Just goofing off in Helsinki.
Link: Rodrigo A. Sepúlveda Schulz: The last phone booth in Helsinki.
I predict that phone booths will make a comeback as quiet zones to make calls.
Nokia has these transparent ‘silence booths’ they put up at concerts so folks can make calls. And, on the trains here in Finland, there is usually a phone booth to make calls so as not to disturb the passengers.
How ironic. The telcos are ripping up these amazing networked (phone and electricity) boxes. I am sure there are some good business models that could have been built around re-purposed phone booths.
Anyone got a few million to play with? Quick, the booths are disappearing fast!
phone booth spotting: take a walk to the crossing of laivapojankatu & länsisatamankatu in ruoholahti. never seen a booth like that in finland.
The red phone box in the village where I grew up is now a listed building, “to stay there forever”!
http://www.llandrillo.demon.co.uk/llandrillo/kiosk/index.htm
(and see that white speck in a field above the phone box? that’s where I used to live
BT has been turning a lot of its phone boxes into email and text boxes as well to try and attract some more custom
Some other interesting phone box stories, one about a well-used phone box that locals want removing, and one about a rarely used phone box that locals don’t want removing! Some people are never happy!
“We call the local phone box the drugs tardis”
http://www.thisisbucks.co.uk/display.var.742908.0.we_call_the_local_phone_box_the_drugs_tardis.php
“Is this the least-used telephone kiosk in the land?”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/04/14/nkiosk14.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/04/14/ixhome.html
In fact, when I was at university and mobiles were rare, I sometimes called the phone box in our village and I knew my mates would would be hanging around nearby.
(PS, go and take a photo of Olli’s booth
i was in the area and had to find it.
i just put it up on flickr (and on my other more photo oriented blog -
http://molecularist.com/home/2006/05/a_long_forgotte.html).
there’s also a phonebooth group on flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/phonebooth/
A long forgotten phonebooth
A long forgotten phonebooth Originally uploaded by schickr. This is the one Olli mentioned. I happened to be in the area and had to find it.I also know there use to be an abandoned phonebooth on