Sorry, Superman

December 8, 2002 By STEVE KURUTZ

ON Broadway, in the upper 40’s, there used to be a series of buildings whose lobby phone booths served as makeshift offices for fly-by-night businessmen. The writer A. J. Liebling called these gentlemen Telephone Booth Indians because, as he put it, “in their lives the telephone booth furnishes sustenance as well as shelter, as the buffalo did for the Arapahoe and Sioux.”

If the Telephone Booth Indians could revisit their old stamping grounds today, they would likely go pale at the lack of available real estate. Where once wooden phone booths filled the city’s hotels, office buildings and train stations, sometimes numbering 10 and 15 deep, the quaint structures are now near extinction. And the few that remain do so precariously.

Take the 16 antique booths in the main lobby of the Western Union Building at 60 Hudson Street. In the wake of the attacks of Sept. 11, this regal Art Deco skyscraper, a nerve center for several telecom companies, has become a possible target for terrorists. Paradoxically, the very quality that makes the booths so endearing – the privacy they offered – has turned them into a haven for would-be bombers.

“I had to send a guard in there every time someone made a call,” said Bill Knight, the building’s security director. “It was too hectic.”

So starting in September 2001, Mr. Knight deemed the booths off limits to the public and said they would probably remain so indefinitely. Asked if the decision drew complaints, Mr. Knight’s reply spoke volumes. “Not really,” he said, shrugging. “Everybody has cellphones now.”

For the remaining New Yorkers who still cherish the solitary experience of placing a phone call from a booth, the situation at 60 Hudson Street represents the latest in a long, losing battle against modern technology, when even a lobbyist as strong as Superman seems powerless.

Granted, cellphones fit inside coat pockets a lot easier than do phone booths. But they offer little of the discretion that booths were famous for. Instead, cellphones have turned the city’s public spaces into a pulpit of the personal. People argue with their lovers out on the sidewalk. Friends dial one another and discuss movies they are seeing, while actually at the movies they are seeing.

The current state of affairs is all the more surprising given that New York was perhaps once the capital of phone booths. At their peak of popularity, they were scattered across America, from the Atlanta train station to the Mojave Desert. But it was in New York, a bustling city of pedestrians and passers-by, that the phone booth achieved its greatest cultural impact.

At one point in the 1960’s, the busiest booth in the world was No. 17 at the southern end of Grand Central Terminal, which registered 300 calls a day. The spare, cinematic quality of phone booths – three walls, one door, a secret world within a world – also attracted directors like Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola and Bob Fosse, who set a scene from “Sweet Charity” in one of them.

Much of the appeal lay in their homey comforts. There was a seat to perch on and a small shelf on which to write. An electric fan provided fresh air while an overhead lamp kept your thoughts illuminated.

The booths, many of them made at a Western Electric factory in Middle Village, Queens, were usually made of sturdy oak or mahogany. This meant that conversations remained safely inside while noise from the outside world was kept blissfully at bay.

Only New Yorkers could truly appreciate such a tiny, peaceful space.

Vanessa Gruen, 63, an official at the Municipal Art Society, remembers ducking into the booths whenever she was out job- or apartment-hunting. “If you needed to confirm an appointment, you could close the door and get away from the street noise,” she said. “They were a real convenience.”

In an often cold and impersonal city, the booths could be wonderfully accommodating. Like magic chambers, they transformed themselves according to each person’s needs. The booths at Pennsylvania Station, for example, offered Holden Caulfield a place to agonize, as well as a temporary retreat from phonies. Uptown, the conniving publicist of “Sweet Smell of Success,” Sydney Falco, used the booths at the “21” Club to lay down a fast scam on the vicious columnist J. J. Hunsecker.

For many real New Yorkers, the story line was much the same, though less dramatic. Reporters like Joseph Mitchell found the small, soundproof rooms a good place to call in stories. Businessmen out of the office retreated into the wooden recesses and loosened their ties before dialing clients. In 1945, AT&T set up a row of phone booths on the Hudson River Pier for sailors returning home from the war. In working-class neighborhoods, booths at local drugstores, coffee shops and delis often served as the neighborhood telephone.

EVEN criminals found an upside. “If your house is tapped, who is going to know that you went up to the corner of Lexington and 68th Street to make a phone call?” asked an F.B.I. agent, Joseph Valiquette.

Architecturally, the booths were like the city itself: varied. Chinatown’s booths had pagoda roofs. At fancy spots like the Waldorf-Astoria they were lavish, with arched doorways, paneled interiors and nickel-plated doorknobs. In the 1950’s, when booths expanded to sidewalks, they adopted the sleek midcentury style of glass and steel.

