Payphones, those relics of a lost age of personal freedom and superhero quick changes, are about to get an upgrade. Though over the years the phones (especially phone booths) have slowly been disappearing from our streets and subways, they aren't totally gone. Which is why a company called Smart City 24x7 is making a move to bring them into the 21st Century. To that end, they've not got a contract to install 250, 32" "smart screens" phones in payphones across the five boroughs.
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- Friend of Gothamist, Sarah Kunstler, and her sister, Emily, are in the process of a filming a documentary where New Yorkers call President Bush to air their opinions. People are given quarters to call the White House comment line from a payphone at LaGuardia Place and Washington Square Park South. The film, sponsored by the Documentary Campaign, a human rights non-profit, will be shown on the Documentary Campaign website during the convention. While some comments are compliments, many comments are along the lines of "This is the worst administration I've ever known. You're leading the country in the wrong direction." Emily told the Daily News, "We're hoping it continues to influence people to ask questions. We want people to see the difference between the two parties and get out and vote."
Gothamist on the 2004 Republican National Convention.more ›
Results tagged “phonebooth”
Touchscreen Payphones Are Coming To New York City!
New York's Most Public Library: Phone Booth Library
Phone booths are on the endangered species list in NYC, but one architect has found a nifty way to give them new life: phone booth libraries! As part of his urban intervention project, the Department of Urban Betterment (DUB), architect John Locke has repurposed phone booths into communal libraries or book drops. Wait, could the the Smoke Monster be behind all this?
Astoria Gets a Telepine
While some Brooklynites are lobbying to get trees removed from their neighborhood, Canadian street artist Poster Child is planting them around the city. There's already a dwarf pine in a long-retired newspaper dispenser on Bedford Avenue, and now he's gone and planted another in a telephone booth in Astoria. Personally, we'd like to see an entire greenhouse in one of the four remaining enclosed booths (as long as no one's using them anymore, that is). Challenge.
Phone Booths Nearly Extinct in NY!
Remember phone booths? Not pay phones, but the actual booths you got into in order to access that phone. Well, according to Scouting NY there are only four left in all of Manhattan! Because who needs privacy anymore? Well, maybe Clark Kent. But when movies film here they often have to recreate their phone booth scenes with props. Sigh, just another little thing dropping off the landscape of the city. This site has a great archive of pay phones and booths around the five boroughs, and Forgotten NY takes a nostalgic look back on booths of the past. If you want to see a rare booth in person the remaining ones are at 101st, 100th, 90th and 66th streets.
NYC's Republican National Convention Notes
- Friend of Gothamist, Sarah Kunstler, and her sister, Emily, are in the process of a filming a documentary where New Yorkers call President Bush to air their opinions. People are given quarters to call the White House comment line from a payphone at LaGuardia Place and Washington Square Park South. The film, sponsored by the Documentary Campaign, a human rights non-profit, will be shown on the Documentary Campaign website during the convention. While some comments are compliments, many comments are along the lines of "This is the worst administration I've ever known. You're leading the country in the wrong direction." Emily told the Daily News, "We're hoping it continues to influence people to ask questions. We want people to see the difference between the two parties and get out and vote."
Gothamist on the 2004 Republican National Convention.
New York on Film
While blathering on about the upcoming Joel Schumacher directed, much-postponed Colin Farrell starrer, The Phone Booth, and how only one day of filming actually took place in NY (Times Square). The Post comes up with other recent films set in New York that were filmed in others. My favorite bizarre stand-in: Melbourne, Australia for Besonhurst, NY, from Kangaroo Jack.
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