That payphone is supposed to be gone. The City and DoITT made the bizarre and uninformed announcement in May that the last sidewalk payphones of New York City had been plucked from a spot near Times Square. How could they forget this one, and the numerous others that remained until a few months after that echo-chamber of a press event?
Thanks to Diggy64 in the comments section of 2020’s article “PRAYphones Gone From Midtown Manhattan” we now know that work of the immortal scratchiti artist PRAY made an appearance in 1984’s Brother From Another Planet and other films as well. Here is PRAY’s appearance from that film, at about 44:38. Look for more discussion of…
A woman wearing a red scarf on a warm day made this seem like something more than just another photo of someone using a payphone. Did she know I was taking her picture?
These back-to-back payphones at the Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City have some special meaning to me, on account of the circumstances under which I found them.
My Internet radio projects are not for everybody, so it is especially gratifying to connect with someone out there who just gets it.
An elderly woman last week saw me at a payphone and asked if I needed a phone. Why do I make so many payphone calls?
Certain phone numbers are iconic in my life. 212-255-2748 is one such number.
An overheard recitation of one woman's phone number inspired a brief attempt at letting her know she left a lot more up for grabs than just that.
Just some deliberately vague comments about a coveted phone number I recently acquired, with discussion of how to make sense of online phone number lookup resources.
I got over my fear of being ridiculed for asking about such things. I staked out an old rotary dial payphone at an NYC eatery, asking permission first of a cashier, then of the store's manager, to enter into a strcture marked "Employees Only". . The cashier responded with the predicted dismissive "No." She was overruled. The manager had no problem with it.
I picked up a payphone and let it listen to the sweet sounds of Shogo Kubo, whose guitar stylings frequently grace New York's Penn Station.
Should I recognize the dude in this picture? It appears to be the work of a professional photographer, Thomas J. Rodriguez. So who's the guy in the phone booth? And why is the print a mirror image?
A nickel and an incremental hunch led me to what might be the most entertainment you can get in New York for a nickel.
An abandoned Verizon payphone at a Woodside bar illustrates what a sorry job the telco giant did in cleaning up after itself upon exiting the business. Countless quantities of Verizon's dead payphones lurk in places like Pasiones Bar.
Sometimes inspirational graffiti makes sense. Not this time. Not to me at least.
I was reading up on how telephone numbers in movies usually have 555 as the exchange. From this I learned a little bit of Charlie Brown trivia that was new to me.
There is more religion on the upper east side and other parts of New York than most people realize. The messages are virtually subliminal, hidden in the contours of payphone enclosures.
It's hard to see but it is there. It is one of a few recent sightings of a religious exhortation etched onto a payphone enclosure that could date back to the 1980s. Was this the work of PRAY, the legendary scratchiti artist?
A video playlist of 25 short recordings from an interactive piece involving phone booths at the Denver Art Museum's "Psychedelic Experience" exhibit in 2009. Also included is video of a woman confessing to having helped kill a homeless man in Central Park.
As part of a storytelling project Lanesboro Arts is launching Saturday, a decommissioned payphone in downtown Lanesboro will play a rotating selection of stories about life in the southeastern Minnesota town. Read more at the Austin Daily Herald The first attempt I knew of to turn payphones into storytelling conduits such as the one in…
I spotted this gentleman using a payphone on Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan today. People still use payphones.
A payphone once stood outside this "LIVE GIRLS ONE DOLLAR" shop in Long Island City.
A follower of the Payphone Project’s Facebook page wrote to ask a question I don’t think I’ve heard in a long time: Is it still possible to call random payphones in New York City and talk to whoever might answer? As the subject might be of general interest to visitors of this website I rewrote and supplemented my response to the question and share it herewith.
Strange beeps coming from a Rockefeller Center payphone might have some meaning, or they might not. Anyone with knowledge of the matter is welcome to inform us all.
From 100 feet away I saw something almost unbelievable: A newly installed clamshell payphone, absent any advertising panels. This is the year 2017, right?
A strange and what seemed at first to be an eerie coincidence occurred on Twitter the other night.
Phantom vestiges of a 2012 program to equip NYC's payphones with free WiFi still linger on city streets.
I fed $3.75 into a Steinway Street payphone to record the Christmas music played over loudspeakers on that venue. Some of it was actually audible.