I thought this was a strange location for a payphone. Located in the shadow of the BQE (Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I-278) this Verizon payphone stood outside of a tombstone manufacturer on Laurel Hill Boulevard near 48th Street as recently as March, 2010, when I got these two pictures. The payphone was near a Q39 bus stop,…
In March, 2001, a payphone stood outside the Mexicano Grocery Store: Today the payphone is not the only thing gone from the northwest corner of 21st Street and 31st Road in Long Island City, Queens. The entire building containing the Mexicano Grocery Store was obliterated, clearing the way for a vacant lot now fenced off…
Dan Z. was there when the bastards took our phone booths away! The insufferable, unimaginable, unquenchable, inexhaustible bastards hauled off the phone booths from the Vince Lombardi Service Stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. This handsome series of metal phone booths is gone, gone, gone. The above picture shows the “face of evil” spiriting the…
The payphone across from the Metro Motel in Woodside, Queens, is gone gone gone, leaving but 6 metal spikes in the sidewalk at the corner of Queens Boulevard and 73rd Street. Being located near a motel which caters to travelers and transients I expected this payphone to still be here. I was wrong. This picture,…
Emily’s Coffee Shop, at 31-06 21st Street in Long Island City, is gone. So, too, is the payphone that used to stand outside. This photo is from March, 2001: Emily’s has been replaced by Great Pizza & Fried Chicken Inc. The only trace of the payphone that used to stand at your service is the…
This picture from August, 2000, shows a Bell Atlantic payphone in Long Island City, outside the 2000 Management Inc. garage. The space formerly occupied by 2000 Management Inc. is now home to Queens Auto Center. Ten years later the Bell Atlantic payphone which formerly hung on the wall outside the garage is gone. Evidence of…
Only the mount pedestal remains of a payphone that once stood at 37th Avenue and 22nd Street in Long Island City. This picture is from August, 2000. This picture, taken from just about the exact same spot, is from May 22, 2010.
This picture from early 1999 shows a man standing next to a payphone while talking on a cell phone as his friend waits for him. Scenes like this used to annoy me. Cell phone boors were a new irritant in 1999, and it seemed particularly pretentious to use a cell while standing right next to…
This picture is from March, 2000. The payphone in this photo formerly stood outside of Unlimited Lingerie on Steinway Street in Astoria. Today the payphone is gone. Unlimited Lingerie remains. All that is left of the phone are these metal pipes which helped secure the payphone to the ground.
This set of four payphones and the individuals using them no longer stand at the corner of 50th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. This picture is from April, 2001. The pictures at the end of this story, showing the same spot where these payphones used to be, are from September, 2009. I remember this picture…
Continuing my series of Payphones in New York City Then and Now, I present a set of payphone survivors in Midtown Manhattan. There are three payphones here, as seen first in May, 2000, and again in May, 2010. In this case it seems more accurate to say that the payphone locations, not the payphones themselves,…
Where are the payphones in New York City? Try the housing projects. Housing projects have lots of payphones, and most of them actually work. If you do not live in a projects, and if you ever need a payphone, then your nearest housing projects is a place to keep in mind should you find yourself…
Continuing my lightly-updated series of “Then and Now” pictures of payphones in New York City, I spent the last few days tracking down payphones which I photographed ten years ago in this very month of May, Y2K. Ten years later I find that many of the payphones are gone, but a surprising number survive. Many…
A lot has changed around Hunters Point South in Long Island City. Most of the payphones are gone. Some survive, but not many. I staked out a location which had a payphone in May, 2004. Not surprisingly that payphone is gone. In its wake is an empty street corner, with ghostly echoes of the payphone’s…
Here is my latest paean to telephone nostalgia: My collection of Telephone Exchange Name Sightings. You don’t see too many of these in the wild any more, but if you keep your eyes open (and if you know what you are looking at) then you might find them. I first noticed these old phone numbers…
MPNnow.com reports: “The Verizon phone technician never saw it coming. “Armed with the customary work order, and with the uneventful removal of a pay phone at Newark’s Village Hall fresh in his mind, he entered Farmington Town Hall on County Road 8 Wednesday morning. “He had no idea that he was about to face a…
Blakamin writes: “I saw this box being checked out by the police and surrounded with crime scene tape on saturday” A story from the Dominion Post suggests that a pipe bomb exploded inside a Wellington, New Zealand, phone box may have been meant as a message for Telecom New Zealand, a company whose substantial service…
Here is a picture I took in March, 2007, from inside one of the phone booths in the basement of the UBS Building at Rockefeller Center. That is a reflection of my hand on the right, but I know not the identity of the man 3 booths down.
This is a really cool then-and-now sequence of pictures showing a set of phone booths on the New Jersey Turnpike. These two pictures show how the booths look today, and how they looked about 11 years ago.
Here is something I have not seen in a long time. In fact I don’t think I have ever seen a sign like this out in the wild. I spotted this old Bell Seal sign today in front of a store in Queens, probably indicating that there used to be a payphone nearby. It is…
This before-and-after sequence spans 9½ years, and shows a payphone at the 36th Avenue/Washington Avenue subway station in Astoria. The first picture is from June, 2000. The second picture from January, 2010, shows a remarkably similar scene. The payphone itself seems to be the same. The slanted surface under the phone set (intended for note-taking,…
Of the three payphones seen in these photos from August 19, 2000 two survive today but only one still works. These payphones were in the lobby of the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway. Two payphones still hang from the lobby wall, but only one still functions. It appears to accept incoming calls, but only if…
This picture from March, 2000, shows two payphones outside the Krash Dance Club in Astoria. Krash was a popular gay bar and night club which closed some time ago, later becoming a fully nude bar called Riviera. A lot of folks in Astoria do not seem to realize that Riviera is a nude club, assuming…
A battered and bedraggled payphone is not a pretty sight. Insult adds to injury when the commercial face of a leading cell phone provider looms over the beaten-up phone. Arms crossed, a smug grin on the actor's face, his eyes seem to look sardonically at anyone who would contemplate using this payphone.
Last year at about this time I commented on a New York Times blog entry that called out a “Phantom Bell Atlantic Phone Booth” on the Brooklyn Heights esplanade. I remembered this today when I spotted a payphone bearing vestiges of the Bell Atlantic brand — a brand which should have disappeared by 2002: I…
Telebeam payphones are disappearing from the sidewalks of New York at a rapid clip. In recent days this Telebeam payphone in midtown went from off the hook to off the grid. I spotted this dangling payphone receiver a few months ago (and posted it to my New York City Payphones section), and this week saw…
I spotted this Verizon payphone about a month ago, and was surprised to see that it is still busted up, dangling by its thin wires in a useless, vegetative state. This payphone’s number is (718) 729-9344. I have noticed a lot of gutted out and murdered payphones of late. Many of the phones have been…
The 9/11 Payphone (as I called it) actually had nothing to do with 9/11. Located in Long Island City, this phone happened to be next to a 9/11 mural which was among the first of its vintage to rise up from the hands New York City graf artists after the events of that day. I…