City, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Amsterdam Avenue, Boston Market, Columbia University, Curbed, Development, Rent-Stabilization, Rite-Aid, Saint Nicholas, Uptown, Useless Shit, Washington Heights
In which The Gay Recluse reports to the Board of Directors. Summary Results for January 2008 surpassed budgeted forecasts and represented significant growth for The Gay Recluse. It is expected that as editorial and production capacity of the site continues to expand, traffic will continue to trend upward, justifying additional capital investment into the operation. […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Communism, Gay, Infrastructure, Technology, The Gay Recluse, Traffic | Leave a Comment
Tags: Business Revenue, Feedburner, Feeds, Internet Traffic, Linkage, Metrix, Monthly Report, RSS, SiteMeter, Technorati, WordPress
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 […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Communism, Decay, Government, New York City, Politicians, Resignation, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: American Geographical Society, Anna Hyatt Huntington, Archer Milton Huntington, Audubon Terrace, Beaux Arts, Dominican Neighborhoods, The American Academy of Arts and Letters, The American Numismatic Society, The Hispanic Society, The Museum of the American Indian, The Smiths, Washington Heights
On A Book of Memories
Today – after more than two months of reading over 700 pages of tightly wound dream and remembrance – we finally finished A Book of Memories by Peter Nadas. If you remember, it was a Michael Kimmelman interview with Nadas a few months ago that prompted us to write a diatribe against the beleaguered state […]
Filed under: Communism, Gay, Language, Literature, Memory, Writers-Hungarian | Leave a Comment
Tags: A Book of Memories, Gay Literature, Gay Voice, Gay Writers, Hungarian Writers, Peter Nadas, Quotations
Today we heard the unfamiliar whine of a dog on the subway. Poor thing! We can imagine no environment more foreign or artificial to a dog’s sensibility than a New York City subway car, between the plastic orange seating, linoleum floors, steel poles and preposterous advertisements. (Dr. Zizmor, anyone?) Or — from a sonic perspective […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Infrastructure, Longing, New York City, Subway | Leave a Comment
Tags: A-train, Dogs, Human Condition, New York City, Philosophy, Subway
On Decembers Past
With so much pressure and anticipation, this — namely, the week before Christmas — was when we could stand it no longer: it was time to mount an expedition into that most forbidden and exotic of all domestic locales, our mother’s bedroom closet. To even enter our parents’ bedroom felt dangerous; it was the one […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Memory, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Bedroom Closet, Christmas, Family, Gifts, Pittsburgh, Transgression
On the Blue Atlas Cedar in Snow
The first snow of the season in our Washington Heights garden, and naturally we are drawn to that most unnatural of colors: the electric slate blue of the atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica). Suddenly — are you with us? — we are on a train in northern Italy, watching the countryside drift past; here, it seems […]
Filed under: Communism, Landscape, The Gay Recluse, The Russian Blue, The Winter Garden, Travel, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Blue Atlas Cedar, Cedrus atlantica, Columnar, Fastigiata, Saturnine, Snow, Turin, Venice
On Giving Thanks
While this day is not so different than so many others, to the extent we feel like we are under siege — fending off sickness and financial ruin and political censure at every turn — as we survey our past and contemplate what lies ahead, we are grateful for many things. Such as? Well, life […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Dream, Government, History, Memory, Pessimism | Leave a Comment
Tags: Clementine, Conservative, Democrat, Liberal, Libertarian, Religious Right, Republican, Thanksgiving
On Birds and Cats
But did you not hear about the trial of the man who killed a cat that was stalking migratory birds in a Texas sanctuary? What a nightmare! On one hand, who can deny the allure of the cat, creature of the night, possessor of dreams? Yet who has not stood in awe of birds flying […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Communism, Dream, History, Obsession, Pleasure, The Autumn Garden, The Russian Blue, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Birds, Cats, Conscious, Freud, Jung, The Soviet Union, The United States, Unconscious
The Gay Recluse 