I don't know who did this, at a payphone in Long Island City, but going forward, whenever possible, I will do the same, as a tribute to whatever inspired someone to hang up a payphone handset on the roof of its enclosure. Was it frustration? Art? Heaven-reaching ennui? Who the hell knows?
Now we know. The phone number of the working (yes! working) payphone in the old wood phone booth at New York Presbyterian Hospital is 212-650-1338. No incoming calls accepted but now you would at least know *where* someone is calling from if 212-650-1338 shows up on your caller ID.
Thanks to Flickr user Shari Dayton we now know that a payphone in an old phone booth at 1st Street and A Street in Milford, Nebraska, is alive and well and takes incoming calls. I called and got an answer after I don’t remember how many calls, or how many rings. Here is Shari’s picture,…
Did this payphone simply give up? Did it fall in love with and start making out with the sidewalk? Was a taco involved?
A couple of working payphones, one found inside a fully intact phone booth, from the National Radio Quiet Zone, in Virginia. Photos by Daniel Hopsicker.
Payphone hunting along Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues in Brooklyn today didn't turn up much. In fact, it didn't turn up anything but this, and a single yellow mat where a payphone used to be at 4th Avenue and Bergen Street.
Spotted this man today taking advantage of some of the last dial tone you'll find find in Long Island City, Queens.
Dude reading a book and enjoying the 90° weather next to a couple of non-working CityBridge payphones in Midtown Manhattan today.
Gothamist reports that an ice cream truck company, Good Humor, discontinued use of “Turkey in the Straw” as its jingle on account of the song’s racist history. A new jingle, written by RZA, of the Wu-Tang Clan, replaced the old one. What does this have to do with payphones? Not much.
It's not what it once was, and maybe it never will be again, but I still love Midtown Manhattan. Found this earnest bit of graffiti inside a payphone enclosure today. Apparently someone is "Targeting whole American society with Permanent death Murder Technology extreme weapons."
Old wood phone booths are rare enough in New York. This one stands out for having an actual working payphone inside.
Mark Mathosian writes about the slow demise of the last payphone in Advance, North Carolina.
When I can I like to see if the numbers for these old, rotting phones still appear on this website. It takes me back the olden days, when The Payphone Project functioned as a genuinely valuable resource.
Could the Ferry Terminal peeps have not come up with a more elegant way of sealing off the payphones? Like, barricading them with billboards, or additional seating, or food trucks, or something besides a bunch of Hefty bags?
A tour of Lower Manhattan's payphone population found me making a call from a payphone right across the street from the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Manhattan's maximum security prison.
Just another abandoned NYTEL payphone, this one in Elmhurst, Queens, since at least 2009.
Whether the booth ever contained any kind of telephone is not known to me.
This Michigan payphone is accessible to all, accepts incoming calls, and outgoing calls cost 10¢. Give it a call if you want to try to reach out and touch someone.
This double enclosure at 8th Avenue and 42nd Street, catty-corner from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, is the most consistently and reliably urine-stenched payphone I know of in New York. It seems the spot is always freshly urinated upon any time I set foot upon it, making my eyes water and my tummy churn. Yet, I use the phones anyway. Because they just f*ing work.
A payphone I used only occasionally vanished this week, bringing Astoria's payphone population down to 11. Just a couple of months ago there were dozens.
New York's payphone apocalypse continues, with five phones in a row taken out on Junction Boulevard at 59th Avenue in Elmhurst, Queens.
I would not know what rationale informs the decision to take out a particular phone, or if a coherent rationale even exists. Has the time come when the City finally decrees that public telephones should not exist?
Only payphone I've seen with a water spigot attachment. From Australia's North Territory, @Chris Allan Photography.
Most likely gone by now, this phone was owned by Frontier Communications, probably the largest of the historically established telcos in America still doing payphones. It's a photo from return contributor Daniel Hopsicker.
Penn Station may, at this point, have the highest number of working payphones under one roof in New York City. Most other transit hubs in New York got rid of their payphones altogether.
Midtown Manhattan lost some of its religion during the pandemic, and not just because of church closures. Two of Manhattan's few remaining PRAYphones disappeared from 51st Street, across from St. Patrick's Cathedral.
It will be interesting to see if this phone, which either got struck by a vehicle or had too much to drink, will get removed altogether, or if the structure will get either repaired or replaced.
A beauty among beauty, at Ringwood, NJ, this week. Beauty, A relic among the relics, it seems. And a PTS phone to boot, most likely still works. Posted by Payphone Project on Friday, 22 May 2020