An unexpected payphone find in Ozone Park, Queens, led to a trip through its Streetview then-and-now history from 2007, when the phone probably still worked, through 2022. My video shows what this forgotten Verizon relic looks like today. This is also a test to see if I can get video to play from the top page, not just on the story page.
When last I passed through Elizabeth I remember being surprised not just by the quantity but by the fact that most of the payphones there worked. The latter is not true today but I did find one working public telephone in Elizabeth, along with a couple of unusually beefy Calstar phones.
A website visitor directed me to this phone booth scene from the 1985 film Witness, starring Harrison Ford. Ford is seen using a payphone in a phone booth at WL Zimmerman’s store (now Lestz Wholesale) in Lancaster County, PA. What makes this scene different from most is that the phone booth was not a prop…
Do any payphones remain in the Grand Central Terminal passages, closed since the pandemic struck? A map of the Terminal on the main level says there are. Let's see what remains of GCT's once abundant payphone population.
The vestige of a payphone past lingers on at this spot, as much as 25 years after its removal. I don't know who owned this phone but it looks like it was dead as long ago as the 1990s.
Unlike most phones from my "Payphones Then and Now" series I found one that not only physically survives in this year of 2021 but is fully functional and sounds great. I've used this phone many times for Payphone Radio calls.
Where is he now? This payphone user, that is. Probably talking on a cell phone. I never see anyone use this LinkNYC kiosk today but it used to be a pretty popular spot from which to place a phone call when you didn't have to scream at the device just to be heard.
All I remember about this one was that it had a Bell South logo on it. Bell South was the first big telco to exit payphones, but never had holdings in this part of the country. Bell South exited payphones by 2003. This photo is from 2011. It was not uncommon to see brands of…
A brief window into New York's payphone past in a 1-minute piece about a 30-second payphone at Penn Station. At least one remnant of the 30-second payphone survives today, not working, of course, and not at Penn Station.
This payphone outside a library reminds me that I believe public libraries should have public telephone rooms where anyone could make a call. It would likely serve a very small niche of the public but it seems, to me at least, like a low-impact, low-maintenance service to offer, assuming there are limits on usage.
A brief look at the life and times of a 33rd Street TCC Teleplex payphone in Astoria. I don't remember using this one but plenty of other people did, and likely still would, if only they could.
One of my favorite payphone photos I ever got. A young woman takes a break from her job at Walgreen's to make a call at the payphone outside. Whose phone number is on the scrap of paper she holds in her left hand? Why does she appear to be so antsy?
Citizens are now required to keep their cell phones charged, healthy, and in their possession at all times, an unfortunate and potentially perilous denouement to the decades-long era of publicly accessible communications devices.
By request, and because I was genuinely preparing to resume this subject, I'm continuing my series of "Payphones Then and Now", starting with this shot of a phone at 36th Avenue and 37th Street in Astoria, Queens.
A payphone I used only occasionally vanished this week, bringing Astoria's payphone population down to 11. Just a couple of months ago there were dozens.
An amazing thing about these payphone enclosures is how successfully they cancel out the noise of the above-ground subway, allowing one to continue a conversation without having to scream. The same cannot be said of the LinkNYC kiosks that threaten to replace and supplement the quantity of today's NYC payphones.
These two back-to-back payphones, at 617-338-6433 and 617-338-6548, appear to remain active on Summer Street, near Macy's, in Boston, 5½ years after I took these photos, and who knows how many years since first deployed.
Memories of the first payphone to which I remember ever having regular access. Oh, how I worked this phone at my high school. This is a rewrite of a story I wrote a long time ago.
Phone booth hunting in publicly posted college and high school yearbooks turned up some interesting stuff. Until the mid-2000s, if not beyond, most high school and college campuses had payphones of some sort, so their appearance in yearbooks seemed like a sure thing.
These scraps of paper from 1999 or 2000 appeared from my boxloads of papryal ephemera today, reminding me how obsessively I used to write down payphone numbers.
When I first heard about 80s.nyc, a Streetview for NYC in the 1980s, I thought it sounded like inspiration for an extended dream sequence from "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer". I went out clicking for payphones and phone booths, and found quite a few. It was good fun, even if it chewed up a little too much time.
