Not Coming To a Brooklyn Subway Station Near You: Underground Cell Service

For many Brooklyn straphangers, it's a blessing and a curse.

The lack of cellphone service in the city's 277 underground subway stations may provide much-needed cover for boyfriends who forget to pick up the dry cleaning as promised. On the other hand, try informing guests riding on the train from the Upper East Side that dinner has been canceled due a sudden attack of stomach flu.

Regardless, times indeed are a-changing for that last bastion of a non-mobile era.

Just not in Brooklyn.

According to the Wall Street Journal's Metropolis blog, Brooklyn has been completely left off the full list of underground subway stations scheduled to get cellphone service this year. 

The list includes stations uptown and downtown on Manhattan's west and east sides. But it looks like Brooklyn—along with Queens, The Bronx and anywhere north of 96th Street—will have to wait for reliable underground cell phone service.

For at least one straphanger at Atlantic Avenue subway station on Friday afternoon, that wasn't such a bad thing.

"I like the fact that no one can get ahold of me here," said Park Slope resident Gretchen Mann.

However, a quick stroll down the southbound platform of the No. 2 and 3 train on a pre-rush hour Friday afternoon told a different story. Gathered under a skylight stood several subway riders, cellphone in hand, searching for a signal.