A lot has changed around Hunters Point South in Long Island City.

Most of the payphones are gone. Some survive, but not many.

I staked out a location which had a payphone in May, 2004. Not surprisingly that payphone is gone. In its wake is an empty street corner, with ghostly echoes of the payphone’s former presence.

This payphone (and the one behind it) used to stand at 50th Avenue and 5th Street in Long Island City. What to say about the STOP sign? Maybe it was a message to those who would advance the payphone genocide?

The above picture is from May, 2004.

The payphone is gone but the tree, with its parenthesis-esque arc, looks about the same as it did 6 years ago:

The above picture is from April, 2010, 6 years later.

If a payphone falls in the city, does anyone answer?

Here is all that is left of this Long Island City payphone:

Some day the sidewalks will be blasted and even this shred of evidence will be gone.