Intersection’s Other Not-So-Glamorous Headquarters

A friend of mine grew up in the Bronx and moved to Long Island City, Queens, in the 1980s. Upon exiting the Court Square 7 train station for the first time all he could ask was “What asshole part of New York is this?” Long Island City was a shit-show back then, but my friend made peace with it and lived in a 5-room apartment near Court Square for over 30 years.

A lot has changed in Long Island City since the 1980s, and much of that change occurred relatively recently. But the stampede of wealth and development has not trampled the old Long Island City altogether. Vestiges of the old days still remain if you know where to look, and wouldn’t you know it, the Smart City has offices in what’s left of this “asshole part of New York”.

At 10-26 53rd Avenue, on a slip of road that feels more like a private driveway than a city street, is Intersection, part of the confusing consortium of companies responsible for LinkNYC, the so-called “payphone of the future”. This is not 10 Hudson Yards, the fantastically disconnected-from-New-York-City location where LinkNYC’s programming and product management team works. This facility, located around the corner from a circus performer training academy, is where LinkNYC kiosks are produced.

Or is it? It actually looks like LinkNYC kiosk production came to a halt back in August, after the demolition of its former manufacturing location near old Sunswick Beach in Astoria, Queens. Only 2 new installations have occurred in all of 2019, one at 2853 Broadway and another at 400 West 42nd Street, both in Manhattan. Neither of those machines has been activated. Meanwhile dozens of LinkNYC kiosks, installed as long ago as November, 2017, remain unactivated, potentially subjecting Intersection to considerable financial penalties should DoITT exercise its right to mete them out.

It can’t be that Intersection is busy building kiosks for the other two U.S. Link Cities. Since February Newark’s LinkNWK population actually dropped from 4 to 3, while Philadelphia’s LinkPHL population has risen from 7 to 9. I have not kept up with the InLinkUK rollout, where the company presently reports 436 live machines and 67 coming soon. But social media comments such as this suggest InLinkUK installations have also stalled:

Are Changes Coming to LinkNYC Machines?

My semi-educated guess, couched in a little bit of hopeful optimism, is that a halt in production of these kiosks foreshadows design and functionality changes before the rollout continues.

Will a telephone handset be added, allowing cell-phone-free New Yorkers to make phone calls with a little more dignity than LinkNYC’s current loudspeaker interface allows?

Maybe the loudspeaker will be muted altogether, save for TalkBack or certain emergency situations, thus preventing demented ice cream truck music from blasting into house and home at obscenely loud decibel ratings.

Could the surveillance cameras be removed or disabled, in response to concerns about the potential use of face-recognition technology to serve hyper-targeted ads to individuals on city streets? (I do not share those concerns, by the way.)

Or maybe the Link Cities rollout is just taking a break while the company figures out how to make money and deliver ads more effectively. I remember asking about a year and a half into LinkNYC if the payphones didn’t actually make more money than these things would. That question might have been more prescient than I gave myself credit, since revenue forecasts suggest the kiosks will not meet their targets. It is not clear if these revenue forecasts include both LinkNYC and the old payphone enclosures, or just LinkNYC. Those payphones enclosures still make money, and could even be carrying the company at this point.

If changes do come to the physical design and function of LinkNYC then it would make poetic sense for Intersection to completely remove the phone calling feature. With that they would continue their current advertising model of the old payphone enclosures, many of which had their payphones removed months or even years ago while new advertisements continue to rotate through the ad panels.

This enclosure is one of many on Manhattan’s Upper East Side which serves no purpose except to display ads. The phone disappeared at least a year ago, making it incorrect to even call this thing a payphone enclosure. This is an advertising enclosure.