| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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| By Sorabji on Friday, December 26, 1997 - 12:53 am: |
1) here in new york city, this only works on NYNEX/Bell Atlantic payphones, and fails on all cocots. 2) Dialing 958 almost never works on the first try, and only occasionally works on the second try; it usually takes until the third or even fourth try to get any results. on the first try the sound of the roboton bitching the number of the phone is almost inaudible, and not simply because of the general street noises. it simply can barely be heard. this is true of payphones, not residential phones, where dialing 958 returns (audibly) the number you are calling from immediately. 3) as i've always suspected, the hand-written numbers you see jammed into those little compartments are not always accurate (if the voice of 958 is to be believed). 4) of course, few NYC Bell-Atlantic/NYNEX payphones accept incoming calls, and virtually no NYC cocots do incoming calls. 5) i've not tried the technique of dialing 0 and asking the operator what number i am calling from. |
| By R.C. on Friday, December 26, 1997 - 10:30 am: |
What are cocots? |
| By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Friday, December 26, 1997 - 11:52 am: |
COCOT phones are owned and operated by private individuals rather than Ma Bell. Usually they're more expensive, less reliable, have weird malfunctioning robot operators, and are just about useless for our purposes. |
| By Dr. Sang Froid on Friday, December 26, 1997 - 05:54 pm: |
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| By R.C. on Friday, December 26, 1997 - 07:57 pm: |
I spent my afternoon in search of phones/that I might gain an entry into the Payphone Project demimonde. Here's what I discovered while out on my mission: There are not nearly enough payphones in downtown Sarasota. I mean/sure it's a small city -- any city with a "Main St." must/by default/ have a limited population. (To the best of my knowledge/Manhattan has no Main St.) But I was on Main St./in the heart of the business district/& there were only 2 payphones on the street for a distance of 6 blocks (& these are short blocks/not quarter-mile-long NYC blocks). And both of them were cocots! One was across the street from my former place of employment. But it was broken -- no dialtone. The other was a block farther down/in front of a place called The Brickyard. (This is the 'street slang' name -- it has no actual name.) The Brickyard is a large area paved in red brick & filled with tables where passersby/skateboarders /& the homeless can sit & talk/listen to street musicians (no one was playing today) & eat take-out from the burger joint on the corner of Main & Lemon. (Mark may wish to note that this establishment -- also without a name -- serves better-than-avg. cheeseburgers/very juicy. But alas, they are fried -- not flame-broiled -- & therefore do not fit the classic definition of a cheeseburger. Plus there is no choice of cheeses -- only that orange American pseudo- cheese is served.) The phone in front of The Brickyard was working -- someone was on it & remained on it for more than 30 min.! Which pissed me off royally/becuz it was starting to rain & I did NOT feel like getting soaked just to find out the # of a damn payphone. (I mean, what is with people? It's A Payphone -- not your home phone! You get on it/have a brief conversation to find out what you need to know or reach whomever you must reach/then hang up & let someone else use the fucking phone!) I assumed from the general appearance of the thing that this phone was also a cocot. Apparently, GTE (our local telco) has just about abdicated their position in the payphone market. But the bitch wouldn't get off the phone/& I got tired of pacing back & forth 3 feet behind her in the rain/so I left. While observing said bitch/I did not see her put any $$ into the phone. Which must mean someone placed an incoming call to her there! So, there is hope -- or at least I thought there was. Chagrined by my defeat downtown/I headed for the supermarket near my home/where I know there is a working payphone. It is the one on the right in the bank of 2 phones outside of the Kash-n- Karry supermarket at the corner of No.Lockwood Ridge Rd. & University Pkwy. It is a cocot/owned by a company called Parkway Collections. The tel# is 941-359-4881. There was a man using phone right next to it/so I had to try to verify the # on the sly. I dialed 958 & got an error message. I dialed 114 & got a smiliar message. Then I remembered that here in FL/you must dial a 1 before dialing 411 to get Information. So I tried dialing 1114 & got another error msg. Finally/I just wrote down the # & left. I then when home & tried to call the aforementioned payphone. One ringie-dingie/ two ringie-dingies... I felt certain that I would connect & someone would answer/because this phone is in a very high-traffic area. On the third ring/I got a VERY LOUD TONE/like a fax tone. I'm sure the system was waiting for me to input some #/but I had no clue what. I tried 958 & 114 again/but the ear-splitting tone continued. Finally I hung up/crushed. So/my Payphone Project was a bust. Will someone please tell me how these folks in Austrailia manage to ring up random payphones /speak to people who turn out to be their actual neighbors!/& get instructions to run to their houses & turn off their water sprinklers? Anyway/abject failure tends to make my terribly hungry/so I'm off now to scrounge up some eats. I may have lost the battle/but I shall not lose the war! I have decided that next time/I will stake out payphones at the following locales: 1. Payphones In Bars. In the days of my errant youth/I associated with a couple or three folks who, umm... did a lot of business using beepers & payphones. At one particular watering hole I frequented in NY/the payphone was always ringing with incoming calls re: buiness matters. So there must be some bars here that have phones that still do incoming calls. I mean/bar culture hasn't changed that much in the past 10 years, right? 2. Payphones In Laundromats. I used to date a guy in Jersey back when I lived in Brooklyn/& he would call me from the payphone when he was doing his laundry/give me the #/& I would call him back & talk to him until his clothes were finished. We reversed the process when I was doing my laundry in Brooklyn. Surely/payphones in laundromats still take incoming calls -- even in Sarasota. If anyone knows of a code I can enter when I hear that seizure-inducing tone after calling into a payphone/pls. e-mail me or post your response here. (Who knew this would be so much work?) RadicalCon@aol.com |
| By Liefje on Monday, December 29, 1997 - 04:04 am: |
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| By Dr. pp on Monday, December 29, 1997 - 03:24 pm: |
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| By RxPF on Saturday, January 3, 1998 - 03:51 pm: |
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| By Quentin on Saturday, January 10, 1998 - 09:05 pm: |
thats what the original message was about, now i needed another ANI and wondered if anyone can help southwestern Virginia...area code 540 anyone know the ANI here? thanks BTW, the CT (860) ANI was 940 last time i checked word L8r |
| By Cornholio on Thursday, January 15, 1998 - 12:36 am: |
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| By Steve Pop on Thursday, January 15, 1998 - 12:04 pm: |
Just who do I write to/call at Ma Bell? I'm on the phone with 718 403 7000 right now (the payphone center for NY) and all it does is ring!! Maybe their phone doesn't accept call backs either. |
| By Interrupt on Tuesday, February 3, 1998 - 11:51 am: |
1073217709889664 Trust me Dial it and see. For me it has worked in Flordia, IL, Iniana, and Iowa. |
| By Chou-fleur on Tuesday, February 24, 1998 - 04:59 pm: |
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| By Rat. on Tuesday, February 24, 1998 - 05:50 pm: |
Best Regards RAT...... |
| By Bcamp on Saturday, March 28, 1998 - 03:55 pm: |
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| By Professor Wiggins on Sunday, March 29, 1998 - 03:49 am: |
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| By Randy Flint on Sunday, March 29, 1998 - 06:13 pm: |
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| By CryptoMan on Friday, April 3, 1998 - 12:08 am: |
ps.. uncool to publish this shit outside of the inner circle |
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