This grainy photo, taken with a Treo cell phone camera, shows a real rarity. This is a fully functional rotary dial payphone. This phone is actively used at a business somewhere in the 5 boroughs of New York City.

I will not reveal the location of this phone. I have been told by folks who seem to know that if the phone company gets word of a rotary dial payphone in public use they might dispatch a crew to “fix” it, which is to say replace it with a touch tone phone. That would be a waste because this phone works just fine.

I know a little bit about the history of this establishment. By my estimate the rotary dial has spun on this payphone since at least the 1980s. It may have been in this spot since the 1970s.

Last year I found a rotary dial payphone at the King Penny Hardware Store on Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria. The phone does not work, and probably has not worked for many years, but its number was (718) 278-9139.

I also spotted what at first appeared to be an amazing phone booth with a rotary dial payphone on 35th Avenue in Astoria. I thought it might have been put out by the owner of the nearby bar as some kind of gimmick. It was cool to see but alas, that phone booth was merely a prop for a filming of the short-lived television show Life on Mars.

My earliest time spent living in New York City included long hours clutching any of these rotary dial payphones at the Parc Lincoln in Manhattan. Those phone booths are altogether gone. The whole lobby of the Parc Lincoln was replaced by an upscale restaurant named ‘Cesca.