Payphone Confidential: Rotary Dial Payphone, NYC, 2009
August 06, 2009
This grainy photo, taken with my cell phone, shows a real rarity. This is a fully functional rotary dial payphone. This phone is actively used at a business somewhere in the 5 boroughs on New York City.
I will not reveal the location of this phone. If the phone company gets word of this phone's location they will dispatch a crew to "fix" it -- but that would be a waste because this phone works just fine.
I know a little bit about the history of this establishment, and by my estimate the rotary dial has been spinning on this payphone since at least the 1980s. It may have been in this spot since the 1970s.
Last year I found a rotary dial payphone at the King Penny Hardware Store on Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria. The phone does not work, and probably has not worked for many years, but its number was (718) 278-9139.
I also spotted an amazing phone booth with a rotary dial payphone on 35th Avenue in Astoria. It was cool to see but alas, that phone booth was merely a prop for a filming of the short-lived television show Life on Mars.
My earliest time spent living in New York City included long hours clutching any of these rotary dial payphones at the Parc Lincoln in Manhattan. Those phone booths are altogether gone.
