Payphone spotting! - Post pictures of Payphones

[Melooon]

PaY PhOne spOTtinG 👀 👀 👀 📸

This idea is loosely based on 2600 Magazine, they have a page dedicated to picture of payphone sent in by readers. I find Iv taken to spotting payphones wherever I go, soon there may be none left Be aware, payphone spotting is a valid and serious sport and you can and will become rich doing it!!

If you spot a payphone in your local area or on your travels, take a picture of it and post it here! Together we will save the payphones (in picture form)


Kinsale, Ireland - 2021


Fuji Q Park, Japan - 2019

[CooperationIsKey]

Well dang, I genuinely can't remember the last time I saw a payphone. Maybe outside my favorite Chinese restaurant (rip)? That was years ago already.

[Nightdrift]

One of the small things that always struck me while going through airports is passing by sections inside the terminals/concourse where you know there used to be a bunch of payphones because the stalls are all still there -- but the actual phones have all been removed and the airport hasn't figured out what to replace them with yet. It's a bit of a nostalgic bummer, but I guess it goes with the times. That said, it does warm my heart to see efforts to document these little guys in photo form -- will be sure to snap any photos if I see any rare payphones out and about. The one in Kinsale's got such a delightful personality to it :':wink:

[xandra]

i love this! here's a payphone i spotted in london (there's still a lot there!):

[Melooon]

Spotted in Cork, Ireland on the 4th of March 2022!

[easy_breezy]

i love this! here's a payphone i spotted in london (there's still a lot there!):

https://i.imgur.com/U9bvVeg.jpg

Can you time travel in those?

[Sylvian]

I like payphone aesthetics, I have an idea to install a self designed VOIP payphone outside of my house or business. However, there are a few problems with this idea. Firstly, it probably violates various zoning laws or permit things. Secondly, in the case of a residential area, it gives a pretext for strange / unknown people from the street to approach my house on a regular basis. Probably for a commercial space it makes more sense, since it could be used to invite people to the place of business.

Physical analog phone-lines (rather than digitized VOIP lines) sadly are no longer in place in many places. I'm curious if we could have an alternative form of internet using analog lines again (a stronger version of dialup)

I really want to try to beef up my phone space, but it's difficult to do this without increasing the risk of toll fraud and other problems. Still, it's worth doing (interactive IVR for my site, a payphone IVR when I eventually get a space where it is safe and acceptable for me to install an art payphone, basically IVR used for artistic ideas either in a physical or virtual space (e.g., choose your own adventure game that is only accessible from that phonebooth, perhaps as part of an ARG))

An interesting story about a person who maintained a phone booth on his property that a lost child used to phone home.
https://news.yahoo.com/lost-child-uses-local-minnesota-174654952.html

[Guest]

Sacramento

[Guest]

Vancouver



Do not ask me what is in there. It’s downtown eastside that’s all you need to know.

[Guest]

Portland

This one still works!

[Okato]

I had passed by a payphone on a vacation a year back. Sadly, I never took a photo of it! 
If I go there again, I'll make sure to get a photo of it if it still happens to be there.

[skull-aton]

I have quite literally been thinking about this thread for months.
Tipping back and forth. should i post? should i not post? Quite the question.

The reason why I'm hesitant is because payphones aren't dead in my country. Here's an article by Telstra as to why they're still around.

But when I lived in another country, I realised how precious these little phones are! And how they sadly are not maintained.

Anyways, here's the payphone down the street from me. :)

[Gans]

Oy mate! What a fantastic way to make use of the old telephone infrastructure. A public telephone network for all. Get people away from forcing people to use mobile phones for everything. That's a way to do it!

In the attachments, a Telekom-pink payphone in Germany. They're scattered around various parts of the city, but are they ever in use? I wonder how expensive it really is to maintain them. They look like they last forever.