The social media mini-tweetstorm was getting monotonous, and that has not changed, except that I spotted some peeps from WCBS asking around for permission to use peoples’ kiosk videos “on all platforms”. At first I thought that meant this might go national, but I doubt that. I don’t watch CBS Nightly News on any kind of basis, because I can’t get antenna signal anymore and don’t have time or desire to hack some online way to it or to pay for other means of access. But this doesn’t seem like national news material to me… unless they can identify the perpetrator, and even there I can’t imagine this little project rises to the level of something that 6,000,000 would find interesting. Now if every city in America had thousands of these wretched kiosks raiding their streets and living room windows then OK, there would be a coast-to-coast connection to be made. So I’m going to assume this will be a weekend filler piece on the broadcast TV/radio/Internet, and that I’ll take a pass on looking for them.
I did not drink last night and, unlike previous adventures in sobriety, where I was able to sleep reasonably well, last night was a fucking adventure. I woke up sweating and with heart pounding, and slept almost until noon after waking at 8:30 yesterday. I feel fine now but in sleeping until noon what that really means is that over about 11 hours I might have scored 6 or 7 hours sleep. It’s like sleeping on a bus, but without the bus. I am the bus.
Yesterday I made what amounted to a 10+ mile walk from 42nd Street/Times Square to 101st Street and Broadway, where I figured I might as well check in on those “historic” phone booths on West End Avenue. Those booths are, in the context of New York and America, about as historic as … well, my morning grog cannot arrive at a suitable witty zinger analogy to compare them too (how about my butt?), but suffice to say those booths exist not out of any allegiance to the history of public telephony in America but as a gawky public relations stunt by the people forcing those kiosks into our lives. I’ve written about it elsewhere, no need to repeat, though I may need to elaborate at some point.
There had been four booths. Today there are three, but it’s not known if the one booth was removed temporarily to make way for some sidewalk work and that it will be restored, or if the company that owns them will just forget about it and leave the phone booth in storage. The manufacturing/storage warehouse for such things happens to be near where I live, on 31st Avenue in Astoria. In fact Long Island City, in the Queensboro Plaza area, used to a central manufacturing hub for American phone booths. I learned recently where and when the first outdoor booth in NYC was installed. I never expected to find such a precise bit of trivia in this realm.
It’s a beautiful day, but I think I’ll stay in for most of it. Not much day it left after sleeping so late. I think I alienated someone last week with my dismal comment about waking up early versus late. I was up early that day and I remarked that doing so just gives me “more time to waste.” Some days I feel that way, other days I lurch to opposite extremes of each morning being a precious gift of opportunity, other days it lingers in more nuanced realms of inarticulate disambiguation.