Archive for the ‘Drag Queens’ Category

As part of our ongoing series this primary season, we met with Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani, who came all the way up to Washington Heights to discuss one of his favorite topics: correct service for the formal and informal table. —————————– The Gay Recluse: Rudy, as mayor you were associated with a hard-nosed approach […]


Like Ann Coulter, the ailanthus tree is noxious, unsightly and invasive, and can be found almost everywhere in the United States, not only in vacant lots and highway meridians, but in once pristine forests, where it wreaks havoc on local ecosystems. It does not favor diversity or nuance, but — and with just the most […]


Last night at the midtown bistro ______, we were pleased to find Des Esseintes at the bar, his thin hand clutched around a tumbler of amber-colored liquid. We asked about this, and he confirmed it was a single highland malt from the ____ distillery, which he had long professed to be the most burnished yet […]


Let’s assume for the sake of argument that we have two couples, roughly similar in every indicator of socioeconomic status, and that money is not a determinative factor in this hypothetical. Let’s also assume that both are offered the opportunity 1) to have (or adopt) a child, or 2) to adopt a pet. A further […]


Today, as part of our continuing series of garden interviews in Washington Heights, we spoke with Ann Romney — wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt — about some of her favorite films and “the focus” they have brought to her husband’s campaign. ——————————- The Gay Recluse: Ann, we noticed in the press materials that you […]


It was the sight of a civil war hat — blue wool, with the truncated black rim and a small leather band across the front — on a fellow C-train passenger that made us think of the time, almost twenty years earlier, when we had last worn such a hat (yes, it is called a […]


This from a July, 1906 newspaper article — “Chicago Woman Physician Alone All Night on Mt. Whiteface” — on display at the summit of Whiteface Mountain: “Dr. J. D. Merrill, a prominent woman physician of Chicago, is reported to have ‘got lost’ and stayed all night alone on the top of Mount Whiteface one night […]


We were recently informed via e-mail of the fait accompli retirement of Glitza Gardenia, a woman who had labored in the administrative trenches of our organization for over three decades. Despite efforts of her manager — the author of the e-mail in question — to honor these years of unflinching service, Glitza refused to consider […]


There are many games of dominoes in Washington Heights, but we prefer to avoid those on Broadway — populated by noisy, drunken louts — in favor of the more intense and serious version found on the side streets leading up to Amsterdam. Here the diamond-studded drug lord steps out of an armored SUV to take […]