Archive for the ‘Washington Heights’ Category
In which The Gay Recluse appears on the back of a tattered subway poster in the post-apocalyptic dungeon that is the 163rd Street subway station.
Filed under: Capitalism, Graffiti, Infrastructure, New York City, Subway, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: 163rd Street, C-train, Dungeons, Graffiti, MTA, Neglect, Post-Apocalypse, Ruins, Shitholes, Washington Heights
In which The Gay Recluse is inspired by a classic. Of all the French photographers who documented Paris at the turn of the last century (and we don’t mean 8 years ago), we are most obsessed with Eugene Atget. Who can resist his urban streetscapes, his ghostly renderings of the city of light? And his […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Memory, Nostalgia, Pessimism, Photography, Pleasure, The Winter Garden, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Eugene Atget, Litter, Paris, Roots, Trees
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 pays tribute to his friends in Inwood. Of all the kind words and comments we received in response to our Gay Modern Love piece, we must acknowledge our friend Sayd in Inwood, who wrote this on Manhattan’s Peak: Oh, TGR. your story on gawker today was absolutely perfect. if i […]
Filed under: Gay, Gentrification, Good Rock, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: A Garden in Riotous Bloom, Big Boobs, Gawker, Gay Modern Love, Inwood, Manhattan's Peak, Mutual Admiration Societies, Skorakopock Rock
In which The Gay Recluse celebrates the demolition of an eyesore. Location: The intersection of Amsterdam and Saint Nicholas, between 162nd and 163rd Streets, in Washington Heights. Previously: We wish we had a photograph, but — alas! — a search through The Gay Recluse archives came up empty. Thus you will have to imagine a […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Knockbusters, Landscape, Photography, Subway, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Amsterdam Avenue, Camper Van Beethoven, Columbia University, English Elm, Knockbusters, Rite-Aid, Saint Nicholas, Useless Shit, Washington Heights
In which The Gay Recluse live-blogs the Super Bowl. 5:58. Our friend T___ arrives to give us haircuts. He tells us that his mother, who is only 64 years old, has just been diagnosed with an inoperable form of brain cancer. She has just begun chemotherapy, and to give him encouragement, we tell him about […]
Filed under: Addiction, Dissonance, Dream, Film, History, Landscape, Photography, Technology, Television, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Contempt, Giants, Haircuts, Hong Kong, In the Mood for Love, Jean-Luc Godard, Le Mepris, Maggie Cheung, Netflix, Patriots, Super Bowl, Tawaa, Tony Leung, Wong Kar-wei
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
In which The Gay Recluse, with very little sarcasm or irony, reports on real estate in Washington Heights. Description: Triple-lot vacant land, long used as an illegal outdoor parking lot. Address: 573, 575 and 577 West 161st Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam. Total lot size = 60′ by 100′. Remarks: This site first sparked our […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Decay, Gentrification, Landscape, Monopoly, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: 10032, Christian Orthodox, Columbia University, Department of Buildings, DOB, Monopoly, Real Estate, St. Mary Magdalen, Uptown
In which The Gay Recluse, with very little sarcasm or irony, reports on retail in Washington Heights. Development: Cigar Shop Address: 609 West 161st Street between Broadway and Fort Washington Remarks: Except for the famous quote — likely apocryphal — attributed to Sigmund Freud, we don’t know shit much about cigars except that they are […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Gentrification, Retail, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: 10032, Cigars, Dominican Republic, Eileen Alexander, Sigmund Freud, Soberano Cigars, Uptown Gentrification, Washington Heights
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The Gay Recluse 