Payphone Down in Astoria

At first glance, from across the street, I thought I might have stumbled across a payphone being yanked out of the sidewalk and hauled off to wherever they get taken after removal. Not quite, although it will be interesting to see if this phone, which either got struck by a vehicle or had too much to drink, will get removed altogether, or if the structure will get repaired or replaced.

A similar scenario in Astoria, about four years ago, resulted in a damaged phone getting replaced within a couple of days. At the time I had expected a damaged phone like that to be more trouble than it was worth to replace.

But then I remember that the City and CityBridge continue to make decent money from the payphones’ display advertising panels. CityBridge must have had long-term advertising contracts for that phone for it to get replaced so quickly. Perhaps the same will be true of this one.

It takes something like this for most people to realize that a payphone even existed, so thoroughly have most people become blind to them.

30th Avenue in Astoria has one other payphone, still standing upright, and with dial tone, at 34th Street at the northeast corner of 30th Avenue. The avenue also has a number of LinkNYC kiosks, which replaced most of what I think would have been about a dozen payphones along this street. Six payphones are found on nearby Steinway Street, at locations between 28th Avenue and 31st Avenue.

That leg and hand you see are of someone posing for an impromptu photo shoot, the photographer unseen behind the payphone structure. She was trying to make it look like she was holding up the phone booth. Kind of reckless if you ask me, since who knows if that phone booth was not about to topple completely from its italic posture. What a way to go: Crushed by a phone booth.

This phone is on 37th Street at 30th Avenue, outside a place called The Grand, which has established itself as a gold standard in ignoring anything to do with quarantine, wearing facemasks, or social distancing. The Grand is hardly the only place on 30th Avenue or anywhere else guilty of this. But the mood around The Grand has seemed especially party-like and reckless compared to other establishments.