Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Save The Payphone

Sara B. Miller, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor, wrote a report that has appeared in numerous newspapers this week:

"Long gone are the phone booth's golden days when Superman metamorphosed inside and anonymous informers called in tips from the street corner. But even as the plastic cracks, the cords are snipped, and wads of old chewing gum jam the coin returns, a modest movement to preserve the phone booth is rippling through state legislatures. To the phone booth's defenders, it is more than a matter of simple nostalgia: It cuts to the roots of social equality, public safety, and common sense..."

According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the number of pay phones in the US dropped to 1.5 million in 2003, down from 2.1 million five years earlier - as the number of cellphone users surged.

Phone topic: pay phone stories. If payphones could talk, what stories would they tell?

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