Queensbridge Payphones: 718-784-8935, 718-729-9638

These phones have some meaning to me. But first, a bit about the phones themselves. These are owned by PTS (Pacific Telemanagement Services), the nation’s largest payphone service provider. In New York it is unusual but not unheard of to see open air PTS phones. They are mostly indoors or else under cover of some sort like at an above ground subway station. On account of their locations they tend to be in better working order than other phones, which are far more exposed to the elements.

These phones stand on what looks like a regular city sidewalk. Someone once implied to me that zoning rules on sidewalks that surround NYCHA properties differ from rules about most other sidewalk space in New York. CityBridge has a monopoly on payphones located on city sidewalks, meaning that if this was an ordinary street corner sidewalk these phones should not be here, they should be CityBridge phones instead. So I don’t know if different zoning rules are in play here, or if PTS just stashed these phones here and no one has complained about them. They’ve been here at least two years.

Their numbers, 718-784-8935 and 718-729-9638, or rather STillwell 4-8935 and RAvenswood 9-9638, do not appear on this site’s data museum of mostly defunct and/or destroyed payphones. They do appear over on this site’s Facebook page, where I posted an anxiety-fueled ramble a couple of years ago ahead of my impending appearance on national television in front of 6,000,000 people. Never had I been so nervous about anything, the anxiety and nerves simply ate me alive.

During that ramble through Queensbridge I discovered the existence of these payphones. It seemed to make magnificent sense, payphones lurking in an area I’d been hesitant if not outright afraid to wander into until that day, and I entered this space because high anxiety could not stop me.

Listen below to my Payphone Radio call I made from the phone facing toward the buildings, and read my thoughts on being a guest for “CBS Sunday Morning”.

Here they are, two years later, dial tones sounding as husky and brash as ever.

Queensbridge Payphones 718-784-8935 and 718-729-9638