I randomly found myself on a Q53 bus through Woodside, Queens, earlier this week. I recently commenced a completionist quest to ride every bus line in Queens at least once, not necessarily for the entire length of each route but for a significant portion thereof. The New York City bus map is a magnificent squall of arteries and connections, with areas underserved by subways of particular interest to me.

As the bus roared past 80th Street and Broadway I saw, for just a half second, these two old codgers outside the aptly-named Car Wash on Broadway in Woodside:

From a distance I thought the placards resembled those found on  E.H.U.C. payphones. If that was true then it might have been possible that these were actual working payphones, since they appear to be located on private property. As discussed in a previous posting, most outdoor payphones in New York are being replaced by a stampede of horrible LinkNYC devices. Payphones located on private property, which these appeared to be, are spared the slaughter, and should be expected to work.

Alas, these payphones have probably not worked for 15 years. They are not E.H.U.C. devices. These phones were owned by the now-defunct NYTEL, a one-man operation certainly not to be confused with the old New York Telephone. NYTEL was run by someone named Cyrus. I never got his last name and, without committing too much time to the matter, cannot find record of it at the FCC web site or anywhere else. NYTEL’s primary business was actually pre-paid calling cards, but Cyrus also owned a decent quantity of payphones provided (one assumes) for the use of his calling card customers.

This busted up handset was jammed in so tight between the payphone itself and the enclosure that I could not wrestle it out… not that I especially wanted to:

You can almost hear the dial tone:

Probably my favorite piece of payphone signage ever: USE PAYPHONES EVERYDAY. Nice reflection of passers-by, too.

Another abandoned NYTEL payphone has lingered outside a Sunnyside gas station for years. I have photos I should dig up.

The pre-paid calling cards hawked by NYTEL and other concerns were a necessary evil for regular payphone users during the 1980s and 1990s. Calls made using these cards frequently cost far more than expected, and attempts to reverse overcharges by contacting the companies who sold the cards was futile.