With pay phones rapidly disappearing from NYC streets, the inevitable end to Art in Ad Places will soon be upon us. We’d intended to install this ad takeover at another location, but upon arriving at the scene, we found not a pay phone, but two telltale, yellow squares on the sidewalk indicating a LinkNYC terminal yet to come.

Not one to be easily deterred, photographer Luna Park had an ace location up her sleeve. As luck would have it - and serendipity often comes into play for those active on the streets - she happened to walk past a pay phone we’d taken over with Jess X. Snow last December. The pay phone was oddly pristine, free from both ads and the graffiti with which most of the remaining pay phones have been covered in the last year. It was meant to be. Luna writes,

I have documented hundreds of ad takeovers in NYC pay phones in my tenure as a street photographer. On a certain level, it is unfathomable to me that pay phones are now almost entirely gone, even though the last time I seriously relied on one for communication was over 20 years ago. For the past 5 years, I obsessively scanned the NYC horizon for suitable pay phones, compulsively noting locations, angles and light conditions. I absorbed a not insignificant amount of pay phone arcana (shout out Public Ad Campaign and Payphone Project). In their decline, pay phones came to inhabit a strange, liminal space on the street: omnipresent yet invisible, portals to a not too distant, pre-digital past. It’s been my great joy to facilitate removing ads and injecting art into these places. I learned individuals can make a change in their environment if they care enough and just do it. Please forgive us for not having asked permission. While Art in Ad Places has been a platform for many and diverse voices, from the serious to the absurd to the sublime, one thing has been missing all along: cats. So I give you my little cat Izzi, staring you down from across the street, demanding attention as always. So long and thanks for all the fish.