Payphone: A thing of the past?

In smog-darkened days and streetlight lit nights, every person who's ever put a quarter in the slot and a public pay phone receiver to their ear probably has their own story to tell, though chances are good they're not typical Pollyanna stories.

They've been used for break-ups and hook-ups, drug deals and break downs. The pay phone used to come in booths, but like a lot of things these days, the glass boxes where one could stand inside for privacy or to get out of the elements have been phased out.

"I've seen a lot of people on the phone going through something or another," said Pam Bricker, a 19-year manager of the Tramway Market on Kingsbury Grade. "I'm sure most of the calls would fill a book."

Speaking of books, there's the battered, water-logged Coke and coffee-stained white and yellow pages.

Or not, depending on your location.

If a user is lucky enough to find one, it is usually attached precariously to a short aluminum, barely bendable snake-like tube. Never long enough and always too short, the chain-to-ball attachment makes it nearly impossible to dial the phone number while looking down at the book and its fine-print numbers.

Using the book, just like the phone itself, is always a crap shoot. Tow truck pages are usually the first to go, hastily torn from the book's spine. Other pages missing are usually the automotive mechanic section, followed by hotels and motor lodges.

The pay phone, like a lot of old technologies, has become somewhat of an endangered species these days. Once found up and down Highway 50 at every gas station, liquor store and convenience shop, they're now harder to find.

While Verizon couldn't confirm how many pay phones are between Meyers and Zephyr Cove, an informal poll found 16 of the phones. Some merchants said they got rid of their phone years ago because it was costing them too much.

With the popularity of the cellular phone, the pay phone has begun to vanish. And while many germophobes may be saying good riddance to the sometimes sticky, always smelly receivers, the methodical disappearance of the pay telephone here can be chalked up to another one of those signs of the times.

The de-evolution of the pay phone is telling on many levels, explained Scott Lukas, chairman of the anthropology department at Lake Tahoe Community College.

With any kind of technology there is an attachment to the times, Lukas said. Pay phones at one time were engrained so much in our culture that they became just another ornament. It was a thing that no one really thought about - they just used them. They were in movies and TV shows, like in "Superman" and "The Blues Brothers," and their place was recognized as merely convenience. The pay phone was stationary. People went to one and dropped their dimes and made their calls.

"With the phone culture of the past, we were more tied down to the land line. We waited around for telephone calls. We looked for places that had a phone where we could make a call. That all changed with cell phones," Lukas said.

We've gone from a sedentary society to a mobile one. We move rapidly and often. The disappearance of the pay phone and the popularity of the cell phone has defined our sense of mobility, Lukas said. "Today it's all about being mobile. Not only do you have your phone but you have your Blackberry and your laptop. Soon you'll have your music, your telephone and a camera in one device," said Lukas. "It's like everything else. Like the drive-up windows at Starbucks, the attitude today is mobility and convenience."

To the phone companies themselves who maintain them, it's no secret that the advent of wireless phones has made the pay phone business much more challenging.

Nationally, payphone usage has declined by more than 40 percent over the past five to 10 years, said Jonathan Davies, spokesman for Verizon Telecommunications.

Yet public telephones serve an important need. For one, not everyone has a wireless phone. A Verizon survey found that while about 70 to 80 percent of Americans do have cell phones, one in five people don't. And that's why there is still the need for them, Davies said.

Plus you can't always get a signal - especially in rugged areas such as Lake Tahoe. Perhaps that's why there is a public pay phone at the bottom of Vikingsholm.

"In those instances, pay phones are a very reliable alternative, and can even be literal lifesavers. Some people prefer to use the clarity of a land-line for making important business calls and others see payphones as a way to control cellular phone costs - especially if they don't have a large allocation of monthly minutes," Davies said.

With the change in the marketplace, companies like Verizon have reduced the number of phones overall, but kept many of the pay phones that are in high-traffic areas such as airports, bus and train stations, hotels, convenience stores, gas stations and movie theaters.

Verizon looks at each pay phone on a case-by-case basis and evaluates the revenue it generates. In some places where there used to be banks of four, five or six pay phones, there may now only be one or two and the revenue is sufficient to keep those phones operational, Davies said.

At the Tramway Market on Kingsbury Grade, it wound up costing more to keep the phone there than it made money. In the past couple years, manager Bricker would see only a handful of people use the payphone in a month.

Finally in March it came down to decision time.

"It wasn't making any money, maybe a couple dollars a month, and so we cut the line," Bricker said.



-- By Jeff Munson, jmunson@tahoedailytribune.com

Movies where a pay phone was part of the plot:

American Grafitti

Midnight Run

Goodfellas

The Matrix

Superman

Changing Lanes

Blues Brothers

Phonebooth

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey

Dirty Harry



By the numbers

n There are 1.3 million pay phones in the United States

n Nationally, payphone usage has declined by more than 40 percent over the past 5 to 10 years.

n One in five Americans don't have cell phones.

Source: Verizon