Posted on 09/04/2023 11:13:11 AM PDT by DallasBiff
The phone booths of New York City have all but disappeared, but their remains were once found in this "graveyard," sadly now removed as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at atlasobscura.com ...
I remember the old "booths"... I'd rather use one than a cell phone... except where someone took a dump in it, or puked in it.
They got too crowded when Clark Kent showed up!
I'd like to have one of the old Brit phonebooths. The double decker would be fun, too, but too hard to restore.
LOL!
Why weren’t the phone booths repurposed to shelter the houseless people sleeping on the street? (Just lay the booths down.) :)
Here are some REAL phone booth graveyard. Of course, you may argue that these are British phone booths and they aren't real. It's weird that you can find hundreds of such photos of British phone booths, but hardly any of a USA phone booth graveyard.
That could explain why nobody’s run into Superman or Dr. Who lately ...
I occasionally found a dime in one. They also always smelled of tobacco breathe.
LOL...made me laugh! Thanks.
Danny Koker (Counting Cars) would be up to it.
“It’s weird that you can find hundreds of such photos of British phone booths, but hardly any of a USA phone booth graveyard.”
I have an 1892 Ericsson “Eiffel Tower Skeleton” phone, that I paid $5 for at a garage sale in Des Moines, in 1970, while going to college at Drake U, that is now worth $2,000 - $3,000, in original condition. A friend in Niagara Falls, who worked for Bell Tel, modified it to work with today’s phone system.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/132913935597
That friend told me that the company notified all employees to locate and buy-up the booth, or especially the top etched/painted glass, as it would be very valuable in coming years. I have a Bell Telephone, light blue on frosted horizontal glass panel, that’s worth almost as much as the phone.
The employees own most of that stuff now, but occasionally one appears at an auction, in original condition, and fetches big money. The Brit red booths are much more common and can be had for $4-7k, ion good condition. The BellTel stuff sells for a LOT more.
No, I’m not a “Picker”, but have run into and seen the stuff, over the past 25-30yrs, in my travels.
Wow, amazing. Just the glass panel.
Slightly OT, but somebody posted about these retro handsets yesterday. This cracks me up. I should get one just to walk around the neighborhood with my phone in my pocket chatting on the phone with my sister!
I remember finding a dime or a quarter, too. Good catch!
Now, THAT’s funny!
I don’t think I ever saw the yellow booths or pink-topped booths, before that pic.
“I occasionally found a dime in one.”
When I was ages 10 - 14 or so, I rode my bike everywhere and I would stop at five or six phone booth around the neighborhood to check for that unclaimed dime. I, too, occasionally found one. It was always exciting to score that dime!
At one of my regular phone booth stops in a gas station parking lot, the phone rang one day as I was picking up the dime. The voice said “Did you just take a dime from the phone?”
I stammered “Uh, yeah.”
The voice said “You better put it back before we get there.” (or it might have been “before we call the cops”)
I was scared to death and put the time back and pedaled furiously away.
Some time later, I figured out you could call pay phones and the guys in the gas station were having a good joke at my expense. They planted the dime and were watching for me to make my rounds, then gave me the call when they spotted me. It still cracks me up.
Me, either. Those certainly aren’t Bell System booths. Maybe a different country?
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