Who couldn’t love a payphone in a cage? This caged payphone has been useless for years, its body beaten and its dial tone and handset long gone. This abandoned payphone lingers as a monument to the faded and bedraggled world of public telephony. Its push-buttons are useless. Evidently someone attacked the phone, forcing the 9…
Old payphone signs have a way of lingering, idling over a spot where a payphone once stood, or outside a business which used to have a payphone. This old sign for a Bell System Public Telephone hovers over a payphone-free slice of sidewalk, outside the Shillelagh Tavern in Astoria. Shillelagh has no payphone inside, either,…
I last saw this row of payphones near the Time Inc. Ditto Center at Rockefeller Center in September, 2010. These payphones disappeared around the end of 2010, when Verizon sold off a bulk of its payphone business to Titan360. These payphones were unusual. Most New York City payphones allow for 3 minutes of calling time…
Brookfield Now reports on payphone scammers Colin Nordstrom and Jeff Frost: “Payphones owned by Frost, 53, and Nordstrom, 48, were programmed to autodial toll-free telephone numbers and to navigate automated menus long enough to collect a fee of nearly 50 cents from the holders of those phone numbers. Federal Communication Commission regulations stipulate that payphone…
I made a phone call from this payphone. The call was successful. If you do not use payphones so much these days, then you may have no idea how unusual this is. The quantity of these phones is deceptive. Most payphones, when put to work, do not work any more. They seem to exist as…
Snowbound payphones were commonly seen around New York after the Christmas blizzard of 2010. Bike lanes were plowed before streets and sidewalks, so it should come as no surprise that public telephones received no special attention from the Department of Sanitation. Nevertheless, even in emergency conditions, folks still need to use the telephone. At least…
The days of the Blackout Payphone appear to be nearing an end, if they are not finished already. Its dial tone is gone, and even if it worked accessibility would be limited since the phone is surrounded by materials of construction-destruction. This payphone’s number, RAvenswood 9-9832 (or 718-729-9832 in modern parlance), returns only a busy…
Many a time these days an individual in search of a payphone is fooled by the meaningless beacon of the “Phone” sign. Signs like this used to mean that one could expect to find a public phone nearby. Today, useless signs like this typically mean nothing except that a payphone was present here, sometimes many…
The payphones at Broadway and 46th Street in New York City's Times Square seem to be objects of particular fascination for many people. This is because Earthcam points a live webcam at them, inspiring some to imagine that it might be possible to call these phones and watch live as some random person answers.
I swear sometimes it seems shocking to see a human being use a public telephone in the 21st century. This gentleman’s casual use of a payphone looked to me like something from another generation, a man who stepped from the past into the directly exposed sunlight of modern times.
Abbas Kiarostami’s “Taste of Cherry” is a favorite film of mine. The film puzzled and at times disappointed me, but the ending baffled me to a point of distraction. Early in the film appears a yellow Iranian phone booth. I assume it is either genuine or modeled on a real Iranian booth. Before this film…
A globe-trotting friend sent this picture of an ecclesiastical-looking phone booth at Harrods in London. To me this looks like a cross between a phone booth and a mausoleum. Maybe it’s a direct link to Dial-a-Prayer?
I spotted this payphone in October (on 10/10/2010, to be exact). Something tells me that when I pass this spot again this payphone hulk so ignominiously suffocating under a plastic bag will be gone. Payphones like this, stuffed into alleyways and in the free spaces between buildings, are increasingly hard to find. I hope to…
I spotted this picture last week at the Museum of Modern Art. The photo, by Helen Levitt, is called “New York, 1971.” This gentleman’s behaviour, in which he casually smokes a cigarette whilst perhaps waiting for a call, seems to embody that of the Payphone Hog, that nuisance of earlier generations who monopolized these public…
Back in March of 2010 I commenced a collection of Telephone Exchange Name Sightings. Like my interest in payphones, the exchange name sightings was another paean to telephone nostalgia in which I gathered photos and other relics of a faded era in telephony. Recently a friend, Ivy Nguyen, sent over this nice photo of an…
This rugged Verizon payphone worked perfectly after being nearly buried in snow during the great blizzard of 2010, the 6th-largest storm on record for NYC. With the new year comes change to the payphone landscape of New York City. Prepare to see fewer Verizon payphones on New York City streets, as they will be replaced.…
From Lenny (1974), starring Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce and Valerie Perrin as his wife/ex-wife Honey. In this scene Honey calls collect from a payphone to tell Lenny that she has some good, if oft-repeated news, and to ask for money. Lenny promises to send as much money as he can, and he tells Honey…
"We might not make our fortune, but we're going to provide payphones to those that need them for years to come."
Travis Bickle at a Manhattan payphone, asking Betsy if she got the flowers he sent.
The style of green Manhattan phone booths I spotted a few weeks ago are seen throughout the “Midnight Cowboy”, the 1969 film starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. The paper covering the payphone in the first of these booths (across from the Plaza Hotel) show how payphones in the 1960s were, like the payphones of…