Yesterday. All I wanted was to move. Up at 6am I made short order of grocery shopping. I am consistently being awarded the Senior Discount even though I am not 62, and I do not feel close to 62. I don’t even fuck old but I have cashiers half my age looking at me and thinking OLD. I saved $4.54, not even enough to buy the sandwich I had intended to purchase but which I left behind because of cost.
It took half the day to find food to eat. I went to Flushing. Every place, it seemed, was cash only. Every place of interest to me, that is. There was an ice cream place that took cards but I needed FOOD. I guess POPEYES would have taken cards but I was, in a rare mood, interested in expanding my palette beyond cold cuts and cheese burgers. Fried chicken would have been outside that milieu but when in Flushing it seemed not in the spirit of things to go fast food. A beef cashew and rice platter looked promising but they were cash only. I had a $20 but that I needed that for later, or at least I thought I did. I had intended to visit the only bar I go to anymore later that day, and while the bar does take cards I quit paying at bars with cards after a certain bartender wrote himself a $20 tip on a $15 tab. He thought I wouldn’t notice and in most times and places he would probably have been right. But I did just happen to check my credit card statement the next day and asked when would I have ever spent $35 on beer at that bar? I confronted the bartender. He never outright admitted but his expression was clearly guilty as charged. The $20 tip I never wrote was returned to me in the form of four $5 pours. I was a regular at that bar but have not entered there in years.
All food options in Flushing seemed out. I boarded a 7 train and moved on to Grand Central Terminal, where I got a reliably overpriced Italian Sammich from the vendor at the north west corner of the lower level. There were tables available to stand at and eat the sammich. Very limited public seating is available nowadays at GCT.
I tried something different this stramble. No video, or not much. I narrated, unsure if the microphone setup was working. It seemed to work but I will need to enhance the voice somehow. It may just molder away for eternity. My voice sounded strange and I know not why. Strange to me, at least. Sounded like the voice of a stranger.
From GCT it was up to Rockefeller Center and down to Penn Station to check on the state of the payphones in those places. REsults are mixed. Rockefeller continues its defunctitude whilst Penn Station at least allows toll free and emergency calls. Flushing Main Street could possibly be the last working publicly accessible telephone in New York City. I left that phone off the hook and this seemed to attract the attention of some high school kids. One in particular was acting like he knew everything about them. Wish I could have heard the conversaion. They disbanded soon after I spotted them.
I’m 69 years old. I wish I had your energy. Pay phones have been a part of my life until they all started to disappear. I am glad the the NYPL main branch still has the old wooden pay phones booths. I guess it’s a nostalgia thing. I clearly remember when at GCT they installed a large section of phone booth, where the Hudson News concession is now. GCT has gone through a lot of changes over the years. That bank of phones became kind of famous because it was used for the introduction for Million Dollar Movie on channel 9 WPIX. I remember that short clip use the soundtrack for Gone With The Wind, and the image of a telephone receiver dangling off the hook. It was noirish and had random shots giving it an experimental vibe. I think the Oyster Bar still may have a pay phone but I’m not sure. I remember sometime in the naughts, getting on a notoriously slow crosstown 14th street bus with an old black woman. The bus was not too crowded but the noise! We looked at each other in a wonder, and I said to her since when had buses become collective telephone booths? She laughed and said “You’re right! It feels like it happened overnight!”
GCT still has about a ½ dozen old payphones, moldering away at locations throughout the Terminal. None of them work. There are two in the Oyster Bar Saloon. Those were unusual for being inside the bathrooms. Typically bars put the payphones outside the restrooms. I’m no fan of nostalgia but I will miss the golden sound quality of the copper landline when it is finally made extinct. In the end most NYC payphones were cellular but the few remaining payphones today are copper and calls from those phones sound glorious.