All of us on the Art in Ad Places team are longtime fans of (and occasional collaborators with) stikman, one of the most prolific anonymous street artists in the country. He understands the joys of both creating and discovering art on the street better than perhaps anyone we know, and he’s long been fascinated with the weird leftover pieces of cities that dot our public spaces. Like payphones.

stikman told us, “There are still pay phones because there are still a few people with quarters in their pockets. I have long enjoyed finding the damaged hulks of advertising kiosk and re-purposing them as a base for installations. I love the idea of replacing slick graphics with a view of the exposed guts of the marketing/branding machine. I am thankful to Art In Ad Places for this opportunity to place something from the head and heart in the public square rather than something from the marketing department.”

As stikman points out, even if the phones don’t work, even if nobody has tried to make a call in years, the payphones still exist because someone still wants your quarters. Only now, instead of dropping change into the coin slot, you don’t even see the money disappear. It slips away more subtly, as we’re all fed a steady diet of habit-changing consumption-promoting advertising.