Death of the Payphone

Many of the scars from amputated urban furniture are recognizable, and if the concrete is old enough the fossil record of a block will show the advances and retreats of different eras of hardware. Among the horse rings, parking meters, and bus shelters can be found several different methods for mounting payphones.

Payphone locations are especially interesting because each is a place where many people have had emotional experiences. This small concrete pad buried in leaves was the site of the payphone in front of the library on SE Belmont. It was the phone nearest my house in the late 1990s and I spent many hours here with my red box talking to people, including my mom, my girlfriend, and a publisher who owed me money. I don’t recall any particularly memorable conversations and if you find a ghost lingering here it is probably not mine, but this was a street corner where I hung out a lot, in the sun and rain, night and day. I recently walked by with my family and wasn’t really able to convince them why I was so interested in this scrap of concrete.

Someone claims to have snagged a piece of the phone booth used by Jello Biafra to escape from those jocks. They were walking by when it was being demolished. After John Dillinger was shot by feds in the phone booth in front of the Biograph Theater, onlookers soaked their handkerchiefs in his blood for souvenirs. I wonder if anyone took the gory handset?