Under the gloom of yesterday’s miserable weather I checked out one of Titan’s three new payphone kiosks in Times Square. This kiosk is at the corner of 49th Street and 7th Avenue, at the edge of Times Square. I made a short video of the new advertising contraption. The video includes other incidental activity in this always bustling area.

If you stand still in Times Square for long enough someone will eventually approach you to ask for something. At the end this video a man approaches me asking “Can I ask you something?” I silently decline his offer, shaking my head and concentrating on holding the camera steady. The surprisingly unaggressive gentleman heeds my rebuff, and wanders off, disappearing into the Times Square quagmire of humanity.

Titan’s new payphone kiosk is not likely to shake things up too much in the gaudy advertising-saturated space of Times Square. Jumbotrons, digital displays, and constantly changing billboards hundreds of times larger than this little kiosk are the norm, rendering this single screen relatively puny by comparison. And there is only one digitally activated screen on this kiosk. This payphone enclosure has 3 panels, but only one of them is activated with constantly changing advertising.

What appeared to make these payphones different when I tried to use them to make phone calls yesterday is that they actually seemed to work. A fully functional payphone in Times Square is a rarity, so I was surprised to pick up these phones at 49th Street and 7th Avenue and hear dial tones emanate from each of them. A dial tone usually, but not always, indicates that a payphone works.

I placed a couple of test calls to my voicemail, dropping 25¢ for each call, and talking about blahblahblah for 45 seconds or so.

Alas, when I tried to play back the voicemail messages I heard nothing. Silence. The 2 test calls I made are completely silent. Nothing was recorded. I guess you can use these phones to make calls, so long as you don’t intend for anyone to hear you.

These payphones come so close to working, but appearances can be deceiving with payphones.

The payphone enclosure was littered with piles of trash and plastic crates — not an uncommon site, and relatively mild by comparison with this Times Square Payphone from Thanksgiving Day, 2009.

The numbers for these 2 payphones are (212) 221-8897 and (212) 221-8898. Alas, by all appearances these phones appeared to be fully functional, but they were not. I called my voicemail to leave some test messages, but the recorded messages were completely silent.

Seen from across the street, through the endless blizzard of vehicle and pedestrian traffic, the other 2 panels of this 3-panel payphone enclosure contain static advertising panels. Only one panel, facing south, is enhanced with the constantly changing digital advertising display.