Perhaps more than anything, though, the booths simply offered a public, climate-controlled place to make a private call.

If you are one of the few holdouts to the wireless age, conducting your business – legal or otherwise – from a pay phone these days leaves much to be desired. The offspring of the phone booth, referred to as an “enclosure,” is not much more than two metal sides and a phone, which comes in several styles. There are the ones that eat quarters; the ones with stuck buttons; the ones with chewed receivers; and the rare ones that work. All of them leave users with a vaguely unsanitary feeling.

So why did the booths disappear? For several reasons, according to Paul Francischetti, a Verizon vice president. Part of the charm of phone booths was that they were microcosms of the city’s culture. In the 1970’s, New York was crime-ridden and in disrepair. So were the outdoor booths. Addicts used them to shoot up; drug dealers, the modern descendants of the Telephone Booth Indians, as a base of operations.

At the same time, building owners began to look at the indoor booths with a wary eye. Many felt the space could be used more effectively. The final blow came, Mr. Francischetti said, when the Federal Communications Commission deregulated the pay phone industry in 1985, creating fierce competition and a bottom-line mentality. Booths were expensive to maintain. “More than anything else,” he said, “that brought phone booths to the brink of extinction.”

It takes some legwork, but a few booths can still be found in the city. The Waldorf’s are long gone, but the Frick Collection, on the Upper East Side, has one, and the Federal Courthouse in Downtown Brooklyn has a full row of booths, as does the Roseland Ballroom on West 52nd Street.

Several restaurants still have old-fashioned booths, among them Giambone, a sleepy Italian place on Mulberry Street. The owner, Joseph Elias, said the restaurant’s cherrywood booth, which dates to 1914, is used frequently by workers from the nearby courthouse. “Many lawyers come in and make their secret calls,” he said.

It was a rainy evening – perfect phone booth weather – and Mr. Elias stood behind the bar and explained the story of the lone booth. The space was once home to a Western Union office, and when it moved out in 1924, Giambone moved in and the booth stayed. “It fits,” Mr. Elias said.

Inside, there was a wooden bench, a metal fan and a nameplate that said “Western Electric.” Someone had scratched the name “Helen” into the wall. The booth looked warm and inviting. “The phone companies call me sometimes,” Mr. Elias said. “They want me to upgrade to digital. I tell them, no, I’m happy with what I have.”

———–

Tuesday February 5, 6:00 pm Eastern Time

Forbes.com Davos Slips Out Of Town Quietly By Todd Jatras

It was billed as one of the hottest tickets in the world, but the World Economic Forum and its 2,700 delegates barely registered their presence in the city of New York. The conference was moved here in a show of solidarity following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, bucking a three-decade tradition of holding the annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. ADVERTISEMENT

As the world’s business and political leaders cleared out of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel on Feb. 4, most were clearly relieved that the megaprotests that marred WTO and G8 meetings in Seattle and Genoa never materialized. New York was well prepared for any such unrest, picking up the tab for 4,000 additional cops.

What was not so clear was whether the delegates, who each paid more than $20,000 to attend, or the host city got anything other than repetitious panel discussions and high-powered cocktail chatter out of the five-day affair. Sure, there was plenty of lofty talk about the captains of industry finally facing up to their social responsibilities, but hard and fast evidence of that was scarce. And for all the talk about the Forum restoring New York’s international stature in the wake of the terrorist attacks, it all turned out to be a rather ho-hum affair in a city that plays host to the world’s elite every single day.

Most of the talk was predictable and politically correct. With panel topics ranging from bioterrorism and interfaith dialogue to understanding the anti-globalization movement, it would be nearly impossible to identify any real political or economic agenda issuing forth from the meeting.

Instead attendees were left with the memory of Microsoft ChairmanBill Gates, the world’s richest man, discussing foreign aid and debt relief for less developed nations with U2 singer Bono.

And if that combination wasn’t odd enough, consider that George Carey , the archbishop of Canterbury, of all people, may have had one of the more profound insights into the state of the global economy when he remarked that Enron ‘s recent collapse raised fundamental questions about honesty and accountability within capitalism. “There’s a big question mark over capitalism today. It’s one word and it’s Enron,” he said. “And what is that challenge? Capitalism has to act within boundaries.”

At any rate, nobody here thinks things would have turned out much different had Davos stayed on its side of the pond. And the idea of the World Economic Forum returning to Switzerland next year will find few protestors in New York.

So long, Davos, and thanks for the memories.

