Checking in as I occasionally do on the last outdoor, free-standing phone booths of Manhattan, I noticed that one of those old booths has been arted up with images of grasses and greenery.

Images of greenery cover most of three sides of this phone booth at 66th Street and West End Avenue. They advertise The High Line, that always-too-crowded above-ground park down toward Chelsea.

The High Line is a narrowly elbow-rubbing space that reminds me of “The Mark of Gideon” episode from the original “Star Trek”. The half-dozen times I have tried to enjoy that space I could barely see my helplessly-grasping claws before me. I prefer to wander this city’s un-yuppified cemeteries to its hyperbolically self-infatuated bicycle parks.

The High Line is no destination for me, but I think that their advertising support for one of the city’s last phone booths is pretty cool.

That, I guess you could say, is the good news.

The bad news is that the inside of this booth smells disgusting. My eyes watered and my senses roiled when I stepped into this germ hole. It evoked memories of nearly-abandoned rural phone booths, those rectangular columns of filth maintained once a month at most, accumulating odors and bodily fluids from travelers and derelicts relieving themselves on the run.

The old phone booth has gathered some graffiti, too. Its overhead fan and light do not work, though I can not remember when they ever did.

I believe I first wrote about this booth in 2004, about a year after a friend’s picture of me standing therein was used for an April, 2003, story about this web site in “Time Out New York”. I also agreed to be filmed standing in this phone booth as part of a completely stupid cable news segment involving phone booths. I no longer do media interviews for payphones, because there is no value in it for me or for anyone else, but the “Time Out New York” story was a good one.

The High Line-supported phone booth at 66th Street and West End Avenue is one of only 4 remaining outdoor, free-standing phone booths in Manhattan. The other booths are looking and smelling a lot better than this one. I will have more pictures and comments about those booths in the coming days.

At 747 Third Avenue is what could be described as a modern spin on the phone booth.

Also seen in midtown is a British Phone Box. It is not a phone booth, but a place for the security team at 437 Madison Avenue.

I am also a loving fan of the lonely old phone booths on Yankee Pier, in Buttermilk Channel off of Governors Island. Governors Island is closed most of the year, and I have not made it over there for a couple of years. I do not know if the old phone booths survived since last we met.

And speaking of outdoor New York City phone booths, I am reminded of a day I happened to walk past the Sunswick Bar & Grill in Astoria, and I noticed an old-school phone booth in front of the place, complete with a rotary dial payphone. At first I thought the owner at Sunswick placed the old booth outside as a gimmick of some sort. Alas, it turned out that the old booth merely a prop for the television show “Life On Mars.” I saw the booth around the area a couple of other times, used in other scenes for that short-lived show. Even though it was just a prop I think it was pretty cool to see an old school rotary dial payphone booth out on the street.