What is This

Thursday, January 19th, 2006

What is This

These mysterious lava-lamp looking things started showing up on streetlights not long after the ’03 blackout. I put this photo as the first entry in the new Information Please Flickr group. It turns out they indicate that a fire call box is below. Links: Mefi ,Gothamist, and Forgotten NY. Via Vidiot and Shrued.

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Earlier in the GammaBlog

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Filed under: New York City, Photos by gamma

17 Responses to “What is This”

  1. Flickr: niznoz, on January 18th, 2006 at 11:02 pm Said:

    Possibly an NSA spying device.

    I always thought these things were for measuring the amount of light and turning on the streetlights, but there is some debate about this.

  2. Flickr: Mk.1 the ARTterrorist 2.0, on January 18th, 2006 at 11:37 pm Said:

    watch’em the next time a emergency vehicle passes. you’ll see then.

  3. Flickr: GammaBlog, on January 18th, 2006 at 11:53 pm Said:

    Niznoz, they seem to be installed over the spot where the light sensor is on the other streetlamps. So I suspect they also serve that function. But they also light up. They started installing them after the ’03 blackout, so I was thinking that maybe they are some sort of emergency lighting.

    Mk.1 is that a joke or do they really do something when an emergency vehicle passes.

  4. Flickr: quoo, on January 19th, 2006 at 12:16 am Said:

    hah, in the thumbnail, i thought someone had managed to get a can of something on top of the sreetlamp.

  5. Flickr: mikeoliver, on January 19th, 2006 at 12:17 am Said:

    great group man and this was gonna be the first photo I posted… been dying to know what these things are.

  6. Flickr: cyclosity, on January 19th, 2006 at 12:24 am Said:

    hey good stuff
    im curious

  7. Flickr: GammaBlog, on January 19th, 2006 at 12:45 am Said:

    Thanks everyone. Invite your friends, the larger the group of people involved the more we will be able to answer our questions.

  8. Flickr: Vidiot, on January 19th, 2006 at 12:49 am Said:

    As far as I know, it’s to indicate the location of a fire alarm call box.

  9. Flickr: |Shrued, on January 19th, 2006 at 12:51 am Said:

    Should I spoil the answer?

    Teaser alert: http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2005/02/17/heady_streetlamps.php

  10. Flickr: GammaBlog, on January 19th, 2006 at 12:56 am Said:

    Yay! Vidiot. You are the first Information Please info-master. At least it makes sense. Now I’ll have to see if there really are call boxes beneath them.

  11. Flickr: GammaBlog, on January 19th, 2006 at 12:58 am Said:

    Shrued, you missed out on the glory by three minutes. :(

  12. Flickr: N¡fer, on January 19th, 2006 at 3:46 am Said:

    Oh finally, the mystery is solved! Now I can fall asleep again at night.

  13. Flickr: GammaBlog, on January 19th, 2006 at 4:13 am Said:

    Nifer, do I detect some sarcasm?

  14. Flickr: Vidiot, on January 19th, 2006 at 5:21 pm Said:

    More info here.

  15. Flickr: GammaBlog, on January 19th, 2006 at 5:32 pm Said:

    Thanks Vidiot. Forgotten NY is a favorite site but I missed that post.

  16. Flickr: Irene Rx (aka Irena Kittenclaw), on January 20th, 2006 at 3:59 pm Said:

    Gee, and all this time I thought those were robot milkshakes!

  17. Flickr: zenkigen, on January 26th, 2006 at 3:53 am Said:

    they contain poisons… for mass execution

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