More photos and details here:
Recollections of Obama’s Ex-Roommate
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/recollections-of-obamas-ex-roommate/
Excerpt:
SUBLET AVAILABLE: Three-room railroad flat, third floor, West 109th Street. Near Columbia University. Ideal for roommates who do not need privacy, reliable heat or steady hot water. Kitchen modest, but take out available, including New York bagels for only a quarter.
Such were the accommodations that greeted the future president, Barack Obama, when he moved to New York in 1981 to pursue his undergraduate studies at Columbia, according to the recollections of Phil Boerner, his roommate for a semester. Both men were transfer students from Occidental College in Los Angeles, and as transfers were locked out of university housing at the time. Mr. Obama, 20, a junior, had spent two years at Occidental, where he had lived in the same dorm as Mr. Boerner.
Mr. Obama, who ultimately made Chicago, and now Washington, his home, enjoyed his New York years, Mr. Boerner recalls. Museums. Jogging in the park. Breakfasts at Tom’s on Broadway, not yet the celebrated hangout of Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza.
“I miss New York and the people in it,” he would write Mr. Boerner a few years after they graduated. “The subways, the feel of Manhattan streets, the view downtown from the Brooklyn Bridge.”
**Ideal for roommates who do not need privacy,**
SOUNDS TO ME LIKE THEY WERE LOVERS.