The Old Town Crier

In May 2025 Futel installed a phone in front of the Street Roots office on West 3rd and Burnside. We are very excited to be able to do something with Street Roots - it took several tries to get the project and its funding set up. In July 2025 the phone began exhibiting the “Old Town Crier”, a program by the Street Roots creative writing workshop.

Participants from the workshop contributed spoken word and musical works. The project was funded by a RACC Portland Arts Project 2025 grant, which paid for a year of the public phone at that location, and also paid the contributors.

This has been an excellent phone location and a great project to work on. Over half of all calls made at Futel phones have been from this one. The phone gets damaged, as they all do, but it also gets protected by the people around it, and there is almost always someone on the corner.

Hear the “Old Town Crier” from the Street Roots phone, or find it in the creative sections of the menus of the other Futel phones.