Craaaazy Payphone. January, 2007.

I’ve been rummaging through my RAID, not looking for anything in particular but finding all manner of digital detritus and effluvia from across the roughly 25 years I’ve had the presence of mind to save and backup content. After those years of accumulating images, documents, and using the RAID for routine website backups and such, it’s been quite some time since 12TB of storage became just not enough to house the amassment. I may be a digital hoarder, but I don’t know.

Whatever the case this interesting image from January, 2007, resurfaced.

This payphone disappeared soon after I spotted it on January 5, 2007. Its number was (718) 784-9849, a number never listed on the Payphone Project. I believe this phone, amplified with three antler-like bits of signage, was the work of an artist at a gallery called “The Space,” formerly located across the street from this location. If you happen to know anything about who created this and what its title was please comment below or let me know.

Queens Plaza has changed so much since 2007 that I don’t mind saying I am not 100% certain of this phone’s exact location. I believe it to have been Jackson Avenue and Queens Plaza South. I remember the dowdy old 70s-era building in the back, with its somber, never-blinking eyes in the form of rounded rectangular windows. It may have been an NYC government building, which would make sense, as many government buildings continue to occupy Queens Plaza.

I was at a bar a few years ago when I overheard and older man say he went down to Queens Plaza for the first time in at least 10 years. He did not know where the hell he was. The apocalyptic-seeming rise of a dozen or more luxury high rise apartment buildings has completely transformed this once low-key, albeit central transit hub, into an instant “community” that feels like it swallowed whole what was there before. Some have said that there was “nothing there” before but that is simply not true. There was a coherent and defined community around Queens Plaza but the stampede of development and wealth would have none of that.

A couple of payphones still survive at the plaza, on Queens Plaza South around the corner from where I believe the above payphone was located. One payphone lingers at the Queensboro Plaza subway station but has not worked in over a year. 4 other phones on the subway platforms, all of which worked, disappeared around the first of the year.

Ironically, over a century ago a significant quantity of phone booths were manufactured and distributed from plants at Queens Plaza. It’s true what they say: Things change.