47th Street Payphone, 11 Years Later

This picture from early 1999 shows a man standing next to a payphone while talking on a cell phone as his friend waits for him.

Scenes like this used to annoy me. Cell phone boors were a new irritant in 1999, and it seemed particularly pretentious to use a cell while standing right next to a perfectly functional payphone.

Today this scenario is too common to notice. In fact, if you look closely at people who appear to be using payphones you will often find that they are actually using a cell phone, and simply using a payphone enclosure to muffle the noise of the street. The payphone in this picture offers no such sound deflection but the larger advertisement-covered payphone enclosures do, as many cell phone users have discovered.

When I went to see if this payphone still existed I found that it did, and that someone was standing right next to it using a cell phone, just like in 1999.

Over 11 years later this payphone still stands on West 47th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. Its phone number, according to my cell phone’s caller ID, is (212) 730-2583.