Shattered and Dangling: A Verizon Payphone, October 2009

I spotted this Verizon payphone about a month ago, and was surprised to see that it is still busted up, dangling by its thin wires in a useless, vegetative state. This payphone’s number is (718) 729-9344.

I have noticed a lot of gutted out and murdered payphones of late. Many of the phones have been surgically removed by the payphone owners, leaving just an empty hull on a city sidewalk. In the coming weeks I will be sharing photos of some of these empty payphone enclosures, this in anticipation of what I assume will be their complete removal.

I see phones like this one and I have to ask, what does it take to shatter a phone in this manner? I ask not about the physical force needed but about the decision making process, the minute-to-minute circumstances that led a human being to end a phone call by smashing the device. But why assume there even was a conversation? Idle hooligans and guttersnipes. wandering past a public phone, may have chosen this object as an outlet for showmanship, their energies guided by ignorance or indifference toward the consequences of their actions.

Whatever the case, this Verizon payphone has been a useless museum piece for many weeks. In the past I might have assumed a phone like this would be repaired. These days I imagine instead that Verizon would find that it makes better  financial sense to just forget about it.