The last time I used a pay phone was to respond to my beeper, which was attached to my hip and set on vibrate. It was fourteen years ago; “Quit Playing Games With My Heart” was what is now “Call Me Maybe”. And if my beeper went off, I would definitely call you, because it was an event, and I made sure everyone knew that I had been beeped.
On Saturday, the New York Times informed us that pay phones are being given new life. According to this article, architectural designer John H. Locke has been installing bookshelves of his own design into disused phone booths around the city.
So far he has carried out four installations, most recently at Amsterdam Avenue and West 87th Street just before 8 a.m. on a Sunday last month. As several sleepy-eyed patrons of a 24-hour deli looked on in confusion, Mr. Locke snapped a lime green bookcase into place, stocking it with children’s books and paperback novels.
The last time I saw a phone booth used for anything other than urination or drug doing was the last time I answered my beeper. I commend Mr. Locke for refurbishing these pay phones, but the question is, will they have a lasting impact?
What happens to the installations after the first few minutes is a bit of a mystery to Mr. Locke. He checks on them periodically, he says, until they disappear — after a few days or a few weeks. Which is fine with him. ‘It’s a spontaneous thing that just erupts at certain locations,’ he says. ‘People like it, people are inspired by it, but then it disappears again.’
But did anyone urinate on the installations before ferreting away their literary loot? And more importantly, what kind of Stephen King literature does Mr. Locke stock these shelves with? And how quickly were these King novels taken? The answer:
He had barely rounded the corner before a man who had been standing outside the deli began browsing through titles, choosing The Shining by Stephen King, tucking it under his arm and heading home.
The thief-cum-art-enthusiast was ebullient about his newly won fortune:
Robert Davis, the man who took The Shining, raved about the idea, though he was under the mistaken impression that it was part of a citywide effort by the Bloomberg administration to improve literacy. Mostly, however, “the bookshelf served to highlight New Yorkers’ ability to ignore anything in their paths. Mr. Locke said he was impressed that for each person who seemed to notice the bookshelf, at least a dozen walked by completely oblivious.
But that doesn’t seem quite fair. If junkies and gentlemen looking to relieve themselves have long since become the phone booth’s main clientele—using them as shields against the keen and penetrating eye of the New York citizenry—then isn’t the fact that only one out of a dozen pedestrians noticed the installation a confirmation of New Yorkers’ consummate ability to select only relevant information on the concrete horizon?