It’s been a gloomy Monday in the Big Apple this week as the last pay phone was uprooted from the Times Square area of midtown Manhattan and hauled away like a pile of trash. It should be in a museum, you think, if you’re like us. Don’t worry, that’s exactly what this duo is heading towards.
It all started in 2014 when Mayor de Blasio promised to push the concept of street utility into the future. Since then, payphones in New York City have been systematically replaced by approximately 2,000 Link Wi-Fi kiosks that provide free domestic calls, device charging, and, of course, Internet access. They also provide weather, traffic and community news information.
The town also has several private pay phones, so Superman still needs somewhere to change while Bill and Ted can keep walking home. However, if you need to make a phone call and have nowhere to go, the Link kiosk is for you.
Even though your Cap’n Crunch whistle hasn’t worked in decades, it’s still a sad day in history for Jolly Wrencher, whose debut was about an old red box. We’ve seen payphones continue to exist as art, so that’s a good sign.
The steady decline of payphones has been going on for several years. “Headquarters” in Gardena, California. Store the removed payphone trays in the parking lot behind them for a while. A few years ago, 2600 magazine featured a photo of these abandoned beauties (my photo). The Wi-Fi kiosk mentioned above seems to have taken on the task of calling home. I have seen WiFi phone booths in Australia and Japan.
Old journal 2600. Photographs of these public marvels survive and are now a memento. Telecommunications has changed too much. From call ranges, long distance charges, data lines, phone lines and more. I used to cheat money in college with an old coin slot with a black or yellow line. 
Ah, memories.
Even in Christopher Reeves’ first Superman movie, he had a hard time finding a phone booth. He found a pay phone, but it was a phone without a booth.
You mean they can’t do the classic Superman scene anymore [he finds out there aren’t full phone booths in Manhattan?
Somewhere around here I have a red box that I made from an AT&T autodialer. Somewhere around here I have a red box that I made from an AT&T autodialer. Где-то здесь у меня есть красная коробка, которую я сделал из автодозвона AT&T. Somewhere in here I have a red box that I made from an AT&T dialer.在这附近的某个地方，我有一个用AT&T 自动拨号器制作的红色盒子。 AT&T 自动拨号器制作的红色盒子。 Где-то здесь у меня есть красная коробка с автодозвоном AT&T. I have a red AT&T dialer box around here somewhere. When I was there, I took him to the 2600 conference in Washington DC and was well received. I bought a dialer at the Dayton ham festival (it wasn’t Hamvention, it was at the Hara Arena, but it was in August or something) and didn’t know if it would work, so I just bought it.
When I moved in a few years ago, I found an old one in the pantry. Alas, I left the battery inside. Besides, 2600 content is still the same? A long time ago I attended a meeting in New York, somewhere at that time the Metrocard machine was in the spotlight.
I still buy magazines and yes, I meet later on the list. However, like most things, not much is in the past.
Big Brother is slowly winning. Soon everyday life will be impossible without a smartphone that transmits your every move, every word to Google, Samsung, Apple, Winnie the Pooh and the NSA.
Not so long ago, there was a time when people from the GDR risked their lives to avoid this annoying surveillance.
Complaining about a cell phone is like complaining about an Internet modem. In order for both to work, they need an infrastructure that is not under anyone’s control. Front cell tower, rear DSLAM or equivalent. If people are worried about an older or younger brother, they will have to withdraw from society. Completely self sufficient.
If you have a mobile phone, it is constantly tracking you, not your website (which is bad enough).
It’s getting more and more crazy. The Corona app is an example, setting access rights and even digital IDs or online banking accounts is increasingly dependent on smartphones. Ordinary mobile phones are no longer enough, as are SMS/text messages.
So yes, if you’re not using your phone today, you’re pretty limited. Internet access alone is not enough.
The news is, you’re not important enough or interesting enough for someone to want to spy on you, despite what your sun-sized ego or your paranoid schizophrenic auditory hallucinations tell you.
There is enough computing power in the cloud. No one should take care that you personally use this data for other purposes.
Ask all those clever scapegoats who are locked up if they consider themselves “important.”
This is provably false, as there are laws explicitly stating this (and often debated in court), introducing mass surveillance without any prior suspicion or justification.
It’s not so much about surveillance… it’s about “why” she was with you at all. I don’t wear a tie (unless you really need “comfort” and no one will feel lonely or insecure…). As soon as I retire, my phone starts gathering dust. To contact me, leave a message on your landline (well, it’s a landline/internet line now) and I’ll contact you when I get home, or go fishing to find me… just more unnecessary monthly “fees” “.
I remember using a couple of phone booths at the airport when I was traveling in company. End of an era.
My boss has a habit of wiping down a pay phone before using it. Then I found out for myself how great they can be.
I wonder how the Machine can contact Finch now – Shah and Fusco need their phones.
Public phones are still useful for disenfranchised people on the regular internet and are still fun to play with.
Owning a cell phone means Bieng is online for me and many others, my use case is that the internet where I live has no other options, I gave up landlines, I never had cables, all my working over the Internet Filling resources I do try to make it as difficult to track as possible. It’s best to include “toll-free” or toll-free numbers in your Wi-Fi hub in case of all sorts of emergencies and mishaps.
But I suspect that they were originally used by people who did not yet have a telephone at home. So they ran to the corner and called a cab or Uncle Bob. In 1972, we had a teacher who had just arrived from the UK, and he said that the telephone at home was not as common as in Canada.
Switching to payphones when you’re not at home will only happen when the home phone becomes a wait. Then they disappear when using the phone.
Gone are the days when the Waltons had to go to Ike’s store to use their phones. When Jim Rockford had to stop at a pay phone to make a call while chasing a suspect.
With the advent of radio, telephone booths appeared even in the police. Initially, the dispatcher had a walkie-talkie, but the patrol cars could not answer on the walkie-talkie, so they stopped at a telephone booth.
Apparently, somewhere in Manhattan, one or two full-size old-fashioned closed stand-up telephone boxes still survive.
I don’t think they’ve used phone booths since Google Voice came along. There’s no need to look out for someone eavesdropping on you, and a VPN makes it harder to track down from the comfort of your home.
Funny little things, trolls (children) asking questions with a “sexual” bent when “speech recognition” became a “thing” but wasn’t perfect. The system doesn’t know what to say. They say happy hour.
I am a born New Yorker. Hear all the messages about deletion, deletion. A truly depressing event. Thanks to the author for the references to Clark, Bill, Ted, a great reminder of the heyday of Gotham. Like Hawkeye Pierce said. “See you in an interesting paper!”
In Los Angeles, in one of our “old school” restaurants, Philip’s (famous for its “French Sauce” sandwiches), there is an antique wooden telephone box on the windowsill on one of the walls. Every visitor should come in and take a selfie.
I don’t remember seeing them. But apparently they appear in the movie, and “North by Northwest” comes to mind. Also Charlie.
I was at QC Montreal last summer and was amazed they had so many pay phones – they were still easy to find. There are about 10 of them per subway station and one for every 2-3 blocks on the street. Everything is fine and works well.
about ten years ago. I was locked up and suddenly wondered where to find a pay phone. I don’t know what I would do if it weren’t for people near the subway. it’s in montreal
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Post time: Oct-14-2022