There’s one in the parking lot of a convenience store about 10 miles north of where I live (out in the sticks). I checked to see if it worked the last time I was up there about a year ago, but I neglected to check to see how much a call costs.
I saw about a half dozen pay phones when I was in Bermuda, including a few that were the classic British-style full booths with the door and everything. One was at the Botanical Gardens in front of the Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art (which was green rather than red), and I ducked into it when it started to rain. I didn’t test for a dial tone, but it did have a phone book. The other was near the cruise ship docks at the Royal Naval Dockyard.
It’s been a decade since I drove, but a lot of truck stops had whole lines of booths in the drivers’ areas. Not usually the stereotypical foldy door type, more regular door with a window.
A decade is enough to make a big difference in this question, though. The original thread was from 2010, and it was dwindling back then, and I’m wondering now how many may still be functional and present in the US. I have found some anecdotal evidence on the web that they are still fairly common in Hawaii, but that’s all I’ve got for the US.
We still have them at transit stations in Portland, OR, due to a long-standing policy of installing them that hasn’t been changed in 30 years. Supposedly, they are considering replacing them with emergency phone.
I saw one today, actually, in a strip mall. And I actually saw someone go in to use it. I was waiting outside the driver’s license place for it to open and was gobsmacked at what I was seeing. I was going to call out “Hey, you can just use my cell phone” but she’d already closed the little door.
I’ll bet the number of people who enter a true booth so they can use their cell phone in a quiet, private area greatly dwarfs the number who enter it to actually use the pay phone. I’ve seen bars in Portland and SF that have old-timey booths for this purpose (no pay phone, just a booth).
There are some left in Paris. I’ve been wondering for a while who would use them nowadays and why. And since I’ve been wondering, I noticed that I never see anybody in them.
There’s still at least one phone booth in Rochester, NY. It’s one of the red British-style ones. I think they keep it around because it’s picturesque. I’ll admit I’ve never actually checked to see if the phone is operable but the booth is kept up in good repair.
Haven’t seen any in the US for awhile, which is why I was pretty surprised when I saw several red phone boxes when I passed by small towns in England last summer: the first one I dismissed as an affectation, but then upon seeing several others, thought that they couldn’t all be nostalgic, non-functional pieces and England probably does have a lot more pay phones than the US does. None to be seen the one time I actually had to make a call, of course.
There’s a pay phone on the wall at the school where I work (right outside my room, actually). I picked up the receiver in the last couple of years and there was a dial tone.
It’s just so weird to me how quickly they seem to have disappeared. I mean, obviously it happened gradually, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that I realized that something that was such an everyday sight in my childhood and teens had seemingly vanished.
