The New York Times recently compared NYC to the “techno-fascist dystopia” of Blade Runner, in part due to the city’s over-abundance of advertising. As we’ve noted before, even though most of New York’s payphones can’t be used as for their stated purpose, they still have a valuable (to some) function: advertising space. These days, payphones serve no purpose except to distract us. But it wasn’t always this way.

Thinking about the opportunity to put his work on the side of a payphone, Duke Riley told us, “Payphones played a major role in the world I grew up in. When I was 15, I got my first pager. The payphone was your autonomy, your anonymity, your meeting place, sometimes your sleeping place and, for 25 cents or a calling card, your connection to the rest of the world. It was my internet.”

We never knew how good we had it. Thank you, Duke, for turning at least one payphone back into a space for connecting to the world, even if there’s still no dial tone.