Tag Archives: NYC

The current issue of The New Yorker features an article about the Ansonia Hotel, former home of the legendary Continental Baths: What is it about the Ansonia Hotel, at Broadway and Seventy-third Street, that makes people want to take off their clothes? In the nineteen-sixties and seventies, naked men, sometimes ten thousand of them a week, used to hang out …

Upper East Side, 1st & 71st, 8:30amA woman is walking her dog in front of an under-construction high-rise. A cement truck is waiting to back into the site. Construction Guy: Excuse me, miss! Can you please use the other sidewalk? Woman (pointing at dog): When he is done making HIS shit, you can go back to making YOURS. I was …

Holy crap! We got 7.81 inches of rain in Central Park yesterday, the wettest day in NYC in 119 years, and almost breaking the 1888 record. That’s Florida-style rain right there. But there’s no flooding around Manhattan, at least none that I’ve noticed. I guess we’ve got great drainage ’round these parts.

Last night I attended the first organizational meeting of the Queer Justice League, where about 100 activists gathered to discuss the purpose, structure, rules and procedures of the group. During an interesting opening exercise, attendees were asked to give their first names, preferred gender pronoun, and a one-word description of their mood about the meeting. Curious, optimistic, hopeful, ready, excited, …

The Second Avenue subway, the long-awaited, often-started but never finished subway line down Manhattan’s East Side had its fourth groundbreaking this week. (My “morning view” pics are usually my own, but I grabbed this one from the NY Times.) The tunnel shown was sealed up in the 70’s during NYC’s big financial crisis and has sat empty since. I can’t …

Food Emporium, 1st Avenue, Tuesday 8pmA small boy is running in circles around a produce display, unspooling about 50 feet of plastic bags.Young Mother: You had just better start behaving right this minute or tomorrow morning I’m getting on the phone and calling in Mean Nanny for the rest of the week. Do you want that? Do you want to …

Have I complained about the weather yet? Have I complained about the radiators in my apartment making more noise than the annual Ghosts of Christmas Past convention? Have I complained lately about the miserable chattering pigeons in my airshaft that wake me up at 5am every morning? Have I complained about the guy upstairs who just got a new monster …

“Oopsie. Here’s your foreskin back. Keep it in a warm dry place. We’ll be happy to take it out of your hands later, if you are among the millions suffering from ESPS (Excessive Sexual Pleasure Syndrome.)” The New York Department of Health issued a statement today saying that the New York Times had “misrepresented” its response to the recent UN/WHO …

Sunday, 11pm, Christopher Street, West Village I’m on my cellphone, leaning against a tree. A handsome young man comes running up the sidewalk at me. His jerky gait on the broken cement suggests he’s trying not to break his mother’s back. Or maybe trying TO break it, I can’t tell. He’s shouting something, but I can’t make it out with …

Saturday, 1am, 2nd Avenue, East VillageStoned Dude 1(pointing): You wanna eat there? Stoned Dude 2: Thailand Cafe? What kinda food do they have? SD1: Um, Thai food, dude. SD 2: Like what? SD 1: Dude! Like noodles and shrimp. That kinda shit. SD 2: Fuck that. I don’t like Chinese..

And moving to News Of The Deranged, Tom Cruise is coming to Manhattan next week to host a $100,000 per table fundraiser to benefit a Scientology “New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project”, which claims to be able to detoxify cops, firefighters and rescue workers who were exposed to poisons during the World Trade Center rescue. Crazy, right? Even crazier, this …

In response to the recent endorsement by the World Health Organization, the New York City Department of Health is also planning to promote circumcision for men at risk for HIV, asking community groups AND gay rights organizations to discuss the procedure with their members. This, despite WHO’s own statement that the procedure holds little value for gay men who practice …

The first meeting of the Queer Justice League will take place at NYC’s Gay Community Center on Thursday, April 12th at 7:30pm. This meeting will be a space for long-term ACT UP members and new young activists to come together and discuss the future of the fight for LGBT equality. If you want to have a voice in the next …

Five years ago, when NYC’s Eagle opened on West 28th in Chelsea, it was a lonely walk down a crack-head strewn sidewalk to reach the Eagle’s front door. Today W.28th is the epicenter of Manhattan nightlife, with a dozen or more major nightclubs popping up in the area over the last few years. With all that traffic comes a lot …

This giant contraption is the entrance to the 1,2,3 trains at 125th Street in Morningside Heights, just west of Harlem in Manhattan.

After a nice Bloody Mary brunch cooked up by Farmboy C, the three of us made a to-go Bloody and headed up Broadway for a stroll in this lovely spring weather. Somehow we kept going and going, first running into an anti-foie gras protest at Fairway Market, which was largely ignored by busy Seder shoppers. Then we stopped in at …

Father Tony took this great pic of Aaron and Jeff at Exit Art last week, perfectly capturing their opinion of performance art, or at least mine (usually). I was in hibernation for some pervy disco event and wasn’t along for the excursion, but I thought I’d post this pic anyway, for pure beefcake value. Jeff is taken, but our boy …

In a nod to foreign tourists, the NYC hot dog carts are selling Nutella, a vile gelatinous hazelnut tub of muck that I’d never heard of until I moved here to work for a British company. My coworkers adore Nutella, but are grossed out by peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Go figure. The product was invented in Italy during WWII …

BELOW: DJ Michael Fierman leans over his record as he sooths the morning masses shortly after taking the Black Party stage at 11AM. Notice that unlike the preceding two DJs, Fierman is using vinyl. That’s Bonnie Pointer’s Heaven Must Have Sent You on the turntable. Another Black Party has come and gone, always with an astonishment of how quickly time …