Grand Central Payphones, 1988

When I spotted three boxes of 35mm slides labeled “NYC Street Scenes 1980s” on sale for $5 I did not even take a second to think about it. I bought that shit, scanned it, and found some very cool stuff, including a couple of boss shots showing Old Calvary Cemetery (my stomping ground) and some choice photos of the Twin Towers, including a few taken from the roof of the south tower.

The photos capture a religious troupe of entertainers; among them clowns, dancers, and instrumentalists; as they get around all over New York spreading the word, spreading the gospel, can I get an amen and  a hallelujah, please?

A majority of the slides are New York City street scenes showing the troupe in action. Not surprisingly among the 150 or so slides scanned I spotted a few payphones, including three in a row seen here on the right in a photo of a saxophonist performing at Grand Central Terminal. It even appears someone might be using one of those phones, but there is no way to be sure.

At first I thought the 4 rectangular shapes in the center were wood phone booths. Wishful thinking. I now believe those to be Amtrak ticket machines. To get as detailed as possible click the image to grab the full size 3309 x 2267 scan. I used an old CanoScan 9000 Mark II flatbed with its slide scanner attachment.

I intend to post the rest of these scanned slides on one of my other websites, but for now you can take my little guided tour of them over at YouTube. I called the series “Once Upon a Time” in a moment of melancholy. I don’t get nostalgic, at least I don’t think I do; and I know that the 1980s is not exactly ancient history. But those photos from the top of the Twin Towers made the not-so-distant past feel like a long, long time ago.

I don’t do touristy stuff in New York (maybe I should) but I went up to the top of the towers one time. I believe it was New Years Day, 1991. From that experience I had no memory of the fact that the public was allowed access to the actual roof. I thought the touristy stuff was all indoors. TIL.

I made a couple of mistakes in this narrative, thinking those were phone booths at the center of the above photo, and misidentifying Union Square as Washington Square Park.