On Thursday, the NYPD allegedly sent out a directive ordering narcotics officers to make no arrests based on drug transactions that they witnessed, unless an undercover officer was present. According to the Post, this message "stunned drug cops," with once source saying, "They were told point-blank they couldn't make observation arrests without their undercovers." But it turns out it was all a big misunderstanding. Sheesh, haven't any of you cops played telephone? more ›

Let's have a warm round of applause for 929, the new digits for the so-called "outer boroughs." As you'll no doubt recall, last year the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) concluded that unless a new area code was provided for NYC, we would actual exhaust our supply in 2012, just as the Mayans predicted. And so began a "customer education" campaign to prepare everyone for the upcoming changes. Still feeling kind of anxious about these new numbers changing our lives forever? That's okay! We're going to be just fine—as long as you're not using a rotary telephone. You're not, are you? Because if so, this 929 going to take years off your life. more ›

James O’Keefe, the twenty-something conservative gadfly, has issued a statement explaining why he, with three others, were arrested for posing as telephone workers in Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu's office on Monday. O'Keefe, who got famous after he punk'd some workers at community organizing group ACORN last September, says that contrary to "the false claims being repeated by much of the mainstream media," they were not trying to bug Landrieu's phones. Oh no, they were just trying to verify why her "constituents were having trouble getting through to her office." While O'Keefe admits he could have "used a different approach," he expects the media to apologize "for their journalistic malpractice" at once! In the meantime, he's charged with "entering a federal property on false pretenses with the purpose of committing a felony," which is how latte-swilling Obama elites treat Real Americans who are only trying to help. more ›

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. more ›

Ariana Reines's play Telephone begins in darkness, with the faint but mesmerizing sound of static, finally interrupted by the famous words, "Watson, come here, I want you!" Then, out of the void, burst our two stars, Alexander Graham Bell (Gibson Frazier) and Thomas Watson (Matthew Dellapina), their faces frozen in a tableaux of cartoonish terror. In the highly stylized, presentational comic patter that ensues, staged in front of Vaudevillian footlights, it becomes clear their intention is not so much to sell us on their miraculous invention as it is to figure out what the hell just happened. The first transmission of a human voice has left them rather disoriented, you see, as if they've been teleported to another dimension. more ›