Last One! (For Awhile!)

No public phone politics this time, just a painting for Y’all.

(Well, I shouldn’t say NO politics- there’s always a lil’ politics with street art, right?)

I am an old man.

Proof: I can’t accept the modern idea that private conversations can and should happen in public.

I hate the idea that it is acceptable to be talking to someone on your cellphone while also trying to engage with a cashier or store clerk- Or vice versa. I find it incredibly rude. If I’m walking with someone, I hate it when they spend most of the walk talking to someone else who isn’t even there, leaving me out of the conversation. Most of all, I can’t stand it when Teens get on the subway or bus and yell into their cellphones about the sex they had last night or some other private, personal thing- it makes me want to walk up to them, calmly take and close their cell phone, and crush it between my teeth.

It makes me think about the first public phones: I think about phone booths. I think about why we made them: It wasn’t just to keep the noise of the world out, it was also to keep our conversations as private as possible. When did we stop valuing that?

So here it is: A cell phone privacy booth. True, these new kiosks are designed to be good advertising platforms- not good privacy creating spaces, (Unlike the old booths built only for privacy and conversation, not for advertising.) but still; Another suggestion of how they might be used.

Kids today, am I right?

Mayor Bloomberg is often criticized as being so rich that he is out of touch with the common person: one way he has tried to maintain “the common touch” is by keeping his residential phone number listed in the NY phone book, along with the rest of the new scum. According to The New York Times:

“Several times in recent years, and again at a news conference in Queens yesterday, Mr. Bloomberg has entertained audiences with anecdotes about people who have looked him up in the white pages and called at odd hours for assistance.”

Personally, I wouldn’t begrudge him at all if he made his home phone number unlisted. I think that’s what office hours are for, and personal time at home away from work is important- and threatened. Cell phones mean people can be “on call” for work at all hours of the day. But hey, since he is making a thing out of it, here it is: Your Direct Mayoral Chatline. As near as the closest payphone. Why don’t you let him know why you think it should have been free to call him?

In the course of researching this work, I discovered that machines like the one I’m describing already exist.

They are known as “Reverse Vending Machines” and I think that they are an absolutely outstanding idea!

Special thanks to Miss Heather of New York Shitty for inspiring this piece; she wrote to me: “You should hit some of the pay phones in my hood. They’re usually employed as trash receptacles for empty fifths of vodka and/or brandy. Among other things.”

Thanks for getting me thinking about how people really use these payphones, and sorry that this didn’t make it’s way out to Greenpoint!

I know I like to stick my tongue in my cheek around here,

but I’d like to clarify right off the bat that I truly and deeply believe that this is a very good idea.

I first wrote about it back in May:
“Apparently, NY payphones don’t make any money as payphones- their primary value is as a streetlevel advertising platform- a special platform that skirts normal regulations for installing street level advertising. I’m told that they’re even installing more payphones in NYC, even though ubiquitous cell phones are putting the payphone very much out of business.

You know what I’d like to see? If they’re going to maintain, and even grow, the network of payphones as an adverting-revenue generating platform, then they should make all local calls free. That is the old “Contract” of advertising, after all: We shouldn’t have to be exposed to your damn ads if you’re not going to give us something back in return. And how great would it be to know that whenever you hit NYC, getting in contact with the person you’re staying with is as close as the nearest payphone? It would be a great thing for tourists trying to avoid steep roaming charges. As a non-cellphone owner I would LOVE it. And it’s good for locals too. Cell’s dead? PayFreePhone. Lose your cell, need to call your moms? FreePhone. Bars closed, and you’re out on the streets drunk, hungry, and in need a Taxi? Dial “CAB” at the nearest FreePhone and be connected to the nearest cab dispatcher. Dial “INFO” to be connected to a tourism help desk. The possibilities are exciting and immeasurable.

Lets use this incredible, pre-existing infrastructure for something more than advertising.”

Now, it’s hard to be sure exactly how much money payphones pull in as an advertising platform, as reports on ad revenue often rely on the companies to be self-reporting, and they are known to cook the books, but a 2007 New York Times article; As Billboards, Public Phones Always Work by Jo Craven McGinty placed the revenue at 62 million annually. You can bet that it’s even more valuable now, as advertisers have been fleeing the sinking ship of old media since 2007, and have been putting more and more money into online and public advertising.

