'What the f--- is this?': What Darren Aronofsky has to do with new payphones in NYC

Astute New Yorkers may have noticed a series of relics reappearing on city streets in recent weeks.

Public payphones have shown up in Brooklyn, at South Elliott Place and Lafayette Avenue, and along Metropolitan Avenue near Havemeyer Street. In Manhattan, they’re at Second Avenue and East Houston, and at Ryder's Alley and Fulton Street.

The payphones are part of a promotion for director Darren Aronofsky's new film “Caught Stealing.” The film, which is is set in 1990s New York City and features celebrities including Austin Butler, Zoë Kravitz and Bad Bunny, tells the story of an ex-baseball player who gets caught up in the world of organized crime. The phones dispense carefully curated local cultural recommendations to those who pick up the receiver and take a moment to listen.

Really, it’s less direct movie-marketing than an homage to New York, Aronofsky’s hometown.

"Everyone's been like, ‘What the f---’ is this?'" Aronofsky said in a speech at one of the payphone-recommended events on Monday. He sipped out of a shot glass of whiskey poured for him out of a gasoline can in a Mars Bar-looking box truck parked outside of a Brooklyn metal shop. “That's been the big question of the night, and I think the best answer is that it doesn't need to have an answer, because that's what makes New York City the greatest city in the world.”

Monday’s event invited people to experience “Mechanofsky.” Dan Glass, co-founder of the fire-featuring music series Mechasonic Sessions coined the portmanteau to refer to a run of Aronofsky-funded performances leading up to the release of “Caught Stealing” this Friday.

On Monday, “Mechanofsky” attendees included a mix of cast members, Butler among them, and folks who’d heard about it via payphone.

“One of the great things about New York is that magic that we have all had in this city, when you just stumble through the looking glass into a totally insane experience. And that's kind of what we're trying to create,” Aronofsky said at the event. “I wanted to remind everyone why we adore this place.”

To do this, he tapped underground experience designer extraordinaire N.D. Austin, of Chelsea water tower speakeasy, decommissioned freight line shipping container speakeasy and desolate East Williamsburg speakeasy fame.

They’re frequent collaborators: Austin previously worked with Aronofsky on a more-love-letter-to-New-York-than-film-promotion scavenger hunt for his 2017 film “mother!,” which sent participants around the city and ended with many receiving tickets to the movie’s premiere.

“N.D. Austin is an artist who summons mystical winds from beneath the pavement and transforms reality into surreal wonder. I begged him and his team to collaborate on this gift for our neighbors,” Aronofsky said of their current collaboration.

Aronofsky asked Austin to make another scavenger hunt, but their timeline was short and Austin wasn’t sure it’d be possible. But Aronofsky was insistent and persuasive, Austin said. And Austin knew a guy.

Austin contacted another artist who had a functioning network of payphones, and thus was born the “NY Portal Authority” — a network of four public payphones that, each day, dispense four carefully curated NYC cultural recommendations to those who pick up the receivers.

The phones' recommendations have included the New York Earth Room, a permanent indoor sculpture composed of dirt; Yonah Schimmel's Knish Bakery, a 115-year-old deli on Houston Street; a dance party at Rubulad, a landmark Bushwick DIY space; and, of course, Mechanofsky.

Although their long-term future is uncertain, the phones will remain and continue offering recommendations for now.

How is all this related to “Caught Stealing,” again? Many Sony executives would also like to know.

“I've been doing this whole press tour for this movie and everyone's like, ‘New York sucks right now,’” Aronofsky said Monday, shortly before Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hütz took the stage alongside a variety of flame-throwing instruments. “This is pure evidence that New York is still alive and thriving.”