The New York media circus recently shined its fickle spotlight on the death of a young woman in Queens. At the Grand Avenue subway stop along the V subway line, the young woman dropped her cell phone on the tracks and went after it. She was struck and killed by an oncoming train. What is tragic about the death is that a) - subway workers can sometimes retrieve things that have fallen on the tracks, b) -- that cell phone companies tend to be forgiving and offer decent deals on new cell phones and c) -- cell phones don't work in the subways anyway unless you're outside on an elevated track.

Recently some politicians have proposed wiring the subways to allow cell phone use. Though it may take a while to work out the politics of it (Do the cell phone companies bid on who gets to wire the subways? Do they all have to wire them the same way at the same time and pay the city?), this is actually a good idea. Sure it will make obnoxious cell phone users all the more prevalent and a greater curse on our lives, but have you tried to use a pay phone in New York lately?

The state of pay phones in the city is abysmal. The working condition of pay phones has degraded to the point that your safety is seriously at risk if you depend on one to call 911. A lot of pay phones just don't work. If they do work, they work poorly, and are broken and dirty to the point of being a health hazard to those who use them.

The inconveniences of depending on pay phones in the cell phone age are numerous. I once had to meet someone in Grand Central Station who also didn't have a cell phone, and we bounced back and forth between pay phones and the information booth paging one another until the information booth workers took it upon themselves to put us together. For years now, pay phones have been unable to receive phone calls because the powers that be thought that it would crack down on drug dealers using them. Drug dealers have as much of a right to use a public pay phone as anyone else, and have a lot more ingenuity and better organization skills than our phone companies. I'm sure that on your average city street, it's much easier to buy your drug of choice than find a working pay phone.

A little over a year ago, I was working for a pittance of a salary for a failing company and was interviewing for different jobs. A promising job opened up and the editor I was to report to was based in California. Since my job at the time was located in an open warehouse-like building with no privacy for a phone call, I had to call my prospective boss from a pay phone on the street. I found a pay phone on West 33rd Street across from the large Post Office. Like most pay phones, this one barely worked -- the #4 key kept getting stuck and I had to dial two or three times before I got through. I called him and he wanted to interview me. The interview started off well enough despite the traffic noise of midtown Manhattan.

For some reason the powers that be have rigged the public pay phones to automatically shut down after 15 or 20 minutes. Maybe it's to cut down on people who steal calling cards and use them to phone relatives in Brazil or Russia. Maybe it's another anti-drug dealer measure that cracks down on thick-tongued, slow witted, or stuttering drug users who can't place their orders quickly enough. Either way, I was disconnected every 15 minutes and had to keep calling back -- he couldn't call me back because public pay phones can't get incoming phone calls. It was late December. I couldn't dial the phone with gloves on and my hands were getting numb. It was in the middle of the afternoon and school let out. A gaggle of Catholic school kids in their uniforms walked by making a lot of noise. An ambulance screamed by. It was humiliating. Luckily my boss-to-be was cool about it (and cool enough to hire me and is my boss today) and didn't mind my having to call him back time and time again.

I swore to myself during that phone call that if I got the job one of my first acts as a gainfully employed person would be to buy a cell phone. I did.

Most cell phone numbers in New York City have a 917 area code. A few years ago, Manhattan ran out of numbers for its traditional 212 area code and began forcing people to take either a 646 area code or a 917 area code.

For a long time I was cursed with having a 917 area code for my home phone. When I first moved to Manhattan from Queens, I didn't have the option of getting a 212 number. I was given the choice of getting a 646 area code or a 917 area code. Not as well versed in the ways of cell phones, I choose poorly and took a 917 area code for my home phone. Everyone assumed I had a cell phone, even phone company operators. Friends would call and leave messages on it assuming I was walking around dumbly with my cell phone and refusing to answer it.

When I realized I would have enough money for a cell phone, I called to get a 212 number and asked if I could make my then home phone number my cell phone number. The phone company said that it was impossible to do because different exchanges are used for cell phones than are used for home phones. My heart goes out to anyone with a home phone number cursed with a 917 area code. Now that I have a cell phone I'm happy to report that while I live and work in Manhattan, my home phone, work phone, and cell phone all have different area codes (212, 646, and 917 respectively).

For a long time I resisted the idea of getting a cell phone. I saw so many senseless people jabbering loudly about their petty lives that I didn't want to be associated with them and came to loath cell phones. I refused to be the asshole who forgot to turn off his cell phone in the movie theater. I didn't want to be one of the self-important gasbags that talk while they're driving. When the horrors of using pay phones caught up with me, I then resisted buying a cell phone because I was unemployed and broke.

New "hands free" technology has given us a whole new class of pariahs in the circle of cell phone rudeness and people have become much more comfortable with their wireless devices than they ever should. The first time I saw someone using "hands free" technology I was in line at the M&O Deli in SoHo (a great place to get a sandwich, along with the M&M Deli not far away). A guy was talking away loudly, and I surmised by the wire leading from his ear that he was showing off a new way to be loud and rude with his cell phone. Loud cell phone use is extra obnoxious when it's done with these invisible phones -- I don't know why, it just is. New York State passed a law that prohibited using a cell phone and driving at the same time unless you were using "hands free" technology. But the law was a scam, a giveaway to cell phone companies: if you were caught talking on a cell phone while driving and given a ticket, you could avoid paying the summons if you bought some approved gear.

Unless you need to call 911 because you are stuck on the toilet or overdosing on drugs, there is no need to use your cell phone in the bathroom. What kind of civilization have we built if you can't have a moment to be disconnected from the rest of the world when you're on the can? When I hear someone using a cell phone in the men's room of my office building, I feel like shouting "Attention! Attention! The man you're talking to is placing this phone call from a bathroom! He's got his cock in one hand and a cell phone in the other!" Anyone using a cell phone from a bathroom is required to disclose this fact to anyone they're speaking with. Failure to do so gives the green light to Good Samaritans like me to make that disclosure for them.

I salute those New Yorkers who manage to stay cell phone free by choice. I realize how far things have gone when I found myself programming my 12-year-old sister's cell phone number into my own phone.