Payphones of Murray Hill & Auburndale, Queens. January 13, 2021

I walked from Flushing all the way up to Bayside via Northern Boulevard, through Murray Hill and Auburndale, encountering only a small number of payphones in various conditions of disrepair. Here’s a short video from an epic long walk.

The first phone actually had dial tone, a real rarity among the ever-shrinking population of payphones in New York. I’d estimate only 10% of the city’s outdoor phones have dial tone, and those that do often fail to work.

The first phone’s number, read back by MCI ANI check, was 646-365-3759.

3:04​ presents an orange colored payphone stand, bolted to a pole, its payphone and usefulness long since gone.

3:57​ finds one last payphone, showing the phone number 718-274-8671, found on Northern Boulevard near 203rd Street. Based on its phone number that phone looks like it might have been relocated from Astoria, where numbers in the AStoria exchange were found. 278 would, in telephone exchange name lingo, have been AStoria-4.