Mexicano Grocery, Payphone Gone

In March, 2001, a payphone stood outside the Mexicano Grocery Store:

Today the payphone is not the only thing gone from the northwest corner of 21st Street and 31st Road in Long Island City, Queens. The entire building containing the Mexicano Grocery Store was obliterated, clearing the way for a vacant lot now fenced off from the public and overgrown with weeds. Perhaps the grocery store was razed by Eminent Domainers to make way for another unneeded high-income housing skyscraper? If so then those real estate development ambitions rose no higher than this field of gravel and shrubbery. This picture of the former payphone location is from May, 2010:

From the cleared-away rubble of the demolished Mexicano Grocery survives the tell-tale evidence that the payphone seen in the first picture used to exist. A mess of metal spikes pockmarks the sidewalk where the Mexicano Grocery payphone once stood.