It’s funny… For some reason LinkNYC devices cannot make phone calls today. They all return the message saying that I don’t have enough Vonage credits… That message only ever played if you tried to call a 900 number or some pay-per-minute line.
It made me realize how much a part of my routine those stupid devices have become. I want to create a new sound, a kind of Street Radio filled with overheard scraps of sound picked up by the Links. In amassing several hours of recordings I’ve found that it appears I’ve collected full conversations between people who happen to have been conversing near one of those devices. It’s poor quality but with enough software processing I should be able to make it audible. I wonder if there will be anything to be learned from this store of chatter.
I am doing the .MOBI at home, as it looks like a monster thunderstorm is due any minute. I might visit the Astor Room tonight, now that they are installing some British style phone booths out front. Apparently they are going to extend their outdoor seating along the sidewalk on 35th Avenue, and for some reason they thought that putting some authentic British phone boxes would give this space an air of class. Which is funny because in their heyday those phone boxes were best known as filthy vessels for pornographic advertisements.
They are pretty impressive beasts up close. I read an essay once about those phone boxes and public restrooms in Britain, and how they bring loftiness and uplift to life’s most mundane but necessary acts: making phone calls and shitting. That æsthetic was intentional, to give ordinary people a sense of pride or enveloping comfort in doing what they had to do.
These are not the only outdoor British phone boxes in NYC. There is one outside a building near Rockefeller Center. It is designated a “SECURITY” booth and has no phone, as I assume will be the case with the 4 booths going up by the Astor Room. There is also a place called Hell Bar in Williamsburg, which features a phone box somewhere in its décor. I’ve not visited that place.
There was, for a day at least, a phone booth outside of Sunswick. It was Election Day, 2008. At first i thought the owner of Sunswick had put it out there as some kind of gimmick. I later learned it was a prop, and that Sunswick was being used to film scenes for either “Life On Mars” or “Lost”, I can’t remember which now. I think I saw that same phone booth being used in another scene across the street, where those new red phone boxes are now.
I feel like I managed to get through a panic attack without taking a pill. But I’ve had that thought before. When will this stop? Never. that is when. Never.
I rescheduled an appointment with an eye doctor, thinking I had actually booked an appointment with a dentist. I had chosen this doctor simply because her last name starts with an A, and thus she came up first in the listing. This time I noticed there was a photo of her. I looked at it. Oh man she is bombshell gorgeous. I might not be able to take my … EYES … off her. get it? Eyes, eye doctor. Ahaha, I should find a way to use that oh-so-smooth line. Yeah, right.
Look at that, no thunderstorm at all.
Feels weird
