Archive for the ‘Infrastructure’ Category
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: gay stereotypes […]
Filed under: Architecture, Gay, Infrastructure, Language, Memory, Opera, Search, The Times, Traffic, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Beatrice, Clementines, Cornell, Crack House, Drug Lords, Edmund White, English Elm, Frank Rich, Gay Stereotypes, Geraldine Ferraro, Opera, SUV, Theta Drug
In which The Gay Recluse contemplates an uncommissioned masterpiece from the walls of an uptown subway station.
Filed under: Film, Gay, Infrastructure, Subway, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: C-train, Dumb Movies, Emotions, Funerals, Graffiti, MTA, Rambo, Sylvester Stallone, Tears
As we have discussed before, some of the best art in Washington Heights is in the subway stations. Here we pause to admire the genius of a delicate, floating (if raw and mildly distorted) line drawing of Jack Nicholson, which miraculously transforms a garish Hollywood poster into something subversive and entertaining, which is to say […]
Filed under: Graffiti, Infrastructure, Subway, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Art, Graffiti, Jack Nicholson, MTA, Posters, The Bucket List
In our daily travels, we are regularly confronted by some of our more clever but literal-minded critics with the question of why we would ever want to publish our thoughts and observations, if in fact it is our unending desire to be reclusive, or to obtain — in our own lexicon — a “community-free” existence. […]
Filed under: Gay, Infrastructure, Philosophers, Resignation, The Gay Recluse, The Winter Garden, Weather, Writers-German | Leave a Comment
Tags: Best of 2007, Community, Corsican Mint, Deserts, Gy Rclus, Gy Rcluse, Gy Recluse, Kant, Schopenhauer, Search Engines, Site Meter
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 the Pleasure of Ruins
We read about the MTA’s proposal to raise subway fares with mixed feelings; on one hand, we would happily pay the extra five or six dollars a month for more frequent trains, but at the same time, as we consider the ruined state of our subway station — regularly cited as one of the dirtiest […]
Filed under: Architecture, Decay, Gay, Infrastructure, Literature, New York City, Subway, Washington Heights, Writers-Hungarian | Leave a Comment
Tags: Art Deco, Book of Memories, Fare Hike, MTA, Peter Nadas, Subway
Have we ever told you just how grateful we are to the Audubon Station Post Office in Washington Heights? They have taught us so much, and not just about patience and resolve when it comes to standing in the six-hour lines that perpetually meander through their sallow, fluorescent interiors, but about the need to resign […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Gentrification, Infrastructure, New York City, Pessimism, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights, Writers-American | Leave a Comment
Tags: Audubun Station, Mail, Thomas Pynchon, Thurn und Taxis, Trystero, United States Postal Service, USPS, Washington Heights
On Tears for the Gay Recluse
Recent artwork in the local museum of the ephemeral:
Filed under: Infrastructure, New York City, Subway, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: 163rd Street, C-train, Chelsea Boys, Gay, MTA, New York City, SubTalk, United States Marines
On the Dead Station
As we ride the uptown 6-train, we peer through the window to catch a glimpse of the dead station at 18th Street. A friend once went by foot through the tunnels to this station and described finding there among the abandoned gates and pillars irrefutable evidence of human habitation: a doll’s shoe, a pornography magazine […]
Filed under: Architecture, Infrastructure, Memory, Subway | Leave a Comment
Tags: , 23rd Street, 6-train, Dead Stations, MTA, New York City, Subway, Union Square
In reading great works of literature, we are sometimes struck by the presence of what could be termed a “gay voice.” It is a voice that resonates with perspective of the sexually-oriented “outsider,” so that we come away with an understanding (and it does not have arrive by way of a literal representation) that “heterosexuality” […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Drivel, Gay, Infrastructure, Sickness, The Gay Recluse, The Times, Writers-American, Writers-British, Writers-French, Writers-German | 2 Comments
Tags: A.O. Scott, Gay, Henry James, Herman Melville, Marcel Proust, Michael Kimmelman, Peter Nadas, Susan Sontag, Thomas Mann, Toni Morrison, Virginia Woolf
There was a sleeping man, presumably homeless, in the subway station; as we approached, he turned over and gazed at us with eyes like those of a beaten animal, which is to say both fearful and imploring. He cleared his throat and began to speak in a surprisingly deep and resonant voice, which echoed in […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Dream, Infrastructure, Subway, Writers-French | Leave a Comment
Tags: Baudelaire, History, MTA, NYC, Spleen, United States