To drive the point even further, the WEF invited apologists from a wide array of dignitaries from wealthy society to proclaim that “we’re not doing enough” including Bono, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, and Queen Rania of Jordan.

I don’t think it would be possible to assemble a panel of pundits who are further disconnected from the ills which befall downtrodden peoples from around the world. Of course, those folks probably couldn’t afford the airfare and the motorcade to get them to Manhattan.

What’s most disturbing is that not a breath of “helping other people” is mentioned outside of the context of the violence directed toward the Western world. All that these folks are reinforcing is that a slap in the face such as September 11th is a healthy spark for discourse on the subject of world equality.

Anyway, as Shakespeare said, it’s an event “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

-Ian.

——– http://biz.yahoo.com/apf/020204/world_forum_6.html

Monday February 4, 11:46 am Eastern Time

WEF Speakers Criticize America

Some World Economic Forum Speakers Assail America As Smug Superpower, Decry Policies By JIM KRANE Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — They came in solidarity with this terror-wounded city.

But since they arrived, speaker after speaker at the World Economic Forum has lambasted America as a smug superpower, too beholden to Israel at the expense of the Muslim world, and inattentive to the needs of poor countries or the advice of allies.

With the forum wrapping up its five-day session Monday, some of the criticism has been simple scolding by non-Western leaders. But a large measure has come in public soul-searching by U.S. politicians and business leaders.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., cited a global poll that characterized Americans as selfish and bent on arranging the global economy for their own benefit.

“We’ve not done our fair share to take on some of the global challenges” like poverty, disease and women’s rights, Clinton said Sunday. “We need to convince the U.S. public that this is a role that we have to play.”

Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT – news) Chairman Bill Gates warned that the terms of international trade were too favorable to the rich world, a disparity that feeds resentment.

“People who feel the world is tilted against them will spawn the kind of hatred that is very dangerous for all of us,” Gates said. “I think it’s a healthy sign that there are demonstrators in the streets. They are raising the question of ‘is the rich world giving back enough?”’

At a press conference at the forum Monday, representatives of humanitarian groups had differing views on how much their messages were resonating with corporate and political leaders.

“Today I think there is broad recognition that no business concerned with its brand name can afford to be indifferent to human rights and social issues,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch Group.

Others said that the rich and powerful are listening to the needs of the poor, but that it’s unclear whether the forum will prompt any changes.

“We are swimming against the tide within a meeting like this…especially when you’re talking about the rights of homeless children, but at least we are swimming in the same river,” said Bruce Harris, executive director of Casa Alianza, a Costa Rica group that helps street children.

Held in the Swiss ski resort of Davos in its first 31 years, sponsors decided to move this year’s forum to New York to show support for the city after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

About 2,700 corporate and political leaders, clergy and celebrities came to discuss the world’s problems, and have spent much time dissecting U.S. foreign policy, its possible role in breeding terrorism and the potential harms of globalization.

Few protesters turned up Sunday near the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, site of the forum, on the fourth day of the conference. But mostly peaceful demonstrations miles from the hotel generated 159 arrests — the largest in a single day since the conference started — and one case of vandalism was reported.

The total arrested so far during the meeting grew to over 200, mostly for disorderly conduct. Two demonstrations were planned Monday afternoon by a group promoting a wide range of causes, from environmental protection to the cancellation of developing countries’ debts.

In a curious convergence, the titans of business and politics at the meeting have seized on many of the same socially liberal issues that they have been accused of ignoring at past gatherings.

The forum’s agenda may have taken some of the steam out of street protests, which were sparse except for Saturday’s turnout of about 7,000 demonstrators, and has even paralleled issues under discussion at the World Social Forum, an anti-globalization conference under way in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

In Brazil, speakers on Saturday condemned the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, with one comparing the practice to apartheid-era South Africa’s creation of “Bantustans,” which were economically poor areas designated as homelands for blacks.

In New York, guests heard a similar message Sunday.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser, warned that Palestinian violence risked evolving into large-scale urban terror, while Israel’s response “will slide into a pattern of behavior that resembles the South Africans.”

Jordan’s King Abdullah II called for “international intervention to help steer the parties from the brink,” arguing that the “burning injustice of Palestine” had “fed extremism around the world.”

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chided his colleagues in Congress for giving too much foreign aid to Israel, the largest recipient of American help, and said too little aid flows to the neediest.

“I’ve been critical of the aid we’ve given to Israel,” Leahy said in an interview. “But the same complaint could be made of a number of wealthy Muslim countries. They’re not giving aid to the poorest of their own people.”