Comebacks we'd like to see: #6 -- Phone booths
Filed under: Technology
This post is part of our series ranking the top 25 bygone products and trends we'd like to see return.
I guess I should have known the end of the phone booth was coming when I first saw the movie Superman in 1978. Christopher Reeve, as Clark Kent, races to a phone booth to change into his costume when he realizes that he's staring at one of those new fangled public telephones -- without the booth.
Phone booths were great in their day, though. If you needed to make a phone call, and it was raining, for instance, you could jump in the booth and talk to your heart's content and your mouth grew weary -- or at least until you ran out of spare change. Then, of course, there was the simple idea of some privacy. You could talk inside a phone booth and its glass walls and not worry about anyone overhearing you -- except possibly the operator.
And, of course, Hollywood loved the phone booth. Two of my more vivid phone booth film memories, aside from Superman, is, of course, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure -- their time machine was disguised as a telephone booth -- and Cannonball Run. An uptight bureaucrat gets stuck in a phone booth when a car parks next to the door. And, now that I think about it, I think Jack Tripper got stuck in a phone booth in Three's Company. By the time Hollywood came out with Phone Booth in 2003, with Colin Farrell stuck in the thing and trying to survive a sniper attack -- it was a film that seemed kind of quaint. Not surprisingly, the film's screenplay had been written years ago -- I remember reading about the upcoming film somewhere in the mid-1990s.
But phone booths were prone to not just graffiti but vandalism -- a simple rock and glass was too irresistible to some people, apparently -- and it was just cheaper to maintain a phone without the booth.
So, yeah, phone booths are gone -- and even public phones without the booths are on their way out -- thanks to cell phones. But I kind of miss phone booths. Especially when I look at my cell phone bill.
Geoff Williams is a business journalist and the author of C.C. Pyle's Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America (Rodale).
What obsolete conveniences would you like to see return?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
5-16-2008 @ 7:28AM
dana ivory said...
I miss phone booths for the simple reason that it was private and if someone was on the phone you didn't have to LISTEN TO their conversations!!(Or annoying ringtones.....)
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5-16-2008 @ 10:10AM
Loraine said...
Where in the world does Superman change his outfit to become the hero???????
I liked the old phone booths. Think back to when it was nice to make a call in the winter without the winds blowing around you. And while we are at it, lets bring back the days when the operator would say, "number please" and get rid of push this button, push that buttom, and why do I have to push one for English. If you can't speak English, get our of MY country.
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5-16-2008 @ 11:02AM
angelica said...
Even though i'm american i'm pretty sure someone in France or Italy would be thinking the same thing of you over there.
5-16-2008 @ 11:11AM
Dancinboy said...
I miss being able to have a seat, get some light overhead, and a liittle breeze from the overhead fan, sometimes you could browse through the phone booth
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5-16-2008 @ 7:46PM
Molly said...
It was a luxury, that we took for granted. The more Mothers had to go to work, the less respect our children have for other's property. We were taught to leave a place cleaner than we found it, be it parks, play grounds, farm country, or road side. Mom wouldn't tolerate throwing anything on the ground. Now, if you have a Phone booth, people distroy it, rip up the Phone books, and throw the paper on the ground and light it. Heck, they break into houses, in the name of fun, smash everything they can, and video tape it so they can brag about it. I'm ready to go back to the 60's
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5-18-2008 @ 11:32AM
Fred said...
Have you noticed how many more phonecalls people seem to have to make nowadays --talking all the time,while walking around or driving --than in earlier days, when they needed to talk to someone, and went to a phone booth and paid a dime? There can't be that much escalation in the need for phoning nowadays! I believe some people see their jabbering on a cellphone in public as a badge of personal importance or something!
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5-18-2008 @ 10:54PM
Tom Kerrins said...
Making a call at a phone booth was a right of passage. That's where you call your first girl to ask for a date. It usually took 2 or 3 tries before you got the nerve to let the call go through. It was also the way to get out of the house so you wouldn't tie up the phone in case some important person called for your parents!! Which never happened.
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5-26-2008 @ 12:35AM
Ray J said...
I grew up in the 40's when a nickel was a big deal and also the cost of a phone call. 70 years ago. Us kids, to get a little spending money, would put a napkin up the return hole of the phone booths phone and after a few days went by, we would use a wire to pull the napkin out along with a few nickels from unaswered phone calls. Hay there was a depression going on. ha ha.
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6-06-2008 @ 8:23PM
Steve Brigandi said...
The writer, Mr. Williams, seems to have forgotten one the best movie scenes using the old-style, glass phone booths:
1980: The Blues Brothers -- Jake & Elwood were both in one when Jake's ex-girlfriend took a shot at them with a flamethrower, hit the huge propane tank nearby, and the ensuing explosion rocketed them into near orbit! Upon smashing back to to Earth, still lying flat on their backs (quite shaken but still cool), Elwood noted,
"Hey Jake--there must be over seven bucks in change here", whereupon the brothers (still on their backs) proceeded to collect their new-found expense money without missing a beat...
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