It may not send shockwaves of joy throughout the land but it will interest anyone who considers payphones to be part of their disaster planning scenario to learn that a freshly installed payphone has appeared at the 3-way intersection of REDACTED in Queens. The phone itself is obviously not new but it must have been placed here within the last month or so. I found this mysterious phone at the far corner of the parking lot outside an abandoned sporting goods store. It’s number is 929-240-9188.

All I could say when I saw this phone was “WHAT?” The enclosure in which this phone was installed had been empty for years, and there was no reason to think a payphone would ever appear here again. I used to see rogue payphones like this fairly frequently but nowadays they are exceedingly rare. There happens to be another working payphone about 20 feet away from this one, and until a couple of years ago a working payphone was found in the subway station downstairs.

The rogue payphone, which bears no identifying information, charges 50 cents for a local call of unspecified duration — probably 3 or 4 minutes. The placard at the top of the phone invites callers to call anywhere in the world at a rate of $1 for 3 minutes.

Unfortunately I was unable TO COMPLETE a coin-paid call. The quarters got stuck in the slot and no change was returned when I turned the coin return lever. I did, however, find a dime and one penny in the coin return chamber. That suggests someone besides me actually used or at least attempted to use this payphone. So, someone’s making money from this thing.

This installation, which is almost certainly illegal, happens to be near a legitimately owned and operated payphone. Formerly owned by Van Wagner (and by Verizon prior to that) this phone was acquired by the CityBridge consortium, the group of media and technology companies responsible for those awful LinkNYC devices. When I could not get the rogue payphone to accept my quarters I tried to use the CityBridge phone to leave myself a voicemail message. Wouldn’t you know it — it didn’t work. The CityBridge phone took my quarter and connected the call, but the 1-minute voicemail message I thought I had recorded was silent.

I was further surprised to find that the rogue phone accepted incoming calls, albeit with a catch. I called the phone a few times, with mixed results. The first time it appeared that the call was directly connected. But when I called a second time a message from the payphone instructed me to deposit 25¢ to connect the call. I used to find phones like this around New York, which allowed for incoming calls but only if the person who answered the phone ponied up a quarter or two. That functionality on this phone seemed to be a little flaky.

The informational placard, which is supposed to display the name of the company that owns the phone and who to call with complaints, is completely washed out. This is almost certainly intentional. Its blue color resembles that of the placards found today on legitimate payphones.

Somewhere in my coffers I have photos of this enclosure when it was occupied by a previous payphone. I seem to remember it being a TCC Teleplex phone but I could be wrong, and I would have a hard time finding that photo among my oceans of hoarded digital photographs.

Seeing as this phone is situated on private property which is presently unoccupied it could be around for a while. The business closed some months ago, and the building was briefly occupied by a popup Halloween Store. There was and possibly still is another payphone inside the building, a long-abandoned phone formerly owned by… I think it was Duvel or Devul or something. It remains to be seen if the next occupants of this space care enough about this lowly payphone located on the far reaches of their property to have it excised. I spotted a similar rogue payphone in Brooklyn last year, but do not know at present if it is still in place. As long as no one cares enough to want it gone these illegal installations can survive a long time.

The nearby CityBridge owned phone will probably be replaced by a LinkNYC monolith. Actually that one payphone will probably be replaced by dozens of LinkNYC devices placed every 50 feet at every possible opening along Northern Boulevard and Broadway. But it might be a while before Links reach this part of Queens.

These payphones intrigue me. I don’t mind feeding quarters into them but I think it would be crazy to use them for any meaningful or sensitive communication. Unregulated as it is you just don’t know who might be listening in on or recording your activities. With that in mind you’d be foolish to make a credit card paid call through a phone like this.

I happen to know where maybe a half-dozen payphone enclosures still stand, empty of the payphone that used to be within. I looked at a couple of them today, thinking that whoever set up this phone was going to make a broader rollout of their rogue public telephones. I did not find any others, though I only looked at a couple of spots that happened to be nearby.

Whooosh… Going to use this as a draft for a PP site story. That site’s been kind of quiet lately.