Archive for the ‘New York City’ Category
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 Gay Sex in the Seventies
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 […]
Filed under: Film, Gay, Gentrification, Health, History, New York City, Nostalgia, Sickness, Stereotypes | Leave a Comment
Tags: Disco, Gay Sex, Gay Sex in the 70s, Gay Sex in the Seventies, Poppers, St. Mark's Bathhouse, Studio 54, The Saint, Vintage New York, West Side Piers
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.
Filed under: Graffiti, Infrastructure, New York City, Subway, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Graffiti, MTA, Networks, Sundance, Sundance Film Festival, Television
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 […]
Filed under: Gay, Language, Memory, New York City, Search, The Gay Recluse, Traffic | 1 Comment
Tags: Andrew Holleran, Brazil, Clemetines, Edward Rothstein, ESPN, Internet, Nietzsche, Picea Abies, Rambo, Roger Cohen, Search, Spruce, Vacant Shell
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 […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Decay, History, New York City, Resignation, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Art Deco, Billboards, Biography, Economic Depression, General Electric, Refrigerators, Rex Cole, Showrooms
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), […]
Filed under: Gay, New York City, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, The Times | 4 Comments
Tags: Daniel Jones, Fashion & Style, Gay Stereotypes, Gay Voice, Gay Writers, Homophobia, Modern Love, Morrissey, The New York Times
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 […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Drag Queens, Drivel, Gay, New York City, Stereotypes, Television, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Advertising, Ceramics, Chris Berman, ESPN, Glazes, Mike Ditka, National Football League, Pottery, Sunday NFL Countdown
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 […]
Filed under: Architecture, Decay, Gentrification, Government, Landscape, New York City, Pessimism, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | 1 Comment
Tags: Ailanthus, Ann Coulter, HPD, Marcus Millichap, Massey Knakal, Pigeons, Rats, Real Estate, Shells, Uptown Manhattan
Yesterday as we approached Ft. Tryon Park for our weekly promenade in Washington Heights‘ most beautiful cliff-side heather garden, we were confronted by a small regiment of bagpipe players, apparently rehearsing for an upcoming event. We sat for a few minutes on one of the adjacent benches and observed these maneuvers, in which the band […]
Filed under: Government, New York City, Politicians, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2008 Presidential Campaign, Bagpipes, Bette Midler, Ft. Tryon Park, Heather Gardens, Parade Maneuvers
That cloud overhead — you really don’t recognize it? That hovering and inescapable dread, which makes New Year’s the longest Sunday of the year, particularly now that we no longer have to endure the last day in August before returning to school? No, it’s not so much the prospect — or let’s be honest, the […]
Filed under: Brooklyn, Memory, New York City, Pleasure, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2008, New Year's Day, Resolutions, Saturnine
More than any other neighborhood in Manhattan, Washington Heights — except for a few enclaves north of the George Washington Bridge — has existed in a state of commercial paralysis, so that as we stroll up and down Broadway, we are tempted to say (and with the expected derision) that nothing has changed for at […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Gentrification, Landscape, New York City, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2007 Awards, Broadway, Columbia Medical, Florist, Joa, Starbucks, Uptown, Vantage Properties, Washington Mutual
True, there’s a part of us that wants to mock this display in the entrance to our parking garage in Washington Heights; to note with derision the odd juxtaposition of the toy sports-car bear with the postcard portrait of a baby Jesus; to look with disdain at the tree itself, oddly pathetic and completely garish, […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Longing, New York City, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Christmas, Faith, Jingle Bells, Logic, Outsider Art, Parking Garage
Each morning we turn the corner onto Broadway and are newly amazed by the cataclysmic arrangements of trash and debris on the streets and sidewalks. Plastic bags and dead leaves circle south in violent little eddies, while chicken bones, boxes, mannequin torsos and car batteries can be found heaped up on the curb. A barren, […]
Filed under: Decay, Gay, Good Rock, New York City, Resignation, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Broadway, Dead Leaves, Litter, Parking Meters, Plastic Bags, Saturnine, Washington Heights
Today we dreamed of traveling to a small island off the coast of Japan called Gukanjima. Only three-quarters of a mile around, during its heyday it nevertheless was home to over 5000 people, which for decades made it the world’s most densely populated island. Looking at pictures of it now, we imagine a city block […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Decay, Dream, Gentrification, New York City, Nostalgia, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Edwardian Architecture, Gukanjima, Japan, Manhattan, Washington Heights
How sad we are to learn (this from The Times) that “the New York City Council cleared the way this afternoon for a 17-acre campus expansion by Columbia University, the largest in its history.” How sorry we are for Nick Sprayregen and his family, the owners of Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage, the largest private-property owners in the […]
Filed under: Architecture, Gentrification, Government, New York City, The Times, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Columbia University, Eminent Domain, New York City Council, Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage, West Harlem
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 Beauty of Extreme Weather
What? Only two inches of slush? That’s not a storm! It’s a transition, a pause, a hiccup and (most of all, after all the buildup) a disappointment. But seriously, do you remember the time — we were still in school then, so it would have been at least 100 years ago — when it snowed […]
Filed under: Landscape, Memory, New York City, Pleasure, Weather | Leave a Comment
Tags: Down Jacket, Snow, The Great White Hurricane, Winter
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
The Gay Recluse 