In this month of December, in this crazy year of 2020, the town of Beckley, West Virginia, has at least 37 public pay telephones, all owned and operated by Frontier Communications. As discovered by photographer Daniel Hopsicker, of those 37 phones 34 actually worked, a pretty impressive ratio.
Here's what I could find of payphones in three separate parts of town. Not much dial tone to be heard out there.
A poignant little pairing of the old and the new at 21st Street and Astoria Boulevard.
Some Tijuana, Mexico, payphones, from Gabriel Sandoval, reporter at TheCity.NYC. I've backed up Gabriel a few times on his coverage of LinkNYC, the so-called "payphone of the future". He and TheCity.NYC helped me get the crisis counseling/suicide prevention telephone installed on the RFK/Triborough Bridge last year.
Two of my life's interests meet: A payphone at a cemetery. An old, abandoned PTS rig stands just inside the main entrance to one of New York's most beautiful cemeteries
I got schooled yesterday on what the graffiti all over this payphone means. A gang member told me these are the names of "fallen soldiers", victims of Woodside's gang violence. What looked like a squalid mass of graffiti is really a descanso of sorts, a poignant roadside memorial.
This is another set of photos from Daniel Hopsicker, who's been sending up dozens of payphone and phone booth photos from his travels.
I've been on a video-making kick lately. This one has me traipsing familiar territory, along 21st Street in Long Island City, whilst finding a couple of surprises: Two fresh casualties of New York's payphone apocalypse and a signature etching from the legendary scratchiti artist PRAY.
These non-working payphones will probably never work again but the SpareRoom advertising panel is new, proving yet again that payphone enclosures of today are not out there to provide access to public telephones but to make money for CityBridge, and the City, by selling ad space.
Whilst passing this phone today it sounded, from several feet away, like noise was coming out of it, making me think someone left the phone off the hook and/or somehow tweaked it to blast noise.
Because I didn't think the previous video was all that great, and because I guess I'm on a video kick these days, I went back to Queensbridge to more fully document the two payphones at 12th Street and 40th Avenue in Long Island City. This time I think I got it right, or at least as right as I'll ever get it.
While making this little video about one of the last independently-owned payphones in town I had the unusual experience of being asked, by someone who needed to make a phone call, to get out of the way. That was quite choice, proving to any naysayers out there that people still need and use these things.
This was awesome. Magical, even. I was making a video about this phone when a real world payphone user interrupted me, asking if he could make a phone call. That is what he did. People still use payphones!
I discovered these payphones on March 25, 2017, the day before my appearance on "CBS Sunday Morning", when an anxiety-fueled ramble sent me wandering headlong into parts unknown to me, including the Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing projects in North America. These phones still work but call quality is garbage.
A short video of my discovery that a trusted, fully functional payphone had been chopped, with some pictures of how it looked just a month ago. It had those cool Arial font "TELEPHONE" signages, yellowed with age, from the olden days of NYNEX and New York Telephone.
Rummaging through old photos, found this one today. It's a Midtown Manhattan payphone user, with an arrow for emphasis, from September, 1999. I remember that phone, near the Time & Life Building where I used to work.
This payphone, which does not work and contains no display advertising to subsidize its existence, serves no purpose whatsoever, and might even pose safety hazards.
What the title says. CityBridge has a monopoly franchise on NYC's outdoor payphones. With no competition they can get away with stuff like this.
One payphone carcass stuffed into the hedges, and another hunk of nothing with no advertising panels or dial tone help round out what's left of the payphones on Northern Boulevard between Long Island City and Corona.
I think this is the first time I've seen a payphone in a movie or on television that I recognized and had actually used. Vestiges of this payphone still remain on Broadway near Crescent Street in Astoria, Queens.
New York City payphones make a couple of appearances in this violent, obscenity-filled movie.
If you want to reach out and touch someone, a total stranger, most likely, here's your chance. Bill Carew, from Carolina Beach, North Carolina, sends up this working payphone, a restored 1980’s DTMF AT&T/Western Electric rig, that makes and receives calls.
PPTs (Public Pay Telephones) have complicated digestive systems. This is from 6th Avenue around 50th Street last week. Wishing the last shot coulda been clearer.
This payphone disappeared not long after I got this shot, in August, 2010. I remember the hoarsely glottal loudness of his voice but wish I had some memory of what this dude was yelling about, into a payphone, clutching a print copy of a newspaper with his left pit.
The greater Sacramento, CA, area still has a good number of working payphones. Here are four of them on I Street, all in a row. Thanks to Sarah Steffens and Brian Louderback.
This phone is among the last outdoor phones in New York not owned or confiscated by CityBridge, the consortium of media, tech, and advertising companies awarded a monopoly franchise on virtually all of New York's outdoor payphones.