Blackout Payphone Revisited

Tomorrow is the anniversary date of the Northeast Blackout of 2003. That was a memorable day for me in many ways but a memory I recall best is this shot of several people lined up to use a payphone at Queensboro Plaza in Queens.

Blackout Payphone, 2003

This is near the Queensboro/59th Street Bridge, which was the entry and/or exit point for people who had to walk to or from Manhattan to get to or from Queens.

I like this photo. It shows a random gathering of people who, in an emergency, found that they needed a payphone. Emergencies tend to be among the few circumstances in which people seek out payphones any more. A blackout today would probably result in even longer lines at this payphone, because while this payphone has survived the last 6 years many more in this area have not.

I recently found all of my photos from the 2003 Blackout. While hardly a thrilling photo essay I nevertheless have come to appreciate these little time capsules of events, whether they be memorable or not. In a similar spirit last year I found all the photos I took on September 11, 2001; and on September 17, 2001, the day I went to Ground Zero. I never intended or desired to look at all of those pictures again — I went so far as to vow that I never would look at them again for fear of reliving the horror of that day — but with these years of remove I find it amazing that these tiny windows onto that day communicate so little of how it felt.

But I digress.

The Blackout Payphone (as I call it) is still in place today, perhaps waiting for another crisis that will thrust it back into usefulness.

Blackout Payphone Today

My purely anecdotal observations suggest that this payphone does, in fact, get a fair amount of use these days. Someone in the payphone business once told me that a public phone only needs to make a dollar a day to be profitable. In the short time I spent getting this picture I watched as this payphone earned its daily dollar.

The coffee shop is still closed (I can not remember it ever being open) and its old school phone number is chipping away. I call the phone number on the coffee shop’s awning “old school” because it has no area code, placing its origins somewhere in the enormous space of years between Telephone Exchange Name numbers like “Astoria 0-8090” and today’s geographically arbitrary area codes which have become mandatory dialing almost everywhere in America.

One metal post by the phone is bent, probably from being hit by a vehicle.

I could not re-create the exact angle from which I got the picture in 2003. Road work caused the area where I sat 6 years ago to be fenced off.

 
 
UPDATE
  • I revisited the Blackout Payphone in April, 2011. Soon after that visit the payphone was completely annihilated