Spotted in the wild:

14 years ago
I thought dinosaurs were extinct.

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41 Responses:

  1. midendian says:
    14 years ago at 11:36 am

    Dear god! Was it functional?
  2. boggyb says:
    14 years ago at 11:54 am

    They're still quite common over here in the UK, even though we've got more or less universal cellphone coverage. There's even an old red phone box a few minutes away from me (BT likes to replace them with the newer glass ones, but being Brits we like to put preservation orders on the old ones :).
  3. gytterberg says:
    14 years ago at 11:57 am

    Did it work? What you saw may have been a fossil.

    Actually quite often when I see a payphone it's in use. I think it's because the supply of them has fallen far faster than the demand for them.
  4. mcity says:
    14 years ago at 11:58 am

    Grandpa, what's that?
  5. mc_kingfish says:
    14 years ago at 12:29 pm

    Was this sitting in a pile of word-processors and checkbooks?
  6. jcheshire says:
    14 years ago at 12:40 pm

    50¢? Seriously? I would have thought they had raised it to $1 by now.
  7. waider says:
    14 years ago at 1:04 pm

    Walking home from the office on Thursday, I saw an aluminum post sticking out of the sidewalk, leaning slightly off perpendicular. I was a good ten or fifteen feet past it before I realised it was the support for a (now absent) payphone.
  8. jeremiahblatz says:
    14 years ago at 1:41 pm

    It has a label on it, are you sure it's not part of some open-air museum?
  9. ammitbeast says:
    14 years ago at 2:00 pm

    I'm frightened! What is it!? Will it hurt us?
    • bluknight says:
      14 years ago at 5:44 pm

      Just be glad it wasn't seen in Boston. One shudders to think of the reaction of that city's local constabulary.
  10. wealhtheow says:
    14 years ago at 2:03 pm

    Because there are certainly zero other instances of sad anachronism to be found in Berkeley.
  11. fruitylips says:
    14 years ago at 2:09 pm

    Not 20 min ago, I was boggling at a pay phone in an actual phone booth (like the kind Clark Kent always looked for to change into Superman) with sliding doors and everything.

    It's over in Vasona Park in the South Bay (I don't recall if that's Campbell or Los Gatos over there) by the ranger's office.
    • jwz says:
      14 years ago at 2:18 pm

      There are a couple of fancy phone booths in Rincon Center, and for a long time they had no phones in them and a sign that declared them "privacy booths" or some such nonsense. But now they're bolted shut, and I find that kind of sad.
      • lafinjack says:
        14 years ago at 2:32 pm

        A sad commentary on our times, etc.
      • romulusnr says:
        14 years ago at 10:27 pm

        they had no phones in them and a sign that declared them "privacy booths"

        Jesus hell! I wish they would actually make and place more of those. There's nothing worse than trying to hunt down a quiet place that gets signal so you can make a decent sounding phone call.
  12. latemodel says:
    14 years ago at 2:26 pm

    WTF are you doing in Berkeley?
  13. fatherbingo says:
    14 years ago at 2:39 pm

    Photo taken with a camera phone.

    Kind of like playing Super Mario Bros. on a Wii.
    • jwz says:
      14 years ago at 2:42 pm

      I tried to take a picture of my cell phone with the pay phone, but I didn't have enough quarters.
      • 205guy says:
        14 years ago at 11:22 pm

        I was about to skip this thread of fake ironic-nostaligia, but this comment makes up for it. I mean, c'mon people, I saw three payphones outside the caltrain terminal today and I actually walked by one on the main street in Menlo Park as I was reading this on my iPhone.

        And no, I didn't find that ironic, they fill a need, especially around transportation. All the phones around bars got trashed and were thus uneconomical, but travelers and commuters still need them from time to time. There's a ton at airports still, and I've used them when forgetting my charger on trips, etc.

