Yesterday was such a rebound from Sunday, when I felt like death warmed over, and for no discernible reason. Wasn’t hung over and did not drink too much night before. Felt almost happy at times, but at the same time I was provocatively aware of the rise and crest of depression and anxiety that have the power to paralyze me.
A semi-spontaneous trip to Resorts World via the free shuttle bus from Elmhurst was a nice way to spend the afternoon without spending any money, and while actually making money at the slots. I came back with 60 bucks I did not have before, though I could have cashed out earlier when I was at $83.
The place looked good at first but a lot of the machines were disconcertingly buggy. One machine said my balance was way higher than it should have been, which led me to think that other machines would have the opposite problem and claim I have nothing.
it looks like a nice place to just be, though. The bar and food court are probably overpriced but I’ll try the place again some time and see what that’s about. Typically food and booze are cheap at casinos so they can lure you into more gambling, but this is New York.
Conversation with the Dutch television producer yesterday had me thinking about the arc of a narrative history of NYC payphones, and of my lifelong interest in the subject. I forgot about the times my father and I drove around central Florida looking for payphones. This would have been in the 1980s, when deregulation of the industry allowed anyone to get into the business and buy payphone locations. Dad was always looking for some kind of passive income, and while he never bought a payphone route he did get involved with tchotchka machines and scales (pay a nickel to see how much you weigh). He did not do this independently, though. he was friends with the owner of a local bar in Daytona Beach and they got into this sort of thing as a team. I never really knew much about this arrangement until mother told me it had broken down, rather acrimoniously, when the bar owner accused my dad of stealing. Even my mother, who had few kind words for dad, found the mere suggestion that he would steal money at all to be ludicrous, not to mention that the amount he was accused of stealing was so small. I think the disagreement involved 4 or 5 dollars.
I remember watching the two of them open the tchotchke machines and pour out the coins. For some reason they chose to do this out in the open, right at the bar, as dozens of customers milled about. There could be hundreds of dollars in these machines but they didn’t seem to think that merited any discretion, maybe because they did not imagine anyone robbing them of a hundred pounds worth of coinage. Nothing ever came of this seeming vulnerability but even as a youngster I found it strangely precarious.
The look on my dad’s face when they opened the coin box was like that of a child opening gifts at Christmas. He was just … happy. i thought of him a few years ago when a payphone owner took me around on his route. I watched him open the coin box and compared his look of familiarity with that of general dismay. His relationship with a basket full of quarters, nickels, and dimes (no pennies) was like that of a gambler slowly losing his money but ignoring the void opening beneath him.
For as long as I’ve kept an eye on the payphone world it never seriously occurred to me to get in on the business. Like writers who learn to hate the written word I suspect I would come to loath the sound of the dial tone, or the crackling sound of the landline — two of the aural characteristics of public telephones that enchant me the most.
I was invited to a meeting of the independent Payphone Association of New York (what was left of it, that is) a few years ago. It was one of the oddest encounters of my life, and one which in retrospect I think should never have happened. I was invited by one of the few people from the real world of payphones who did not hate the Payphone Project web site. John porter is an amiable and friendly guy who had regarded my ruminations on the state of New York’s payphones to be interesting, if not meritorious. He commented specifically on my dysfunctional encounters with the city’s 311 service, as far as it extended to reporting payphone problems. I sometimes think he read those accounts in a way that they were not necessarily intended, but his feedback was always appreciated.
That meeting of the IPANY took place at a semi-fancy restaurant on Queens Boulevard. As John had forewarned me the IPANY had no legitimate business to discuss any more. Minutes were not kept, though they had been in years past when these meeting would see over a hundred people show up. It was lost on no one who attended these meetings that the business was doomed, if not essentially dead already. This was just a bunch of old friends who got together to talk about old times and getting kicked around by city agencies with crippling financial penalties that put their businesses ever closer to necessitating failure.
There was tension in the room when I entered. i can’t say I blame those guys for being skeptical of me. People in the payphone industry tend not to appreciate much scrutiny, as the stereotypes held by the general public of their clientele and sometimes surprising business practices do not paint a flattering picture of their business. It did not help the industry’s reputation when scandals like the EDT payphone scam (I think that’s the company name) made national headlines, or that payphones’ most common appearance in general discussion includes mention of drug dealing and public urination. The “surprising business practices” I so charitably refer to involve sticker shock as experienced by countless individuals who used payphones to make collect calls. Either unaware or ignorant of the charges these calls commonly cost the caller significant amounts of money even when the calls were only a few minutes long.
There are two schools of thought about this. One is that it’s an obvious set-up to scam money out of vulnerable people who do not read the fine print on the payphones or who simply do not know they have a right to either ask an operator what the charges will be or they can choose a long distance carrier of their choice.
The other school of thought argues that this is simply a case of supply versus demand necessitating what seem like outrageous charges when really the rates align with what it actually costs to provide the ability to make long distance or collect calls from remote locations. When you really really need to make a call in this fashion then you should expect to pay a premium, just like you would if you really needed a pack of Sour Patch candies and your only option is to buy it from a vending machine. You will pay significantly more for this product than you would if you bought it at a store.
Another lower-profile matter weighing against the public’s perception of payphones involves the murky world of prison payphones, a genre of telephonic communication that most of us never have to deal with. Rates for calls made from prison payphones are quite high, as the companies providing this service justify with an argument similar to the collect call fees. The expenses associated with providing phone service in prison is simply too high not to charge a premium. The matter surfaces in mainstream media on occasion, usually with the typically American disdain for convicted prisoners shouting down the fact that they are not even the ones paying the bill. Whoever they call pays the bill.
This fact helped foster a scam that went nationwide … will look that up.
OK, getting dizzy from writing so much today.
