Justin is a game producer in New York City. He formerly worked at an all-girls private school. Go figure. Now his shelves are populated with game industry books. He has a Gamertag and Tweets a lot. He doesn't refer to himself in the third-person nearly as often as this text would suggest. Enjoy!

April 23

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When we were in our old office, our fax line died. This resulted in a 4+ hour trek around Chelsea with a seasoned Ma Bell technician. After going down into multiple neighboring townhouses and apartment buildings, one of which was straight out of a horror movie (40-year-old telco switching equipment, beams of wood nailed to the back of the teeny tiny elevator door, etc), we came through a basement into this cul-de-sac nestled in the middle of a city block, surrounded by the backs of towering buildings. As twilight engulfed this tiny hidden alley, we turned a corner into an even narrower passage, with a door all the way at the end. I kid you not, it felt like that door would lead to the inky blackness of nonexistence, especially after all the trekking we did into areas of a normal city block that you just don’t usually get to see. The technician started looking around the door, around the doorknob, the ground in front of it, the junk piled next to it. “What are you looking for?” I ask. “The code… for the door.” Fucking hell. It does lead to the inky blackness of nonexistence.  He says, “You see, there are so many doors like this that we usually just scrawl the codes somewhere around it - the frame, the ground, wherever.” So he finally finds it - a combination of a partial code on the door frame and a few calls to other local technicians. He punches in the code, and the door opens. It was full of inky blackness, until he reached in and flipped on a lightswitch. Inside the room was a folding chair, empty cans of soda, state-of-the-art fiber optic switching equipment humming with powers, but the highlight was the wall full of technical paperwork, documenting the “history” of the area’s telecommunications, some dating back to the 1960’s (IIRC). Unfortunately I couldn’t take photos in the room. “Security,” he explained. Oh well.  He checked over some of these old documents, found where our old copper should be routed to, and after we got out of these he was able to patch things up. This goes down as one of the most bizarre experiences I’ve had in this burg. 

When we were in our old office, our fax line died. This resulted in a 4+ hour trek around Chelsea with a seasoned Ma Bell technician. After going down into multiple neighboring townhouses and apartment buildings, one of which was straight out of a horror movie (40-year-old telco switching equipment, beams of wood nailed to the back of the teeny tiny elevator door, etc), we came through a basement into this cul-de-sac nestled in the middle of a city block, surrounded by the backs of towering buildings.

As twilight engulfed this tiny hidden alley, we turned a corner into an even narrower passage, with a door all the way at the end. I kid you not, it felt like that door would lead to the inky blackness of nonexistence, especially after all the trekking we did into areas of a normal city block that you just don’t usually get to see.

The technician started looking around the door, around the doorknob, the ground in front of it, the junk piled next to it.

“What are you looking for?” I ask.

“The code… for the door.”

Fucking hell. It does lead to the inky blackness of nonexistence. 

He says, “You see, there are so many doors like this that we usually just scrawl the codes somewhere around it - the frame, the ground, wherever.”

So he finally finds it - a combination of a partial code on the door frame and a few calls to other local technicians. He punches in the code, and the door opens.

It was full of inky blackness, until he reached in and flipped on a lightswitch.

Inside the room was a folding chair, empty cans of soda, state-of-the-art fiber optic switching equipment humming with powers, but the highlight was the wall full of technical paperwork, documenting the “history” of the area’s telecommunications, some dating back to the 1960’s (IIRC). Unfortunately I couldn’t take photos in the room. “Security,” he explained. Oh well. 

He checked over some of these old documents, found where our old copper should be routed to, and after we got out of these he was able to patch things up.

This goes down as one of the most bizarre experiences I’ve had in this burg. 

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