When CityBridge removes a payphone from New York’s streets it should be a pretty tidy affair. On the spot where a payphone stood one should find a flat smear of concrete or maybe a few metal stubs that fortified the payphone’s base. This payphone’s removal was not so tidy. From the “What Could Possibly Go Wrong?” department comes this masterpiece of urban neglect. Remains of a payphone removed include sharp edges and a metal square obtrusive enough for anyone to trip over or fall onto.

If a payphone’s base cannot easily be removed from a sidewalk then the usual routine is to cover it with a pylon or some kind of bucket indicating this is a city works project. Nothing doing here. The task of ridding New York of this functioning and reliable payphone prevailed over public safety.

Maybe I am especially piqued because, until its unannounced removal, I had used this payphone several times a week. One day it just disappeared. Its removal was unceremonious. As with most payphone removals in New York no announcement of its impending absence appeared on the phone, no public input was solicited, and no clue was offered as to when the phone might be replaced (with a LinkNYC kiosk).

This location, on 29th Street near 38th Avenue in Astoria/Long Island City, does not appear on the City’s map of New LinkNYC Site Permit Applications, suggesting that this payphone was removed just to get it out of the way so CityBridge didn’t have to maintain it anymore. This former payphone location is also not present on the City’s map of LinkNYC kiosk locations that have been approved but where the kiosk has not yet been installed. Assuming the city’s maps are accurate, and further assuming CityBridge actually installs kiosks only after completing the permit application approval process, it would seem that replacing this payphone with a LinkNYC machine will take months, years, or maybe it will never be replaced at all.

In November I used this payphone to call 311. I thought someone in charge should know that every LinkNYC kiosk in New York could not make phone calls, or so it seemed. For a few days I tried and tried to make phone calls through dozens of these machines but nothing went through. This payphone worked. Let that be a cautionary tale.

But more typically I used this and countless other payphones to call in to my Payphone Radio project, a Shoutcast radio stream into which I’ve poured countless hours of payphone audio since 2010. You could call it a Phone Blog. Almost all content at Payphone Radio comes from payphones around New York and sometimes from out of town. Mostly you’ll hear me reporting on my thoughts and observations of the moment. A lot of it is boring as hell, depressing, and some would probably find it creepy. It needs paring down but once in a while I land on something articulate. It’s no podcast. Listen if you dare:

Originally I posted this content in a playlist format but I prefer the less predictable and ephemeral nature of a live radio stream. You do not know what you will hear when tuning in nor can you replay tracks at will. I listen in myself once in a while, reveling in the rugged, gray timbre of the landline telephone. Having said that it is true that many payphones today connect via VOIP or satellite, though the type of connection in use is not always obvious to the naked ear.

Unlike LinkNYC kiosks, which are veritable electricity guzzlers, the advertising displays on most of today’s payphone enclosures are solar-powered. The original LinkNYC franchise agreement stipulated that testing of solar-powered kiosks should have commenced somewhere in the Bronx within the first year of the rollout. If this happened it was done on the lowdown. No public announcement exists for what would seem like an energy-conscious initiative CityBridge would want the public to know about.

Another franchise requirement — that a quantity of LinkNYC kiosks would be free of advertising — remains ignored.

There may be a lot not to like about LinkNYC kiosks on their æsthetic intrusiveness and privacy concerns. But CityBridge’s seemingly deliberate failure to honor the terms of its contract could come back to haunt the franchise if the City stops giving it so many free passes.