#NYC payphone booth haven for heroin-addicts, locals say

A disused Midtown payphone booth is getting new life — as a daytime shooting gallery for drug users, people in the area told The Post on Thursday.

At least two people a day brazenly inject themselves in the nook on 39th Street between 5th and 6th avenues, typically between 10 a.m. and noon, according to the owner of a nearby restaurant and catering business.

“They come with a kit — a bag, a cooking device and the needle that’s waiting for them on top of the phone,” said Wendy Powell.

“We would just like for the booth to go away, but we know that isn’t going to fix the problem.”

A Post reporter spotted two needles sitting atop a phone in the booth and a small baggie with traces of white powder on the ground Thursday afternoon. The booth in question has two phones separated by a metal barrier, though only one of the lines actually works.

The repurposed kiosk has been all the rage among drug users since the coronavirus outbreak, Powell said, but “There’s nothing that anyone’s doing about it.”

She recalled recently calling 911 after spotting a healthy-seeming young man standing with a needle in his arm inside the booth.

“The guy knew we were calling the police, he could hear us, and just continued,” she said, “and then he shot up in his second arm, and walked down the street with bloody arms.”

Her employee, 34-year-old Joseph Casale, said that in his 10 years as a New Yorker, “I’ve never seen people shooting up so openly.”

“There’s an actual congregation of people shooting up,” he said. “I just hope the city can stop in and try to resolve the situation. It’s scary.”

Pre-pandemic, folks would use the booth for “some weird stuff,” Casale added, “but it’s way worse now.”

“It’s sad. People are going through tough times and the booth is helping enable them.”

A construction worker across the street, who would only give his first name, John, 48, was also shocked by the shameless display.

“Every day like clockwork they are in that phone booth unpacking their paraphernalia like they can’t get that poison in them fast enough,” he said. “Right out in the open!”

“They act like no one can see them, but you can, and it’s a tragic thing to witness.”

The native New Yorker said the scene reminds him of the bad Big Apple of the 1970s and ’80s.

“Seeing this now brings back memories that I hoped to forget,” John said. “For the city to come back to this so quickly, I just can’t believe it.”

City Hall, the NYPD and the Department of Information Technology didn’t immediately comment.