Borden Avenue Has Lost Its Dialtone

This payphone removal happened within the last 7 days. A working payphone with dial tone and full functionality got yanked to make way for a yellow, shower-stall-sized mat. I started recording this video unaware that the phone would be gone.

This is a somewhat sketchy part of town, though this phone happened to have been around the corner from the manufacturing plant for LinkNYC kiosks, the so-called “payphone of the future” expected to replace every payphone in New York, maybe even this one.

There is also, of course, a clown training school nearby.

It remains to be seen if a LinkNYC kiosk will rise up at this former payphone location.

There used to be a cluster of payphones at this stretch of road, situated at an entrance to the Queens Midtown Tunnel, under the Pulaski Bridge, not far from the former headquarters of FreshDirect and its enormous LED billboard.

Three Verizon phones once stood across the street, a BAS Communications phone on the next block, and a smattering of Telebeam phones on the other side of the train tracks.

This was Borden Avenue’s last dial tone.

A few photos I got of this phone from last month follow. It had those cool Arial font “TELEPHONE” signages, yellowed with age, from the olden days of NYNEX and New York Telephone.