The Payphone Project: Links to Payphone and Phone Booth Content. Telephone Art Piece. CellBooth - The portable phonebooth. The Cell Atlantic CellBooth Jenny L Chowdhury Talking on the phone is no longer a private exchange. What if you could carry a phone booth with you and set it up when you needed to converse in private? Not so long ago, "Chatty Cathys" sought rooms or, if outdoors, phone booths to conduct phone conversations.
The personal space provided by these enclosures created the illusion of privacy for the two parties on the phone line. Now, we talk on cell phones everywhere we go, disregarding issues of privacy (and also those of courtesy). In addition, we are also often walking about, hailing cabs, shopping, etc. while we talk on the phone. As I grappled with these issues of privacy, personal space and nostalgia for a "simpler time", the idea for portable phone booth was born. What emerged was a wearable/portable phone booth and subsequently a piece of performance art that calls the attention of New Yorkers to the changes in human behavior due to the ubiquitous use of cell phones.
** JennyLC ** Telephones UK. You must remember this... I submit for your consideration The Payphone Project--self-described as "stories, pictures, phone numbers and news from payphones and public telephony. " Just the price of the gas in this picture should give you a hint as to how long ago it was taken. Ah, the good old days. My personal experiences with payphones over the years tend toward the middle-of-the-night, damn-I'm-in-a-fix variety. You know the kind I mean, right? Your car broke down and you've just hiked along the shoulder of some lonely two-lane highway, in the dark. You find a roadhouse with a payphone in the back, through the smoke and past the pooltables.
Then, if you've still got a couple of bucks in your pocket, you go order a draft beer and settle in to wait for your friend, roommate, sister--or whoever you called--to come and retrieve your sorry ass. That can't possibly just be me. Much has been made of the vanishing payphone, in this brave day of blackberries, cells, and wifi hot spots.