        Less ubiquitous but perhaps more sorely missed are the lack of internet terminals. Again, you still find them a airports and I have used them since I travel sans laptop, but everywhere else, they went away as fast as they popped up. Kinko's (copy centers) have them if you're ever in need.
  14. skywaterblue says:
    14 years ago at 8:56 pm

    I have actually used this phone.
  15. romulusnr says:
    14 years ago at 10:23 pm

    booths are where it's at.

    Ellensburg phone booth
  16. pikuorguk says:
    14 years ago at 12:12 am

    My landline stopped working the other week. Not wanting to run up a huge bill ringing the free number from my mobile (which is just stupid - it costs more to ring a "free" number than it does a number which belongs to another mobile operator!), I decided to find a payphone.

    And hour later, after having walked most roads within a mile of my house I eventually found one. It had a sticker on it saying the box would be removed soon due to lack of use.
  17. schoschie says:
    14 years ago at 3:07 am

    Cow? Cow. Yip yip yip yip yip, cow.

    Moooooooooooooooo!
    Moooooooooooooooooooooo!

    Nope nope nope, not cow.
  18. dagbrown says:
    14 years ago at 3:13 am

    I was boggled when I saw a teenaged girl talking on something very much like that the other day.

    In Shibuya.

    I thought that Japanese girls were issued mandatory cell phones by the government at the age of 6 so that they can attain enough skill to text at the legal minimum speed of 150wpm by the time they hit the Age Of Maximum Gossip (14, that is).
  19. unwoman says:
    14 years ago at 9:39 am

    Wow, and it's still $.50, which is the same amount it was the last time I used a pay phone in.... maybe 2000?

    Pay phones are probably now only used for crime, by criminals who can't find prepaid mobiles.
  20. ladykalessia says:
    14 years ago at 10:05 am

    And only $.50! Amazing. I remember in high school how big a deal it was when they raised the price to $.75. Mostly because kids kept bugging the front office for change so they could call mom for pickup.

    Things the next generation will never even *think* of...
    • tjernobyl says:
      14 years ago at 7:42 pm

      Until 6 months ago, it was still $.25 up here, but we're always behind the times...
  21. ladykalessia says:
    14 years ago at 11:55 am

    Oh, and it reminds me of this:
    http://daviswiki.org/Payphone_Project
  22. howie_d_rivet says:
    14 years ago at 5:42 pm

    atleast once week at DNA I get asked "where is a payphone near here". Ironic is seeing homeless people on 11th st. Using prepaid or metro pcs cell phones. They do get $250 a week from the city for being homeless.
    • coldacid says:
      14 years ago at 9:15 pm

      $250 a week? Good thing for you guys the homeless here in Toronto ON don't know about that. They only get $25/wk from the province.
  23. hattifattener says:
    14 years ago at 8:18 pm

    I think there's actually been a slight resurgence of the things here in Seattle, after their nadir a few years ago. Maybe the Invisible Hand just overshot a little.
  24. misterfister666 says:
    14 years ago at 10:57 am

    It's in a bart station. They made a big whoopie a year or so ago about getting cell coverage in one or two downtown stations, but out there in the burbs? There's probably some homeland security theatre requirement to have one there so dutiful citizens, in their role as the eyes and ears of peace officers, can report all suspicious activity immediately.
    • httf says:
      14 years ago at 9:39 pm

      I was stunned when I realized that there's no cell coverage in the subways in NY. Positively uncouth. BART has coverage Embarcadero through Civic Center (and whenever above ground of course), so actually I never have to go more than a few stops without coverage for most of my regular commutes.
  25. httf says:
    14 years ago at 9:37 pm

    FTW were you doing in Berkeley? To my horror, I recognized the floor molding first (then noticed the sign). That's my commute destination, and I spend too much time there, staring at the floor.

    But yeah, several bart stations still have pay phones, and not just the wall mounted ones near the entrances and exits.
  26. n_by_nw says:
    14 years ago at 7:26 am

    Oh come on, she's not that fat.