Redittors have not been the only people talking about Payphone Radio. Peter Skiera christened his new blog with a lengthy writeup of that radio stream. It is a good piece of writing. I was happy to have plenty of room to represent myself as not quite the incoherent faux-suicidal Joe Frank-wannabe weirdo some Payphone Radio listeners seem to presume.

In Radio Replay: Payphone Radio Skiera revisits my Shoutcast stream after first profiling it 2 years ago. In that review he described this radio as a “one man telephone reality show.” This time he has more observations:

As a brief refresher, speaking in a Bill Belichick-like monotone, dropping an occasional, unexpected F bomb, Mark Thomas called into a recording apparatus and left personal reflections on all manner of topics which he later streamed over this Internet station. He called in using public payphones exclusively, thus the name of his station. He estimated he made over 1,600 payphone calls since he started streaming his station 11 years ago. Thomas must have been Ma Bell’s best customer. Ah, Ma Bell. I remember her well. The Payphone Radio Network is still on the air, but Thomas stopped calling it in just about a year ago due to – what else – the pandemic.

In the second photo of that story (above) you might notice something I did not catch at first. Skiera stuck one of my Payphone Radio cards into a defunct payphone in his area. If you follow my YouTube channel you might know that I often document myself sticking those cards into payphones, LinkNYC kiosks, and some other surfaces.

I had stuck cards onto payphones and kiosks just for fun, skeptical that this sort of guerilla marketing would bring in any quantity of new listeners. But I have come to believe that it really works. Listenership is definitely up since before I started doing this, and I even got a couple of calls from LinkNYC kiosks.

I also appreciate Peter and other friends backing me up on this, placing cards onto payphones in other parts of the country.

As for those calls that came from LinkNYC kiosks I have to ask Who does that? Who sees a Payphone Radio card on a LinkNYC machine, reads the phone number printed on it, and dials that number? It seems like a stretch.

The unfortunate upshot of calls made to Payphone Radio from LinkNYC machines is the the callers most likely heard nothing. At least half the calls made from LinkNYC machines do not work, giving callers silence even though the call really did connect. LinkNYC’s phones have functioned, or rather not functioned in this manner since day one of their arrival on the streets.

Skiera and I discussed conducting the interview which appears in his article via payphone, as I might have done in the past. But reality beckons. The wholescale routing of New York’s public telephones makes such a setup impractical. Some payphones survive but carcasses is all they are. None of the City’s outdoor phones should be expected to work, not even those in the sorta-famous West End Avenue phone booths.

Even the formerly stalwart Penn Station payphones seem to have been decommissioned once and for all, leaving me with only about a dozen payphones in the 5 boroughs that might possibly work. This means I need to update my “Where Can I Find a Working Payphone in New York City?” article. Make of it what you will, but that has become the most viewed page on this site.

If you enjoy Peter Skiera’s Radio Replay: Payphone Radio consider donating a buck or two to his Patreon, or at least click around the rest of his Recommended Stations blog. Skiera appears to be the first internet radio broadcaster to dedicate a single station entirely to wind chimes. Look for it!