Payphone Radio

Flux comprenant des centaines d'appels effectués à partir de téléphones publics payants

Payphone Radio is an online radio stream comprising hundreds of calls made

from New York City public pay telephones. Most of the audio is spoken

commentary by Mark Thomas, but other sounds float through as well.

Other audio includes some of the pre-recorded messages heard when calling

disconnected payphones. There are also sounds of musicians performing in

the New York City subway system, recorded using nearby subway payphones.

Virtually all of New York City's payphones are gone. On account of that

inevitable reality Payphone Radio, containing 1600 calls and over 63 hours

of content recorded from 2010 until the pandemic struck in 2020, is not

expected to update with new content.

This project had many aims but keeping the grey, monochrome, sometimes

poor-quality sound world of the public pay telephone alive for posterity

was high among them.

Payphone Radio is a spinoff of The Payphone Project, the Internet's

original payphone website, online since 1995. The Payphone Project has

been featured by The New York Times, CBS Sunday Morning, LA Times and numerous other media outlets.