As I age and my inner curmudgeon flourishes I find myself less and less inspired by the Internet, the Interweb, the Intertubes. Everything is instantly cliché, it seems, when made instantly available everywhere — even the mountainously vapid piles of steaming keyword bait, that textual effluvia that will define our culture to future generations.
Once in a while, though, connections made through the Internet make things interesting.
Last year I posted this image from the film “Taxi Driver.”
Taxi Driver KH1 Telephone Exchange
The left side of the screengrab shows a yellow cab with what appears to be an old-style exchange-name phone number on the trunk of the car. This image is part of my Telephone Exchange Name Sightings project, a place in which I share photos of old-style telephone exchange name phone numbers as seen in the wilds of New York, in movies, and on printed matter such as matchbook covers and post cards.
Most people who see these old-fashioned phone numbers probably do not know what they are looking at. I know I had been blind to the fact that AS4-5500 (for instance) was a phone number. Having seen that old phone number for so many years I guess I assumed that AS4-5500 was some kind of real estate certification number.
So I was surprised at how frequently I spotted these generations-old numbers once I opened my eyes to them.
The phone number from “Taxi Driver” — KH1-7400 — confounded me. It just doesn’t look like a typical telephone exchange name number. Unpronouncable exchange names are rare. Most exchange names start with the first 2 letters of a real word. Commonly-used New York City exchange names, for example, included RAvenswood, ESplanade, and PLaza among many others.
I added the KH1 sighting to my collection of telephone exchange name sightings anyway. I imagined someone might have some obscure reason to look up KH1-7400, find that number on my web site, and contact me to confirm that it was a real number.
In the meantime I reached out to a New York City exchange names expert who convincingly assured me that KH1 was never a genuine telephone exchange in New York City.
Recently, however, proof that KH1 was a valid telephone exchange arrived. Proof came in the form of an e-mail from John F. F. John had been rummaging through old calling cards when he found this one from UTOG (United Taxi Owners Guild). The old calling card clearly gives KH1-7400 as the number to call, though evidently the number was changed at some point to KH1-7490.
UTOG TAXI RADIO CARD KH-1-7400/7490
According to John:
“The number was the 2-way radio dispatch number (in Queens I believe); call that number and usually a medallion Checker cab picked you up in about 5 minutes.”
“I know — I used it too many times to get me home from mid-town Manhattan to Staten Island in the 1960’s and 70’s.”
Referring to the scene from “Taxi Driver” John adds:
“The cab in the photo may simply have been parked when the scene was shot.”
That’s a pretty cool connection. Who would have thought someone would reach this or any other web site by dialing up an old KH1- telephone number?
I was satisfied, too, to know that Martin Scorsese, director of “Taxi Driver”, did not find some reason to pad this great film with something as trivial as a nonsense phone number. That is one of the many things about movies that drives me crazy: the fake telephone numbers, invariably starting with “555”. These numbers, so obviously fake, detract significantly from any sense of realism in a story.
The End.
