It’s become a chore, I’m sorry to say, to post content to this website. I don’t like WordPress anymore but it I feel stuck with it. I post more frequently to wsbj.com/sorabji, I believe on account of having set up the post-by-email gateway. It seems so much easier and enjoyable to post outside the WordPress bloat.

This web server itself is a regular PITA, filling up to 100% storage with useless files generated by crons I cannot seem to eradicate. Managing a dedServ was on my list of things to put behind me but transitioning these sites, with millions of flat HTML pages, to more efficient database-driven products is just not finding its way onto my radar.

A goal of my present life, this year 2022, was not to leave all this behind but to move on to a new life, an actual job job that leaves me off the hook for being responsible for everything. I am no longer my own tech support, my own content creator, my own researcher, photographer, editor, publicist… I was a lousy publicist anyway.

Except sometimes I return to that arrangement. I never left it entirely behind, and I have often asked myself why. Why didn’t I follow through with moving on to a new life, one that did not exemplify the futility and feeling of drowning in my own effluvial vomit?

Payphones remain a tic in my mind. With most of them gone from New York I am cursed to remember where they formerly stood. They pop up, fully formed in my mind as I walk through these streets, like I’m on acid and seeing things. Last week I felt myself avoiding stumbling into a phone that used to be on Fulton Street. That phones has been gone for months now.

I post to YouTube, where copyright infringements guarantees I’ll never make a dime for any of that time, travel, and work documenting Payphones of NYC and New Jersey. I considered soliciting contributions to at least pay train fare but my sense of the people who watch that stuff is they’d be blind to that kind of request.

I started making Payphone Radio calls again, from actual payphones. I’m not adding these calls to the Shoutcast playlists but instead I’ll produce them one by one as videos, like I did with this one. I think it turned out pretty well, with its deliberate ruggedness echoing the glorious sound quality of the copper landline.

But these little productions are a lot more work compared to just updating a Shoutcast playlist. I’m already several calls behind with no timetable on when I might catch up. My goal is to create a template with all the fixin’s ready to roll, I just dump the audio in. Somehow, despite my usual ability to find efficiencies in all things, I’ve not been able to accomplish that.

In my free hours I watch a lot of pornography, gravitating toward those women who resemble my exes. I also ride MTA buses for the full length of the route. The Q53 from Rockaway to Woodside was memorable. The Q13 from Howard Beach had its moments. I love the bus, though not every minute of it. Roads can be rough and the bus seems to be a favored means of travel among large families with screaming infants and youngsters which always seem to find me.

I pay my fare, unlike many people. On a bus in Rockaway I felt positively ostracized by the MTA, by the fundamental process of masking up and paying my fare. Masks were mandatory, but the busdriver wore none, nor did the woman who boarded the bus as I left. She also did not pay her fare, which did not seem to bother the busdriver. Why is there reason to pay the fare when it is not expected? Why be honest in this world? WHy do the right thing when no reward awaits?

I have occasional dalliances with women I meet through sleazy dating apps. A couple of weeks ago I escorted a retired NYPD woman back to Staten Island after our second night of sex. It was a complete letdown after the first encounter, which had both of us charged for days after. As good as it was the first time after the second attempt we both ghosted each other.

I used the trip to Staten Island to get video of a phone I’d know about for a while but never captured. It is somewhere in the middle of this Staten Island Stramble video. where I find a dead phone on Midland Avenue and check on the ferry terminal phones as well. The Midland Avenue phone came to me through a clever means. It’s hard to explain but I found that a publicly available archive of sorts is out there listing defunct payphone locations around New York. It is not comprehensive but I’ve found it revelatory.

I keep busy with payphones, even if it does not always reflect on this website. I’ve just grown tired of the publishing mechanics and the chore it has become.

I’ve also pursued, for my own knowledge because no one else should care, the genuine “Last Payphone of New York City.” As far as I know two suspects remain after CityBridge and The City made the ludicrous claim that they had removed the last street phone from New York. Why lie about something like that? Why make a spectacle and create misinformation about something so benign, especially when you know you are lying?

The real last payphone of New York, according to the criteria set forth by CityBridge and DoITT, could be this one. It might also be another one in Brooklyn. Whatever the case I’ve encountered a lot of people who believe the lie cast by DoITT and CityBridge that all the payphones are gone. It’s depressing to see bad information like that get passed around like gospel.

When The City pulled the “Last payphone of New York City” their definition of “payphone” was pretty specific, and ignored the fact that numerous other payphones remain in New York. They referred specifically to payphones found on City sidewalks, owned and operated by the CityBridge monopoly, the same group that thrust those horrible LinkNYC disasters onto our sidewalks, followed more recently by as-yet useless Link5G towers installed in certain neighborhoods.