With this work, I’m asking you to consider the cost of providing the service of free local calling as a kind of tax on the tremendous cash cow of using public payphones as an advertising platform. It’s a way for advertisers to move in good faith towards restoring the balance of the old contract- which is, again: We shouldn’t have to see your ads unless you give us something in return. The problem of public advertising (and one of the big reasons there is such a backlash to it in the zeitgeist right now) is that it takes without giving. It only takes and takes and takes. It is aggressive, invasive, demanding, even illegal, and entirely one-sided. They are making MILLIONS off of us. Isn’t it time they gave something back? Isn’t it time we ended this one-sided abusive relationship?

Free Phone. It should already be happening. Let’s fight for it!

And then lets tear down half the billboards and get all the remaining billboards to provide free WiFi access points.

A similar sentiment, but rather more blunt than yesterdays work!

While I was installing this, a friendly and chatty elderly lady came up behind me, and asked- well, more stated: “Changing the ads?” I replied- “Yes, I’m putting something new in.”

I produce these works on the backsides of… upcycled adverts. (I really enjoy the idea that I am literally “flipping it” on these ads) When I unrolled the poster, the original ad, an promotion for a dating service for young Jewish professionals, came out face-up.

“How nice!” the friendly lady said. “I’m Jewish, you know. Are you? I survived the war, you know. Well, I was in England. We were being bombed, the blitz you know.”

I was trying to be very respectful, but as we chatted about the war, I continued with the install. I was nervous about how her mood might change when the time came to reveal the fact that I wasn’t here to help nice, young, attractive Jewish professionals find love and get married. It doesn’t take long to install one of these, so that time came very quickly. When the new poster was revealed, she stopped midsentence and said—“what’s this?”

I explained: “Well, you see, my girlfriend has a rather small bladder, and I didn’t appreciate the lack of available public bathrooms until spending time in New York with her. It’s very hard to find any washrooms, and it sometimes feels like we are just going from one search to another…”

As I’m talking she’s staring straight ahead and very intently at the poster, brow furrowed, and nodding her head slowly. I can’t read her emotions, so I continue: “And people, well, men mostly, are always peeing in these phone booths. They often are so stinky that I can’t imagine anyone being able to use them, so I’m trying to suggest a change. Solve two problems. We need more bathrooms. Sometimes my girlfriend has to hold it for hours, until it’s painful-”

At this point, she turns to me, still looking very serious, and says “-And when you get to be my age, sometimes you can’t!”

Turning back to the poster, she points her finger at it, and shaking her arm, says: “I like this. I can get behind this. I like this.”

I think she realized at this point that I wasn’t just a nice young Jewish man working for an advertising company, but someone doing something that I’m not supposed to: she began to leave, and as she left, she smiled at me, and said- “Good Luck!”

Funny thing: After the Ditmars Tree Twins were featured on Gothamist, whomever is responsible for all the empty “Telebeam” phone kiosks scattered around Astoria came to collect their garbage. It would seem that they were even kind enough to carefully remove lil’ Calgary here from his perch, and place him on the ground (where my timing was lucky enough to retrieve the little dude) before they removed and disposed of the phone kiosk. (I wasn’t so quick with Edmonton) This is all great! I’m sure the owner of the laundromat appreciates having his window less obscured with a garbage-collecting eyesore, and everyone tends to appreciate a less cluttered sidewalk -and man- it was just so thoughtful to not destroy the tree- but fellas, you forgot, like, all the other empty kiosks! For example- this one, just up the street. So I reinstalled Calgary in this spot. He’s been fine so far, but we’ll see if putting his picture up on the site will change all that.

These ad-platform kiosks aren’t as good as the old phone booths for a quick super-heroic change…

but there aren’t many booths left in NY anymore.

Prayer: You might as well be talking to a dial tone.

Now hold on, put down your pitchforks, religious dudes and dudettes:

Depending on your beliefs, this intended-to-be-humorous recontextualization can actually be quite “accurate”. You could use the booth to engage in prayer within your personal relationship with God, or you could use the telephone to contact whatever person or persons you believe can act as your “operator”- who can connect you through to god.

For example, you could call these numbers, toll free!!