Hear, hear: Alex Hughes — April 2018… If there are going to be physical payphones then they should be in working order to provide the consumer with the ability to make calls. An empty phonebook or broken handsets make that experience even tougher. Granted, there are not as many callers as there once were, but there…
An abandoned Verizon payphone in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, leads to a somewhat interesting tale of the alleged theft of a toll-free number used by a suicide prevention and counseling ministry.
It looks like I might have made my last phone call from the last payphone at Rockefeller Center after PTS increased the cost of a local call by over 1400%.
Echoes of "This Phone is Tapped" inform this pair of then-and-now photos from Flickr photographer Tim Perdue.
How many phone booths and payphones are central to stories of crime and intrigue? Many, of course, among them the kidnapping plot involving Calvin Klein which I wrote about in 2016, a story I was surprised to discover was not better known. Here is another appearance of a phone booth in crime from Australia, this…
A video playlist of 25 short recordings from an interactive piece involving phone booths at the Denver Art Museum's "Psychedelic Experience" exhibit in 2009. Also included is video of a woman confessing to having helped kill a homeless man in Central Park.
It has been a couple of years since CityBridge commenced its raid of New York City’s sidewalks with its so-called “payphone of the future”, the 10-foot tall electronic billboard monoliths known as LinkNYC. The LinkNYC platform is, first and foremost, an advertising platform. But the kiosks also offer a number of public amenities, such as…
When I first heard about 80s.nyc, a Streetview for NYC in the 1980s, I thought it sounded like inspiration for an extended dream sequence from "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer". I went out clicking for payphones and phone booths, and found quite a few. It was good fun, even if it chewed up a little too much time.
“Payphones are out here making money while some of the newest, hottest, and most ‘successful’ tech companies around are still figuring out how to get their revenues to climb ahead of their yearly losses.”
As part of a storytelling project Lanesboro Arts is launching Saturday, a decommissioned payphone in downtown Lanesboro will play a rotating selection of stories about life in the southeastern Minnesota town. Read more at the Austin Daily Herald The first attempt I knew of to turn payphones into storytelling conduits such as the one in…
A trip to Hoboken turned up a surprising quantity of payphones, including relics of what were once considered the payphone of the future, from TCC Teleplex.
One of the more oddball moves by the CityBridge consortium was its replacement of Manhattan's classic American Airlight style phone booths with Canadian models. Let's look at them.
Just a few sightings of phone booths around New York, with more to come.
This West Virginia house for sale might be a fixer-upper but it comes with an unusual perk: A phone booth with a working payphone right in the front yard.
I finally watched the "CBS Sunday Morning" segment that aired a few months ago. It's good!
Afghan-American artist Aman Mojadidi has brought Airlight phone booths to Times Square in Manhattan, bringing a whiff of the 1980s back to the Crossroads of the World.
I spotted this gentleman using a payphone on Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan today. People still use payphones.
The Temple City Motel in Salt Lake City once had a classic Airlight style phone booth out front. Today it is gone.
I spotted this woman dropping 50¢ into an NYC subway payphone yesterday. It's true: People still use payphones!
I made one last pass at seeing how many phone calls I attempted to make through LinkNYC's free phone calling feature actually connected. Results were as expected, but I turned up a few surprises along the way.
One of LinkNYC's marquee features is its ability to make free phone calls within the United States. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
A payphone once stood outside this "LIVE GIRLS ONE DOLLAR" shop in Long Island City.
A follower of the Payphone Project’s Facebook page wrote to ask a question I don’t think I’ve heard in a long time: Is it still possible to call random payphones in New York City and talk to whoever might answer? As the subject might be of general interest to visitors of this website I rewrote and supplemented my response to the question and share it herewith.
Strange beeps coming from a Rockefeller Center payphone might have some meaning, or they might not. Anyone with knowledge of the matter is welcome to inform us all.
An anecdote from 1908 claims that presidential candidate William Howard Taft once got trapped inside a phone booth, necessitating that he be freed by a carpenter who sawed the booth apart. I contacted the experts at the Taft Historical Site in Cincinnati to hear what they thought.
Thanks to all who reached out to me after my brief spot on CBS Sunday Morning. The correspondences have been gratifying, to say the least. Phone booth photos from across the country are coming soon to this space but for now here are more thoughts on the rollout of LinkNYC, the so-called "payphone of the future", on Broadway in Astoria, Queens.
The Payphone Project get about a minute of air time on CBS Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley. Reviews all seem positive, with the only complaint being that people actually wanted to see more of me!
These orange pylons and tangled metal bars seem to suggest that LinkNYC will soon rise up in Astoria, Queens, replacing payphones and delivering much-needed advertising to the area.