Someone violated the side of this payphone enclosure, at 21st Street and 33rd Road in Astoria, with a to-me-unintelligible blood-red squall of… something. OPHAGE? OPIAGE? Whatever it might mean I see a heart at the bottom, suggesting the message was sent with love.

Not knowing what a particular piece of street graf means, or asking anyone who might know: “What the hell is that?”, is one of those situations that falls into the head-shaking category of: “If you have to ask you’re not worthy”. You’re just not cool if you don’t know. If you know, you know. If you don’t, go away. Those who know, or know what to know, guard their knowledge like original scientific or documentary research.

I don’t mind admitting when I don’t know what the hell I’m looking at. It’s like when someone told me “If you don’t like Phish’s music then you just don’t get Phish.” If that’s the case then I’m OK with not getting Phish.

This phone is among the last outdoor phones in New York not owned or confiscated by CityBridge, the consortium of media, tech, and advertising companies awarded a monopoly franchise on virtually all of New York’s outdoor payphones.

CityBridge owns the City’s sidewalks’ public communications landscape, with roughly 2000 payphones and about 1800 LinkNYC kiosks, and an exclusive long term contract that makes competition impossible. If you don’t like LinkNYC, get used to it. Those soulless totemic monoliths are not going away anytime soon.

Phones like the one in this story are exempt from being acquired by CityBridge because the consortium’s monopoly franchise only extends to public property, city sidewalks in particular. This one is on a privately-owned strip mall in Astoria.

You’ll also still find independently owned payphones on other private property, such as transit hubs, Broadway theaters, and random places like barbershops, cemeteries, and pubs. BUT, such instruments of communication are increasingly hard to come by. I still can’t believe there is a working payphone in an old wood booth at the New York Presbyterian Hospital on East 68th Street.