Spotted this dude using a payphone located underneath the roar of an above-ground subway train. I often see people holed up in payphone enclosures, but more often than not they are talking on their cell phones and using the enclosure for privacy or, in spots like this, to help mute the noise of the subways roaring past. So I can appreciate getting a shot of someone with the payphone handset in view, proving that people actually still use payphones. In fact I see a decent number of people using payphones but I seem to almost always spot them just as they are hanging up the call and walking off. Payphone calls are typically pretty short, so it makes sense that spotting a call in progress would be mercurial.

One of the unappreciated features of traditional payphones is how their design helps muffle the surrounding noises, so the person you are talking to barely hears the noise and you can also hear the person you called reasonably well. If/when this phone is ever replaced by a LinkNYC kiosk then this caller can say goodbye to that little convenience. Unlike this call-in-progress everyone in the vicinity might hear both sides of whatever conversations takes place over the LinkNYC device. It is already necessary to scream when making a call over LinkNYC kiosks, but with the additional noise of the overhead trains calls made from the Links in locations like this will be of significantly worse quality than they already are.

I’ve used this phone a number of times. It is one of three phones at the intersection of 31st Street and 36th Avenue in Astoria. There is another one across the street, outside a Dunkin’ Donuts; and another one nearby outside a Chinese restaurant. That last payphone made the papers a few of years ago when someone spray-painted anti-NYPD graffiti on it. I am not aware that the vandal was ever caught.

There is another phone a couple of blocks over at 31st Street and 38th Avenue, and another on 29th Street near 37th Avenue. That’s pretty much it for payphones in this immediate area, many of which were removed a few years ago but not yet replaced with LinkNYC kiosks. There is one phone (which makes garbage-quality calls) over at Broadway and 21st Street, another outside a strip mall on 21st Street and 33rd Road, and one phone (which has not worked in a long time) across from the Ravenswood Houses at 24th Street and 34th Avenue. Two working phones remain on the ground at Queens Plaza, but the underground subway payphones of yore stopped working or were removed. I think one of the aboveground subway payphones still works but I haven’t been through there in a while to see. Now you know where to find a payphone in the area of 36th Avenue and 31st Street in Astoria!