Where are the payphones in New York City? Try the housing projects.

Housing projects have lots of payphones, and most of them actually work. If you do not live in a projects, and if you ever need a payphone, then your nearest housing projects is a place to keep in mind should you find yourself in need of a telephone. Also, virtually any subway station should have at least one payphone, though whether it works is another story.

I went looking for this Bell Atlantic payphone which I photographed in June, 2000, on 34th Avenue by the Ravenswood Houses in Astoria. For reasons too lame to explain this payphone was surprisingly hard for me to find again, ten years later, and when success came it felt like I had just won a giant game of Concentration, in which I matched patterns and images from photographs committed to memory. I got pretty close to getting the picture from the same angle as I did in 2000.

This payphone has survived the last decade, changing its brand from Bell Atlantic to Verizon, and standing at attention on 34th Avenue near 14th Street in Astoria/Long Island City since Y2K and probably long before.

The number for this phone, allegedly, is RAvenswood.8-9890 in Telephone Exchange Name speak, or (718) 728-9890 in modern telephony numerology. I say “alleged” because attempts to call this phone return a “beep-beep-beeeeep … we’re sorry, this number is not in service” message. The robots say this phone is simply “not in service” as opposed to “not in service for incoming calls” like most payphones.

Here is how the phone looks today: