Relic payphone booth spotted

Oh, the stories this phone booth could tell.

Every now and then I will come across something in my travels where I say, "My God, how is this thing still here?" The photo I took above is an example of that.

The first thing to note is not the phone booths themselves but the sun bleached sign above it. Yeah, square thing on top of the pole. That is a "Phone" sign and at one point in its life it looked similar to this:

The above was formerly an indoor sign which is why it survived and kept its color. The one seen in the top photo is a backlit outdoor version, although I seriously doubt it lights up anymore. I think the only reason it has no graffiti on it is because that's too high for anybody to bother with it.

I originally thought these phone booths were from the late '80s. After some research, they're most likely much older from the early '70s or possibly even the late '60s!

Yes, this means these booths may have been installed a half-century ago, are still standing now in 2023 and nobody ever bothered to remove them.

There is a payphone still present on the right booth, but the handset is broken, and you can see wires dangling on the stand. I did not check to see if the phone had service because it's highly unlikely it did.

I'll end this by showing something modern but is still so, so old:

The Yellow Pages. Or to be more accurate, The Real Yellow Pages.

I saw these phone books available at a supermarket entrance, obviously free for the taking. Obviously, not too many people are taking them, given there's a whole stack.

Modern? Sort of. It's the August 2022 edition, so it's possible this was the last edition that supermarket received.

Published 2023 Aug 3

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