Alike to the advent of the automobile spurring a pre-marital sex revolution via newly affordable and portable privacy, today’s cellphone-forced obsolescence of the phonebooth has created a special opportunity for public onanists.

Specifically, anyone needing a public phone ought to avoid the two at the southwest corner of Chambers and Broadway. Unless they want to clean it themselves. This morning, around 10 am as I passed, dude was rubbing one out in broad daylight, his back to the sidewalk but looking over his shoulder, grinning. When I returned to that corner after grabbing my crackhead-coffee from the Blue Spoon, dude was gone, but you know I looked, and yeah, it was, shall we say, “marked.”

Never said this was a family blog.

Critics might ask me why I didn’t call the cops, and I’d answer 1) I’ve seen worse and have called them 2) he was almost done and 3) I was, well, kinda rooting for the dude. He looked like life’d been rough to him. Maybe he shares a bathroom with 6 kids and a wife. Maybe he’s homeless (he looked employed though; had a hardhat on. Or a Village People fan?) Nobody other than affluent tourists and well-employed adults were being exploited. Hell, he could have been looking at me. Which makes me sadder for him.

Hope he doesn’t hurt anyone, of course, should his sexual deviance run to other public showings or actions. Had kids been around, of course, my cellphone would have burned a path to 911.

But this is New York City. You’re gonna see dicks, just like when they held the Republican Convention here.