They were everywhere. In service stations, in restaurants, sometimes standing alone in a street corner.
Aside from their usefulness, for decades, paid telephones have played a role in popular American culture, comics (think that Clark Kent is transformed into superman) to music (think of “Payphone” brutal of Maroon 5 or, from the first time, “the operator” of Jim Croce Tearjerker).
About ten years ago, there were 27,000 payment phones in California, with 2,100 in the County of Los Angeles. Now, according to the California Public Utilities Commission, there are only 2,525 public payment phones that operate in the state. The county of account 484. The City has only 149.
Payment phones can still be found everywhere – they just don’t work. But these are reminders an earlier period, when it was important to keep the parts – another relic from a bygone era – in your pocket.
Juan Jacinto uses his mobile phone, while selling clothes on Pico Boulevard.
Marjorie Vasquez, 17, on the left, and Brianna Mejia, 13, pass in front of a broken salary phone.
Craig Fisher, 69, is waiting for the bus to West Boulevard and Slauson Avenue.
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Two payment phones have not been used for years.
A chicken probably attracts more attention than the salary phone near a market in the 41st street and central avenue.
At the intersection of the Olympic boulevard and avenue Vermont, only the shells of payrolls remain.
Apart from the central prison of men, the city center, where certain salary phones still work, a man makes a call.
Scott Johnson, 55, goes through what is not real phones, but an artistic installation on Robertson Bloulevard inspired by payment phones.
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Juan Sanchez ignores a public phone to make a call. Roberto Ubeda sweeps the garbage.
The old -fashioned telephone boxes are part of the charm of Philippe’s, the restaurant on rue Alameda founded in 1908.
California Daily Newspapers
