The Payphone Project

Payphones and Payphone Vestiges at a Rego Park Subway Station Today

the payphone project — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 21:20:28 +0000

Dead Phones in Jamaica, Queens. February, 2025.

the payphone project — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 20:04:24 +0000

These charmers are a recent discovery for me.

Payphone Project on the TODAY Show, 1999

the payphone project — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 18:00:02 +0000

I procured a VCR for the purpose of digitizing some of my old VHS tapes moldering away in a bedroom drawer. The VHS tapes filling my bureau drawers are almost all unmarked, but after getting the VCR in January I finally, after many years of intending to, started wading through them. I knew this was…

A Bronx and Marble Hill Payphone Stramble [Video]

the payphone project — Fri, 11 Aug 2023 00:17:07 +0000

Starts at the Fordham Road subway, where one of the phones I looked at a couple of years ago remains, succumbing to forces of entropy and telephonic decay. The real destination was a random payphone clamshell I spotted on Cyclomedia, the underrated and basically unknown alternative to Streetview for New York City. From there it’s…

Unexpected Payphone Find on Atlantic Avenue in Queens

the payphone project — Wed, 07 Jun 2023 16:01:07 +0000

An unexpected payphone find in Ozone Park, Queens, led to a trip through its Streetview then-and-now history from 2007, when the phone probably still worked, through 2022. My video shows what this forgotten Verizon relic looks like today. This is also a test to see if I can get video to play from the top page, not just on the story page.

Iowa Payphone Defends Itself. AP Story from October, 1984.

the payphone project — Sun, 30 Apr 2023 14:21:48 +0000

Funny story about a payphone call that went horribly, horribly wrong.

Google’s BARD Spouts Bullshit as Fact With Respect to LinkNYC

the payphone project — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 23:35:51 +0000

How many hacks and cyber attacks have targeted the LinkNYC network? According to a report by Motherboard, the LinkNYC network has been targeted by at least 10 hacks and cyber attacks since its launch in 2016. The most recent attack, which occurred in January 2023, allowed hackers to access the personal information of millions of…

Payphones on Maui. December, 2022.

the payphone project — Wed, 29 Mar 2023 21:58:15 +0000

As recently as 2016 Hawaii had the most payphones per capita of any state in the union. Most of Hawaii's payphones are owned and operated by Hawaii Telecom, the regional phone company for the state. Payphones in the other 49 of these United States of America are run by COCOTs. Now you know.

Abbé Franz Liszt Talking on a 5th Avenue Payphone as Cosima Wagner Looks On. Summer, 2016.

the payphone project — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 23:24:21 +0000

Not impressed by Dall-E's attempts at American-style payphones. Or Franz Liszt. Or Cosima Wagner. Or Warren Beatty.

Fresh LinkNYC Carnage

the payphone project — Tue, 14 Mar 2023 12:28:58 +0000

I had not seen this kind of damage to a LinkNYC machine in some time, though I’ve not paid as much attention to these machines as in times past. They remain about the same as ever in terms of reliability. Sometimes a phone call works, sometimes it does not. You just never know what to…

History is Being Rewritten, One AI Prompt at a Time

the payphone project — Mon, 13 Mar 2023 22:57:40 +0000

On three separate occasions I asked ChatGPT what it knew about LinkNYC. It got several facts wrong but presented a typically convincing-sounding mishmash of accuracy and lies. Even I wanted to believe the bullshit. It didn’t occur to me right away, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to see what AI thought it knew about…

Ascot Communications: Abandoned Payphone

the payphone project — Mon, 13 Feb 2023 13:38:15 +0000

It’s true. I don’t here much these days. That doesn’t mean my hands are idle. Quite the opposite. I don’t know when it happened, or if there was a moment of clarity, but posting stories to websites started to feel like futility incarnate. Why post here to an audience of a few dozen when inane…

VIDEO: The Fallen Phone of Flushing Fields, and a Genuine “Last Payphone of New York City”

the payphone project — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 20:35:12 +0000

A search for the fallen payphone of Flushing Fields turned up an unexpected find nearby, making for two abandoned and long-dead Verizon rigs on the same city block. How many of these ghost payphones remain, lurking on New York City's sidewalks?

Is THIS the Last CityBridge Payphone of New York City?

the payphone project — Wed, 02 Nov 2022 23:00:50 +0000

That payphone is supposed to be gone. The City and DoITT made the bizarre and uninformed announcement in May that the last sidewalk payphones of New York City had been plucked from a spot near Times Square. How could they forget this one, and the numerous others that remained until a few months after that echo-chamber of a press event?

Found Some Flatbush Payphones (Video)

the payphone project — Tue, 01 Nov 2022 20:59:24 +0000

I used my patent-pending technique of reverse-engineering public information to locate derelict and decrepit payphones in Flatbush on Sunday. (Just kidding about the patent thing.) I expected three devices but found only two. It turns out one of them had been tweeted to my timeline a couple of months ago. At the start of this…