Someone should change these signs at the Trump Tower: There are no longer pay telephones (plural) at this building. As of July, 2011, there is (as far as I can tell) only one pay telephone at the Trump Tower on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. It is in the basement (the Garden Level) at the end…
I did not have much time to get these photos, and on account of the time-constraints I found myself nearly running up West End Avenue from 66th to 101st Street. The rushing around seemed strangely appropriate in light of the rapid decline of payphones. It’s like I was chasing payphone on this hot summer day,…
Checking in as I occasionally do on the last outdoor, free-standing phone booths of Manhattan, I noticed that one of those old booths has been arted up with images of grasses and greenery. Images of greenery cover most of three sides of this phone booth at 66th Street and West End Avenue. They advertise The…
Old payphone signs have a way of lingering, idling over a spot where a payphone once stood, or outside a business which used to have a payphone. This old sign for a Bell System Public Telephone hovers over a payphone-free slice of sidewalk, outside the Shillelagh Tavern in Astoria. Shillelagh has no payphone inside, either,…
Brookfield Now reports on payphone scammers Colin Nordstrom and Jeff Frost: “Payphones owned by Frost, 53, and Nordstrom, 48, were programmed to autodial toll-free telephone numbers and to navigate automated menus long enough to collect a fee of nearly 50 cents from the holders of those phone numbers. Federal Communication Commission regulations stipulate that payphone…
I made a phone call from this payphone. The call was successful. If you do not use payphones so much these days, then you may have no idea how unusual this is. The quantity of these phones is deceptive. Most payphones, when put to work, do not work any more. They seem to exist as…
The days of the Blackout Payphone appear to be nearing an end, if they are not finished already. Its dial tone is gone, and even if it worked accessibility would be limited since the phone is surrounded by materials of construction-destruction. This payphone’s number, RAvenswood 9-9832 (or 718-729-9832 in modern parlance), returns only a busy…
Many a time these days an individual in search of a payphone is fooled by the meaningless beacon of the “Phone” sign. Signs like this used to mean that one could expect to find a public phone nearby. Today, useless signs like this typically mean nothing except that a payphone was present here, sometimes many…
The payphones at Broadway and 46th Street in New York City's Times Square seem to be objects of particular fascination for many people. This is because Earthcam points a live webcam at them, inspiring some to imagine that it might be possible to call these phones and watch live as some random person answers.
I spotted this picture last week at the Museum of Modern Art. The photo, by Helen Levitt, is called “New York, 1971.” This gentleman’s behaviour, in which he casually smokes a cigarette whilst perhaps waiting for a call, seems to embody that of the Payphone Hog, that nuisance of earlier generations who monopolized these public…
Back in March of 2010 I commenced a collection of Telephone Exchange Name Sightings. Like my interest in payphones, the exchange name sightings was another paean to telephone nostalgia in which I gathered photos and other relics of a faded era in telephony. Recently a friend, Ivy Nguyen, sent over this nice photo of an…
This rugged Verizon payphone worked perfectly after being nearly buried in snow during the great blizzard of 2010, the 6th-largest storm on record for NYC. With the new year comes change to the payphone landscape of New York City. Prepare to see fewer Verizon payphones on New York City streets, as they will be replaced.…
"We might not make our fortune, but we're going to provide payphones to those that need them for years to come."
Travis Bickle at a Manhattan payphone, asking Betsy if she got the flowers he sent.
The style of green Manhattan phone booths I spotted a few weeks ago are seen throughout the “Midnight Cowboy”, the 1969 film starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. The paper covering the payphone in the first of these booths (across from the Plaza Hotel) show how payphones in the 1960s were, like the payphones of…
These old booths are in a parking garage located underneath the Boat Basin Café. These phone booths have a roof over them and appear to be in what Jane Fowler Jones might have called The Unknown Deeps of Manhattan Island but they are, in fact, well above ground.
What is the future of the neighborhood payphone, unadorned by advertising, its survival depending entirely on paid usage?
MPNnow.com reports: “Town Supervisor Ted Fafinski recently learned that he has lost the last hope of sparing the Verizon payphone by having it declared a Public Interest Payphone by the state’s Public Service Commission. While the state believed the phone met the criteria for the designation because it fills a public safety need, no private…
The Payphone Project spotted a phantom Bell Atlantic sign, lurking high over the garage door of an auto body shop.
MPNnow.com reports on Farmington, NY’s, battle to keep Verizon from taking its payphone away: “‘My biggest concern is someone getting hurt, over in the park on a weekend, who doesn’t have a cell phone,’ said Ted Fafinski, Farmington town supervisor. A lot of parents won’t let their kids have their cell phones on hand while…
Nothing remains of this payphone, photographed in March, 2004. Nothing, that is, save for the metal spikes in the sidewalk, those slivers of detritus which mark the spots where countless payphones used to stand on city sidewalks and walkways. The above photo was originally posted to my New York City Payphones Gallery. I do not…
This payphone, once located near the Blackout Payphone, is gone, as are a number of other objects which once lined this curbside at 2927 41st Avenue at Queens Plaza. Plaza Video, a smut shop seen in the background, has been replaced a couple of times since this picture was taken in November, 2006. At present…
This horribly blurry and wobbly picture shows a payphone at the 5th Avenue subway stop in May, 2000. For obvious reasons I never posted this picture, but upon seeing it now I think it makes sense to use it as part of this Payphones Then and Now series, showing payphone locations around New York as…
The New York Times notes the passing of Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky. His poem “Phone Booth” follows. Someone is loose in Moscow who won’t stopRinging my phone.Whoever-it-is listens, then hangs up.Dial tone. What do you want? A bushel of rhymes or so?An autograph? A bone?Hello?Dial tone. Someone’s lucky number, for all I know,Is the same,…