Preoccupied with Payphones

[AbsolutChaos]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

I still use payphones--in fact I use them more now than I ever have before. Mostly this is due to the fact that I HATE cell phones. I recognize they have many uses, but I refuse to rely on one more than necessary. As a result, I often forget to carry mine, so when my pager goes off for work, I must turn to a payphone to find out why I'm being paged. :-)

I'm glad that many payphone accept credit cards too...I often don't have any change on me when I need it!

[pzarquon]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

I've found two more payphones that accept incoming calls. Both (808) 949-9578 and (808) 949-9632 are barely 20 yards apart on the same block of S. King Street.



In contrast to the (808) 923-9974 phone at the Waikiki Aquarium mentioned above, I'm pretty sure the people who answer these phones would most likely be locals.

I've really got to build the site for this. I've collected a decent set of photos already.

[scrivener]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

Looks like a good MySQL project, unless you're thinking of some other approach. What do you have in mind?

[mel]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

I've really got to build the site for this.

Build it and I'll send you pictures of the phones and numbers I got. I don't like posting to Flicker because after the posts pass the hundred number mark, they disappear (unless I pay of course). Most of my phone pictures are at my BuzzNet site, URL posted in a previous message to this thread.

[pzarquon]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

Looks like a good MySQL project, unless you're thinking of some other approach. What do you have in mind?

It'll definitely be a basic PHP site with a MySQL backend. The question is, do I want to code it myself, or find something close to what I want and hack it. The only thing that intimidates me is incorporating the images - how to have it track images (whether there is no photo, one photo, or several photos associated with a number), and yet store them separately (since keeping image data insidea database is a bad idea).

Build it and I'll send you pictures of the phones and numbers I got.

Thanks, Mel. If you haven't noticed, I'm archiving my images at Buzznet and TextAmerica as well as Flickr, so clearly I'm not picky about where the photos are now. It's pulling them all together later that'll count.

[Linkmeister]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

You're not alone! There's a Save the Payphone movement growing in states. There's a link to a tracking project for payphones

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

hmmmm and I thought saving the coqui frog campaign was a waste of money.

If they left the price of a payphone call at 25-cents and spread the cost of maintaining one thru their infrastructure I think payphones would be more common as they once were.

When I lived in Mtn Home Idaho back in the late 70's there was this side road along a farming community with grass as high as 10-feet on the shoulders. Rising thru the tops of the grass were rows of telephone poles running the length of the road. One day I saw a wire running down into the thicket of grass. I made a path (about 8-feet) thru it to the base of the pole and to my surprize there was a payphone complete with booth hidden there in and there was dial tone!

I used to ride my bicycle as my form of transportation and that booth was my safe haven when a storm hit me while biking home from work.

[pzarquon]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

The "Save the Payphones" thing is new to me. Thanks Link. But, er, the Payphone Project? It was the inspiration for my current efforts, and 'twas linked in the very first post in this thread!

I've actually been a bit distracted with, oh, a few hundred other web projects, but while traveling in Hilo this past weekend I collected a few more payphone entries.

[Linkmeister]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

The "Save the Payphones" thing is new to me. Thanks Link. But, er, the Payphone Project? It was the inspiration for my current efforts, and 'twas linked in the very first post in this thread!

I've actually been a bit distracted with, oh, a few hundred other web projects, but while traveling in Hilo this past weekend I collected a few more payphone entries.

I thought it was, but I was in a hurry, so I didn't bother to check.

[pzarquon]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

Odd update to this old thread... I just got an e-mail from someone who found this payphone photo when Googling for the number (949-9632) because he'd gotten a "missed call" on his cell phone from it. Of course, the photo didn't help him figure out who called or why, but he though it was cool that he could figure out where the phone was located.

I'm still sporadically adding to my payphone photo collection. Not surprisingly, Google searches for the numbers specified list these images as the top, if not only, result.

Sure wish I was bored enough to get GPS coordinates, too. Then I could take the database, mix it with applications like Google Earth, and do even more geeky stuff.

[Linkmeister]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

Rural area gets state to acquire pay phone.

[adrian]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

Ah heck, lets just post some pay phone numbers here:

Heald College payphone #1 942-9379
(in the student lounge, so you can wake up someone who's sleeping in the morning)

I'll try to get the other phone.

[pzarquon]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

How 'bout that... here's a site with much of the same idea I'd had in trying to build a payphone directory: Phoneswarm. They feature payphones across the country, and encourage people to call and document whatever they find at the other end. They asked to add a few of the "incoming call" phones I've found in my payphone project.

They've previously posted two Hawaii phones. "Swarm 14" was a payphone in Waikiki near Duke's, and "Swarm 21" is a phone at Keanae Ball Park in Haiku, Maui. People have had some entertaining conversations with people picking up the phone on the beach, but it seems the Maui phone is a bit lonely.

[Linkmeister]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

I took this a while back. It's the bank of payphones at the Navy Exchange at Pearl Harbor. I didn't get the angle quite the way I'd seen it a week or two earlier when I didn't have my camera, and there's somebody using one in this shot, but still...

[anapuni808]

Re: Preoccupied with Payphones

PZ - there is now a payphone installed on the back of the Remington College Building, Adams Lane @ Hotel Street. It's the "smokers bench" for the students.