PRAY at Beyond the Streets

I don’t generally spend $25 ($27-something with tax) to go see a gallery exhibit or to enter a museum. But when I saw PRAY, the legendary scratchiti artist from the 1980s, listed among artists on display at  “BEYOND THE STREETS” in Williamsburg, I made the pilgrimage, and paid the price.

I kept my expectations realistic. I did not expect an actual specimen of PRAY’s etchings. Only photographs or anecdotes. Further to that, as a small part of a relatively huge exhibit, I did not expect to learn anything I did not already know about the woman, or the possible posse of individuals behind the etchings. Despite my years-, even decades-long search for PRAY I do not expect to ever reach a point where she becomes any less of the mystery she so stubbornly remains.

The PRAY exhibit comprised an authentic New York Telephone rotary dial payphone, a placard with a brief explanation of the PRAY mystery, a photo of her work on what looks like a metal beam at a subway station, and the words “WORSHIP GOD” written on the wall with what looked like a magic marker. The word “PRAY” is scratched onto the side of the payphone. Comments on the placard make it clear that while the payphone is authentic the scratchiti is a replica.

The “WORSHIP GOD” scrawl looks more like “WORSHIP GOO” if you ask me. But it was gratifying to see an authentic New York Telephone rotary dial device, described as a “salvaged phone booth”. I take “salvaged” to mean the gallery purchased this phone on eBay. Nothing wrong with that. I was more than a little miffed to find that my database of old NYC payphone numbers and locations did not include 212-650-9681, the number shown on this phone. I have so many contiguous payphone numbers from the 212-650 area code/exchange, all from locations on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, including the tantalizingly adjacent 212-650-9682. But no pattern seems to exist to provide a solid clue as to where in Manhattan the payphone used for the PRAY exhibit originated.

I took some issue with the exhibit’s implied conclusion that PRAY’s work no longer exists in New York. On the contrary, her presence endures on dozens, perhaps hundreds of New York’s payphones, albeit in a form invisible to most. The words “GO TO CHURCH READ BIBLE“, however faint they might appear, unquestionably adorn numerous payphone enclosures in Manhattan and Queens.

Therein lies a distinct layer of the beauty and integrity of PRAY. She didn’t care if her message remained subliminal.

She also appears, more visibly, on certain subway cars.

I also know where to find a few fully-readable instances of her messages on existing payphones. There’s a “THANK GOD” in Queens (below), a “MERCY” in Manhattan, and a “LOVE GOD” in Newark. Those are just a few examples I’ve found on my own. I also know of a “WORSHIP GOD” phone in Virginia, relocated from New Jersey. But the abundance of PRAY’s remaining work is found, almost invisibly, in countless payphone enclosures around New York.

I also strongly suspect that a quantity of PRAY’s work remains on the streets and in the subways, invisibly smothered under metal placards like this one. These placards started appearing in the mid to late 1990s, after PRAY’s reign presumably ended. I’m not saying PRAY is under this placard, but given the quantity of these things it’s realistic to assume she must be under some of them.

I first learned of PRAY in 1991, when a manager at Tower Records (my first job in New York) described with a mix of awe and bewilderment how an elderly woman had scratched the word “PRAY” onto, according to legend, every single payphone in New York City. Payphones in New York numbered over 40,000 at the time.

I already had a well-established fixation on payphones and their connection to the seedier elements of society. The story of PRAY simply furthered my reckoning of the payphone as a focal point of obsession, and a rugged conduit for the grit and bristle of one’s most earnest need to communicate.

After hearing that Tower Records store manager describe PRAY I started seeing her everywhere, or at least it seemed that way. Every time I passed a payphone some religious exhortation popped out at me, as if blinking neon, with messages commanding me to PRAY, LOVE GOD, THANK GOD, or any number of variations.

At the time I harbored a deeper sense of religious angst, mostly in the form of Catholic guilt, than I do today. I think this helps explain why the words seemed to light up whenever I saw them.

Over time my admiration for PRAY evolved toward simple astonishment that one person stayed so committed to their message. I also had to respect an elderly white woman delivering that message by marching through parts of 1980s New York no woman should have entered.

A rumor circulated that she had been a nurse at the Bellevue Psych Ward. Her exposure to those patients might have contributed to her own descent into madness. If so then let us regard it as a beautiful madness. The likelihood that she was mentally disturbed detracts nothing from the sincerity of her message.