This photo of Gerry Winogrand, using a Midtown Manhattan phone booth in 1967, reminds me that while I have no real nostalgia for phone booths I do miss the calming, thought-slowing act of dialing a number on a rotary dial telephone.
I can think of no Warholian flourish or bit of wit to embellish the fact that there just happens to be a payphone at the Andy Warhol museum that takes incoming calls. Museum visitors might find something Warholian, or at least artistically abstract, about making random contact with strangers in this way, should they answer your call. Give it a try. Call Andy at 412-231-8878.
I traveled down the 4 train line from Woodlawn to Fordham Road, capturing sightings of all the dead PTS payphones along the way. None of them worked and none of them ever will. I also spotted a couple of non-PTS phones outside the subways.
Can't not love the phone number hand-written onto the payphone at the Soccer Tavern in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. How does DRINK BEER show up on Caller ID?
Has anyone even touched the payphone at Crabtree Falls State Park since Daniel Hopsicker took these photos over a month ago? Calls to 540-377-9941 continue to return a busy signal suggesting the phone remains, as seen in these photos, off the hook. Don't disturb the wildlife.
I picked up three boxes of 35mm slides labeled "NYC Street Scenes 1980s" at a thrift shop. For only five bucks I felt like a thief. Among the 150 or so slides I scanned I found this photo capturing three payphones at Grand Central Terminal, along with choice shots of the Twin Towers, Old Calvary Cemetery, Times Square, and other places in New York.
A driving tour of Staten Island's abandoned payphone carcasses turned up way more specimens than expected. My favorite was the lo-rise phone at Net Cost Market on Amboy Street.
I had never been to Clifton or Passaic but I had a hunch there'd be a good quantity of old Newtel payphones on Main Avenue. I was right. Unfortunately not a single one of them worked, despite signage affixed to every single one saying "YES THIS PAYPHONE WORKS". Felt good getting out of the city, though, so it was a good day trip.
Chasing down what is left of Lower Manhattan's payphones since I last toured the area in January. Spoiler alert: There are not many left, but a few should survive.
A 1980s film photo showing 6 New Jersey Bell payphones in a row with the old Twin Towers and Lower Manhattan skyline in the distance. Check out Jeffrey's other film photo series at his Flickrstream.
Found 2 or 3 dozen payphones in Hoboken before finding them became kind of monotonous. I was looking for surviving specimen's of TCC Teleplex's "Payphone of the Future", aka the "Internet Phone", but I came up empty. They were still out there a few years ago. Then I headed back to Manhattan for more payphone detail. Time is running out on NYC's payphones and I am out there every day, scooping up what I can of their legacy.
Looks like most of the payphones formerly found on the side streets of Fifth Avenue from Rockefeller Center down to 42nd Street are gone. I found a few stragglers but don't expect them to last much longer. Also visited a couple of Third Avenue phones.
This phone, seen in Elmhurst in August, 2012, is long gone, but the company that owned it still appears to be hanging on, just not in New York. Assuming their bleeding-edge-design website remains relevant it looks like First American Telecommunications now conducts all its payphone business in South Florida, with display advertising its main source…
A payphone that actually still got usage until its dial tone dropped has finally been removed from Steinway Street in Astoria. I had started to think CityBridge or its contractors simply forgot this one was out there.
Phone booth photos from Daniel Hopsicker, shot on various film formats with a film SLR. Phone booths here are from Speculator, NY; Long Lake, NY; Martinsburg, WV; Luzurne, NY; Rochester, NY; Cape Cod, MA; and other places.
There are not many payphones left in Manhattan Valley, but highlights from this weekend's tour of that area's telephonic detritus include an actual working phone from which a friend dialed up Payphone Radio. The sound of Payphone Radio coming out of a payphone is a beautiful thing to hear.
Do people still use payphones? They would if they could.
I did not want to touch or even stand too near these phones, which stunk so badly of pee they made my eyes water. The graffiti/prophecy was good fun, though. I did not spot anything like this on other midtown payphones so I wonder if the prophet/vandal chose this location for some particular reason.
The exact spots where payphones used to stand around the Ravenswood Houses are today all occupied by "DOG WASTE STATION" structures.
Unlike most phones from my "Payphones Then and Now" series I found one that not only physically survives in this year of 2021 but is fully functional and sounds great. I've used this phone many times for Payphone Radio calls.
Blue Porcelain Enamel and a dome top made this model unique and I love the triangular shaped sides that wing out. The pictures I took with my 1949 CiroFlex 120 dual lens reflex camera, on Kodak Ektachrome VS film.
Of the three PTS phones at St. John Cemetery in Middle Village one of them wants to work but the other two are as dead as everything else at out there. I did, however, find a working CityBridge payphone on Woodhaven Boulevard outside Bridie's Bar. I did not expect to find a working CityBridge payphone ever again.
PTS, the nation's largest payphone service provider, is keeping the dial tone humming, at least at the Flushing Main Street 7 train station in Queens. I reported a couple of issues with the device and what do you know, they dispatched a field tech to fix that sucker.
Where is he now? This payphone user, that is. Probably talking on a cell phone. I never see anyone use this LinkNYC kiosk today but it used to be a pretty popular spot from which to place a phone call when you didn't have to scream at the device just to be heard.
All I remember about this one was that it had a Bell South logo on it. Bell South was the first big telco to exit payphones, but never had holdings in this part of the country. Bell South exited payphones by 2003. This photo is from 2011. It was not uncommon to see brands of…
A fully functional payphone is found tucked away outside the independently owned MG Pharmacy at 4025 West Bell Road in Phoenix. Make a note of it if you are in Phoenix and think you might ever need a working pay telephone.
How is CityBridge doing on delivering free local phone calls from its Upper West Side phone booths? And what of the festering beauties, the rotting, decaying old green phone booths at the 79th Street Boat Basin? Let's find out in this 42-minute chase after phone booths and payphones yesterday.
Some things changed, others did not at this Astoria intersection. One thing altogether gone is the set of three payphones, gone without a trace.