Baba Laknath Laundromat Payphone in Elmhurst

This abandoned payphone at an Elmhurst laundromat offered no clue about who had owned the device but left it behind. Identifying information about the former owner probably came down in a deliberate move by the former owner to obscure her or his identity. Unlike the No-Name Payphone at the No-Name Laundromat I posted about last week this phone looks like a standard issue Elcotel or Protel model. I could not identify the make of the previous payphone.

Someone stashed a chunk of wood on top of this phone. Where else would you put a chunk of wood — which I thought looked like a brownie at first — but on top of an abandoned payphone?

The peeled-away yellow sticker looks like it advertised an event in a basement somewhere in Corona. The touchtone keys look especially filthy and corroded.

With so little to see here I nevertheless might have stayed a few seconds longer to get more detail photos. But the dude you see in the reflection below worked at the laundromat and seemed not to take kindly to my admittedly puzzling intrusion. Such dynamics prevent this relatively timid soul from entering into a lot of places of business with no other reason except to look for dead payphones.

Someone etched what looks like a phone number on the payphone’s façade. I tried to mine this number for any shred of a live connection connection I could. I came up with nothing but a hair salon in Jackson Heights. The second number looks like a 6 that wanted to be a 5 when it grew up. Extra credit for the fingerprints. Who could have left those behind?