The world without phone booths

You may have seen it on the news somewhere, but New York City recently removed its last functioning telephone booth. With Wi-Fi, cell phones and data plans now the norm, people simply weren’t using public payphones anymore, and the trend is pretty much the same in every city.

Sure, you may still see a phone booth here and there. But even if you see one, the odds are it doesn’t work. There is at least one professional photographer who had dedicated recent years to taking pictures of phone booths before they disappear — he estimates that about one-third are still functioning. I don’t even remember the last time I used a phone booth to make a call, but I sort of miss them already.

I can’t help but think about all the plots in television and movies that centred on phone booths.