Public Space

Sitting at a POPS, a privately owned public space. It’s at Lincoln Center. I rarely see anyone in this one. It’s not obvious to those outside.

I’ve wasted most of this day, walking. I’m still waiting for the hot sun to give me the sweat job I need. But it’s cloudier than I expected.

I’ve been wasting the day mostly in Manhattan, walking up Central Park West, missing the bus almost every time I thought it would be smart to hop on one. I have interacted with not a single human being today. I ate some peaches. They were divine but the juice in which they were packaged spilled and made an anger-inducing mess. I might have looked disturbed screaming obscenities at a container of peaches while holding it over a garbage can.

I wasted much of yesterday, too, but at least I went into uncharted (for me) territory. I’d never been to Marine Park or Gravesend… oh, wiat, yes I had been to that area, though never to Marine Park specifically.

I went out in search of, what else, a payphone. I spend parts of my workday looking at maps, in particular a seemingly unknown alternative to Streetview called Cyclomedia. It’s a government-subsidized product in which every building is photographed for tax purposes. But they photograph everything else because hey, why not? It is not a competitor to Streetview but it is a useful alternative. FOr one thing there are no”disappeared” houses. If you do not want you property shown on Streetview you can request it be blurred out. So if you, who are not the owner of that property but would like to see that property on Streetview you can’t. You could use Cyclomedia, or possibly Bing Maps though I haven’t had reason to see if blotted-out buildings on SV are also blotted out on Bing. Nothing is blotted out on Cyclomedia.

Another advantage is the lack of advertising bloat. SV is not bursting with ads in every location but in business districts it’s almost out of control.

But SV is no doubt a superior product, but Cyclomedia does not seem to aspire to equal SV on usability.

Anyway, point being, once in a while at work, when tooling around town on Cyclomedia, I spot a payphone. I think I spotted 2 or 3 altogether in this manner. It just happens by chance. The payphone at Marine Park was just the clamshell left behind by Verizon. Here it is.