The folks at “Ask A New Yorker” have been kind enough to allow me to post stories at their site. I approached them some months ago proposing that I write regularly on the subject of (what else?) payphones in New York City. I am piecing together a narrative history of payphones in this town, specifically focusing on my personal experiences and reflections. It’s not going to be a straight timeline but more of a grab bag of stories and anecdotes with a certain quantity of historical perspective. Publishing stories to Ask A New Yorker could serve as a preview for that collection, or it could simply be an end in itself.
One of the accounts for this narrative history will be a longer version of “No Dial Tone: The Mysterious Story of an Astoria Payphone” — my story about a memorable encounter I had one night when a payphone started ringing on Broadway in Astoria. I may never know what that incident was all about but I maintain it was some ham-handed attempt by producers of a reality TV program to mine the streets for material.
I am not sticking exclusively to payphones. “In Loving Memory?” asks if the Central Park Conservancy should consider removing plaques which bear the name of one of the most notorious villains in modern times: Bernard Madoff.
A couple of months ago I found MyFirstApartment.com, an entertaining collection of stories about the first apartments people lived in when they moved to New York. Submitting that story was easy since I had already written an account of my days at the Parc Lincoln, a subject I’ve explored at somewhat interminable length on sorabji.com.
The story at MyFirstApartment.com is called “Early 1990s on the Upper West Side: Transient hotel, the Apology Line, and a general cacophony.
Memories of the Parc Lincoln do not torment me like they used to but I will certainly never forget Room 317.
