That one’s kind of like saying something is “taped” when it’s all digital these days.
I don’t listen to music like I used to. As a kid I had all of the popular albums and 45s. I always listened to the radio in the car or CDs. We would lug around a boom box with our collection of cassette tapes. I joined the Columbia record club numerous times buying albums and then CDs. Now I listen to podcasts or audible books in the car. I haven’t played a record, album, cassette, or CD in years. I have a playlist on Spotify (used to have an awesome one on Prime until they changed their policy) which I listen to occasionally. But music is not really a part of my every day life anymore.
I wish I had a radio. I used to go to sleep every night to music.
I have to be careful when referring to a public phone booth as a metaphor* as to size. Below a certain age, it just won’t “land”.
- “That fighter plane was so maneuverable it could fly around inside a phone booth”. “The rents there are so high, you’d pay 2000 dollars a month for a phone booth”
And that’s a pretty high age - I’m 60 and barely remember phone booths. Payphones were still around until fairly recently but kiosks started replacing booths in the 70s.
That may be a matter of local climate, but I sure agree w you as to SoCal where I grew up.
When I started driving in 1974 almost all the true booths were already gone and a payphone was just in a little kiosk sort of thing: the armored phone itself, a tiny shelf, a storage slot for a phone book (now there’s an anachronism!), a 2’x2’ roof, and tapered “privacy” walls of thick but heavily graffitied plexiglass from belly level on up to the little roof thingy.
Coming up on 63 here. My old-personisms include:
- referring to something as “back in the day” with alarming frequency.
- constantly complaining that “they keep changing everything”.
- related to the above, complaining that nobody sells (item) anymore.
We could have a thread about obsolescence alone, like “I can hardly find carbide pellets for my miner’s lamp anymore”.
When I was in college in the 80s, some of the older buildings still had elaborate indoor phone booth areas with doors that sealed tight, and even little benches to sit and relax while talking. Since I lived in a house off-campus with several other students, and had no privacy with the one public phone in a common area, I had scoped out all the private booths in the various campus buildings so I could talk at length with girlfriends without other students ribbing me or saying obscene things in the background while I talked to them. I spent many private hours talking in my little secret phone booth hideaways.
Well, I didn’t know!!
(Could someone 'splain, plz?)
Ditto, with one major exception: I have the nagging feeling that a 12-oz can of soda “should” cost about 50 cents to $1 at most. When a restaurant sells me a can of soda (or those old-school little glass Coke bottles I see only in higher-end restaurants 
) for $2-4 I feel ripped off.
I never realized this until you pointed it out.
I’m 68 and remember the booths well. It’s sad that I now can’t teach kids how to use one to open a pop (or beer) bottle. Of course, most of those are twist-top mow.
If you get hit with a whip - it smarts!
I remember seeing these literally once in my life during the pay phone era. Oddly enough when my company created their new building, they recreated these except without an actual phone, and clear glass instead of a thick wooden door, but it was exactly the same size as a large indoor phone booth and meant for cell phone conversations during work.
I don’t buy candy bars; haven’t for years. I had it in my mind that they cost about seventy-five cents. Imagine my surprise when I noticed them in the checkout lane the other day! More like two-fitty.
Hijack alert!
By the latter do you mean the Korean War? Because the North Koreans (with Chinese assistance, IIRC) made it nearly to the south end of the Korean peninsula (the phrase “Pusan Perimeter” sticks in my head, though I know that city is Busan now) but the war ended right around the 38th Parallel. I admit there was a long period of stalemate, but we had to have won some battle to get to that stalemate. One doesn’t want to puff up the already-considerable ego of Gen’l MacArthur, even posthumously 
but I recall something about a amphibious landing at Inchon, which IIRC is now the suburbs of Seoul.
(Continuing the hijack)
I’m pretty sure the US lost Red Cloud’s war, but covered it up by rolling it into one big war that ran from Beecher’s Island in 1868 until Wounded Knee in 1890.
Or there was the Punitive Expedition of 1916: the US gave aid to Carranza against Villa. Villa retaliated by killing US mining engineers off a captured train, and shot up Columbus NM. The US sent the army south of the border but they never fully came to grips with Villa; Carranza wouldn’t let the Americans use Mexican railroads so everything was moved via mule. Wilson micromanaged everything from Washington, often contradicting his last order. Finally the Americans brought the Mexicans to battle, but it was with Carranza’s army, not Villa’s. And they beat the Americans. Our experience of bullshit wars hardly began in Vietnam.
Superman: The Movie came out in 1978, and featured the visual joke of Clark Kent running up to a phone booth to become Superman, only to find that there was no booth there, just one of those little kiosks. So by that time, the vanishing of the phone booth was already established enough for the movies to do a gag about it.
I shared a house with some other college grads in the early 70s. We bought a phone booth in the local Public Radio/TV auction (haven’t seen one of those auctions in a while!). Friends would come over to see it (Where?). They had just hung up their coats in it. Fit perfectly in an alcove by the front entrance. If you closed the accordion door, the light would come on. Fully functional.
I was helping at the granddaughter’s middle school before classes started for the day, on the day before a major snowstorm was forecasted. I said I hope they cancel school the next day for a snow day, so kids could stay home and watch The Price is Right like we used to do. Walking out of the building I remembered that kids that age don’t watch “normal” TV, preferring streaming or YouTube. I doubt she knows how to find TPIR.
A couple of years or so ago, DH and I were exploring out-of-the-way areas, and found ourselves in Volcano, CA. Very small settlement, about 120 people or so. We found a phone booth there, with amusing signage pointing out Superman needed it to change clothes. DH says he picked up the handset and got a dial tone, but we did not try to make an actual call. Still, at least somewhat functional phone booth in the wild in the 2020s.