We leave work and walk the long blocks from Madison to Sixth Avenue. We hurry down the stairs into the station, where we mindlessly extract our card from our wallet and slide it through the reader. In the distance we can sense the deep, subterranean rumble of what is surely an empty uptown D-train approaching […]
Filed under: Infrastructure, Longing, Resignation, Subway, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: D-Train, Fate, God, Homophobia, Karma, MTA, New York City, Pessimism, Proletariat, Schopenhauer, Subway
Here we take offense with Andrew Sullivan‘s unthinking assertion that “[f]or all his many faults, [Rudy Giuliani] turned a city around.” Rather than rebut this ourselves, however, we turn to the infinitely more eloquent and compelling words of Herbert Muschamp, who sadly is no longer with us to tell the truth, which resonates in ways […]
Filed under: Drivel, Gay, Infrastructure, Memory, Sickness | Leave a Comment
Tags: Andrew Sullivan, Giuliani, Herbert Muschamp, New York City
Poets, pundits, philosophers and politicians, take note! This is not the story of nations or other one-hit wonders, nor is it the story of religion, for which so many millions have died in futile anger and delusion. It is certainly not the history of capital, although this too has been a scourge; no, friends, these […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Infrastructure, Obsession, Philosophers, Poets, Politicians | Leave a Comment
Tags: Capital, Civilization, History, Meat Puppets II, Nationalism, Religion, The Cannanes, The City, Walter Benjamin
On Reagan National Airport
The taxi dispatcher blew his whistle: “Reagan National?” he asked, referring to the airport just outside of the city. We shuddered visualizing a similar exchange twenty years in the future and the many monuments that would inevitably be erected to honor our current leaders. But as the cab pulled into the circular drive of the […]
Filed under: Decay, History, Infrastructure, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: Airports, Marriott Wardman Park, Ronald Reagan, Spleen, Washington DC
A young runner — perhaps twenty years old — had stopped to stretch at one of the Parcourse installations in Rock Creek Park; it did not take more than a single glance to realize why he looked so familiar. In a short conversation, he confirmed that he had in fact just this year graduated from […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Decay, Good Rock, Infrastructure, Landscape, Memory, Nostalgia, Opera, Pleasure, The Gay Recluse, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: Center for Marine Conservation, Cornell University, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Parks, Rock Creek Park, Running, Stretching, The Meat Puppets, The Smiths, Washington DC
On the Rock Creek Park Parcourse
AMERICA’S NEW OUTDOOR FITNESS SPORT IS FOR EVERYONE. Join the millions of participants who enjoy Parcourse regularly to maintain overall physical fitness and good health. Parcourse consists of a series of fitness stations (where you perform specific exercises) which are spaced along a jogging and walking path in this area, as you can see from […]
Filed under: Decay, Infrastructure, Landscape, Memory, Nostalgia, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: 1970s, Democracy, Exercise, Parcourse, Populism, Rock Creek Park, Washington DC
On Die Tote Stadt
The modern hotel is a mammoth, sprawling fortress on a hill; its endless hallways are dim and silent and uniform except for the temporal, scattered remains of room service left outside a door. If we see anyone at all — and this is rare, although we have been told the hotel is fully occupied — […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Infrastructure, Opera, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: Keycard, Marriott Wardman Park, Paranoia, The Dead City
On the Cotillion Ballroom
As we descend the wide, curving stairs to make our entrance into the Cotillion Ballroom, we look up and observe six — no, eight! — crystal chandeliers hovering above us, massive structures roughly the shape of upside-down umbrellas, each one magically suspended under the 30-foot ceiling. This is a grand interior space reminiscent of those we have seen […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Film, Infrastructure, Pessimism, Politicians, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: Aristocracy, Law, Marriott, The Supreme Court, Visconti
On Flight
The bleak and vaguely militaristic atmosphere of the terminal is now behind us; we have endured the stifling tedium of the runway and the paralyzing terror of the lift-off, during which we considered the high likelihood of our imminent death and regretted our many missteps. We thought with great tenderness of Dante and Zephyr and […]
Filed under: Dream, Infrastructure, Resignation, The Autumn Garden, The Russian Blue, Travel | Leave a Comment
Tags: Cats, conifers, LGA, US Airways
The Gay Recluse 