Rogue Payphone Going, Going, Gone.

When I heard that the former site of the Sports Authority store in Long Island City was to be turned into a new school my first thought probably differed from anyone else’s. I asked: What will become of the payphone, a device I described as “rogue” because it was installed and deployed without permission of the property owner?

The phone is littered with “WE NEED MORE PAY PHONES” stickers, but those won’t help salvage this phone from the wrecking ball.

This phone was the scene of a graffiti exchange that I found interesting. Whoever left the “WE NEED MORE PAY PHONES” stickers on this phone got a response:

I don’t usually call out the location of a rogue payphone. I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. But with this phone good as gone I think now it can be told. As of yesterday this payphone still stood at the three-way intersection of Broadway, Northern Boulevard, and 54th Street in Long Island City, Queens. I got there just before the perimeter of the property was completely surrounded by scaffolding. Today the phone is only visible through a window opening in one sheet of plywood.

This phone appeared in early 2017. I remember well my bewilderment at finding a newly-installed payphone 17 years into the 21st century. The phone inhabited the far corner of a parking lot outside The Sports Authority, a now-defunct chain of sporting goods supplies shuttered a few years ago. The space had been occupied by a used car dealership and a string of seasonal popup stores, but evidently no occupants of the place saw reason to get this payphone off their property.

It was, truth be told, a pretty cool place from which to make a phone call.

Also present inside the abandoned building was a payphone left behind by Davel Communications.

This outdoor phone could actually receive incoming calls, but with a twist. If you called the number — 929-240-9188 — anyone who answered had to deposit 25¢ for the call to connect. That kind of setup is not uncommon in other parts of the country but I have only seen one other phone programmed like that in New York.

Powered by solar energy and connected to a wireless network this phone existed off the grid and off the radar of City administrators, whose job it is to make sure CityBridge maintains its monopoly franchise on most of New York’s outdoor payphones. This phone, deposited on private property just inches away from a public sidewalk, would not fall under the City’s jurisdiction, though I have seen illegal payphones, like this one outside the Van Dam Diner, installed right out in the open on City property.

The empty clamshell payphone enclosure had lurked on this corner for years, abandoned long ago by Telebeam, one of the many independent payphone service providers run out of New York by the CityBridge monopoly. As is typical of rogue payphone installations this phone bears no identifying information about who owns or maintains it. It had not worked for many months, and it looks like the person responsible for placing it here doesn’t care to salvage the phone, which could probably sell for a couple hundred bucks on eBay or Craigslist.

It is unfortunate but inevitable that this payphone has to go.