Abandoned Payphone: Sports Authority

For years this abandoned payphone has been a fixture at the Sports Authority on Northern Boulevard in Queens.

Once offering 4 minutes of local calling time for 25¢ (and 5 minutes calling to the continental USA and 50 other countries for 50¢) this payphone probably completed its last call in 2007.

Its payphone number (718) 533-9104 is no longer in service.

The details of this payphone’s decline can only be surmised. The trail has gone cold for anyone seeking individuals responsible for ownership and operation of this device.

This payphone was once owned and operated by Telaleasing Enterprises, an oddly-spelled subsidiary of the also-defunct Davel Communications. According to this useful source Davel was acquired by Mobile Pro in 2004. In 2007 Davel’s assets were sold to Sterling Payphones, a Bronx-based payphone service provider which appears to have imploded in 2010. With no reference to Sterling Payphones on its informational placards I would guess this payphone was probably pulled from service and abandoned in 2007, when Sterling acquired this and the rest of Davel’s assets.

A dull hum used to emanate from the handset of this payphone, suggesting a physical connection to a dial tone or power supply which could potentially bring this phone back into service.

Today no such hum is heard. Everything about this object exudes abandonment.

This abandoned payphone hangs like a museum piece on a wall near the bathrooms of the Sports Authority sporting goods store at 51-30 Northern Boulevard in Queens. Like this non-working payphone, however, those bathrooms are just a tease. The public is not allowed to use those bathrooms, it seems, though this was not always the case. In 2008 I stepped in to the Sports Authority mens room. Its stark lack of toilet stalls momentarily caused me to think I had entered a bathroom at the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp.

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