…and by that I mean that you could only speak of nothing, because this payphone had no dial tone.
While payphone hunting last week I spotted this old, old, old rotary dial payphone still hanging around on a wall somewhere in these 5 boroughs of NYC. Location: Confidential.
The rotary dialer was a jagged mess. I nearly cut my finger dialing the #1. Still, there was something kind of soothing about the sound, and the analog motion of waiting for the dialer to fully spin.
My interest in finding old rotary payphones was piqued recently when one of my favorite things in New York was finally taken away. What may have been the last working rotary dial payphone in NYC was replaced after decades of service in favor of a touch-tone device. I was sad, though my sadness was fully corraled by my self-awareness of the frivolousness of the matter.
Speaking of payphone hunting I also stumbled upon this amazing find. I call it the NYC Phone Booth Museum. It is not officially a museum but I think it should be. For some reason these antique booths have been left frozen in time off the lobby of an office building. The lights are on but the phones are all dead.
Standing in these old booths was like traveling back to a time when the need for communication outweighed the discomfort of the environment. Phone booths, contrary to what nostalgians might claim, were not inviting or attractive places, at least not on their æsthetic or environmental merits. I often entered a phone booth feeling fine but stepped out feeling ill. My memories of phone booth conversations are of clammy-handed, sweaty disquiet and of others waiting to use the phones expressing their impatience by tapping coins against the glass and yelling things like “PAYPHONE HOG!”
None of these memories, however, detracted from how amazing it was to find these immaculate old phone booths.
I just thought I’d share.
