There is, of course, an arted up payphone at the midtown Taco Dumbo, on 52nd Street just west of 5th Avenue. I mean why shouldn’t one expect to find a disconnected piece of telephonic irrelevance positioned as the æsthetic centerpiece of a modern midtown taco joint?

I saw this phone from outside, through the window, and thought it must be a reflection of a payphone on the street. But no payphones stand on this stretch of 52nd Street. It drew me in to the taco establishment.

I don’t know where the phone came from. I didn’t want to ask, since the place was mad busy with Taco Dumboians when I passed through.

Take a look at the Taco Dumbo Midtown website. With no explanation it makes the payphone look like an essential part of the Taco Dumbo Midtown experience, as if you cannot visit this establishment without paying proper respect to randomly appointed technological obsolescence. The website design appears intent on inducing hypnosis with the undulating, wave-like movement of the phone.

The pink color matches the lettering of the Taco Dumbo logo. Other than that I don’t find that it fits all too naturally into the décor of the place.

Paint covers the phone thickly enough to render invisible any scratchiti or chiseled defacement of the phone.

Officially this phone still belongs to Verizon, but that telco giant ran out of love for this phone long ago. My guess is that Verizon left this phone behind at another Taco Dumbo location, and the store’s owners saw some retro charm in it. It got me to enter the place when I otherwise never would.