Payphone Project on the TODAY Show, 1999

I procured a VCR for the purpose of digitizing some of my old VHS tapes moldering away in a bedroom drawer. The VHS tapes filling my bureau drawers are almost all unmarked, but after getting the VCR in January I finally, after many years of intending to, started wading through them. I knew this was…
Payphone News |
A Bronx and Marble Hill Payphone Stramble [Video]

Starts at the Fordham Road subway, where one of the phones I looked at a couple of years ago remains, succumbing to forces of entropy and telephonic decay. The real destination was a random payphone clamshell I spotted on Cyclomedia, the underrated and basically unknown alternative to Streetview for New York City. From there it’s…
Daily Payphone |

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.
Daily Payphone |

How many hacks and cyber attacks have targeted the LinkNYC network? According to a report by Motherboard, the LinkNYC network has been targeted by at least 10 hacks and cyber attacks since its launch in 2016. The most recent attack, which occurred in January 2023, allowed hackers to access the personal information of millions of…
Daily Payphone |
Payphones on Maui. December, 2022.

As recently as 2016 Hawaii had the most payphones per capita of any state in the union. Most of Hawaii's payphones are owned and operated by Hawaii Telecom, the regional phone company for the state. Payphones in the other 49 of these United States of America are run by COCOTs. Now you know.
Daily Payphone |
Fresh LinkNYC Carnage

I had not seen this kind of damage to a LinkNYC machine in some time, though I’ve not paid as much attention to these machines as in times past. They remain about the same as ever in terms of reliability. Sometimes a phone call works, sometimes it does not. You just never know what to…
Link.NYC |
History is Being Rewritten, One AI Prompt at a Time

On three separate occasions I asked ChatGPT what it knew about LinkNYC. It got several facts wrong but presented a typically convincing-sounding mishmash of accuracy and lies. Even I wanted to believe the bullshit. It didn’t occur to me right away, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to see what AI thought it knew about…
Link.NYC |
Ascot Communications: Abandoned Payphone

It’s true. I don’t here much these days. That doesn’t mean my hands are idle. Quite the opposite. I don’t know when it happened, or if there was a moment of clarity, but posting stories to websites started to feel like futility incarnate. Why post here to an audience of a few dozen when inane…
Daily Payphone |
Is *THIS* the Last CityBridge Payphone of New York City?

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?
Daily Payphone |
Found Some Flatbush Payphones (Video)

I used my patent-pending technique of reverse-engineering public information to locate derelict and decrepit payphones in Flatbush on Sunday. (Just kidding about the patent thing.) I expected three devices but found only two. It turns out one of them had been tweeted to my timeline a couple of months ago. At the start of this…
Daily Payphone |
Another Payphone Stramble, This Time Through Hollis (Video)

This one sent me to Hollis, where I found a long-dead Verizon phone moldering away in a somewhat odd spot. See more of my payphone strambles at the YouTube playlist: Payphones of New York City and New Jersey. An ad which included the “Talk To Me” project showed up on my phone while out doing…
Daily Payphone |
The Old Payphone Across From Ravenswood

This payphone got a lot of use, but the advertising enclosure got a lot of abuse. The duct tape looks like it might be the only thing holding this structure up. The ad panels did not usually stay in place for long, typically ending up on the sidewalk or on 34th Avenue after someone ripped them out. 
Daily Payphone |
Payphone Ramblings, and Some Videos

It’s become a chore, I’m sorry to say, to post content to this website. I don’t like WordPress anymore but it I feel stuck with it. I post more frequently to wsbj.com/sorabji, I believe on account of having set up the post-by-email gateway. It seems so much easier and enjoyable to post outside the WordPress…
Daily Payphone |
[VIDEO] Checking in From Rockefeller Center’s Last Working Payphone

This phone is all that is left of Rockefeller Center's once-formidable "COMMUNICATIONS" portal. This is from last week, after the mentally and intellectually orgasmic conversation with a new PCP who, I did not know, also doubles as a psychotherapist. That was the emotionally clog-draining psychotherapy session I never thought I'd get.
Daily Payphone |
How Many “Last Payphones of New York City” Remain? Here’s One.

Last month's announcement that the "last payphone" of New York City had been hauled off to slaughter was very specific in its definition of "last payphone." So specific, in fact, that it not only failed to acknowledge a variety of still-working publicly-accessible phones but also the rotted remains of CityBridge-owned phones like this one.
Daily Payphone |