Recently, a crowd gathered in Times Square to erase what the city promotes as The last public phone in New York. “End of an Era,” declared the news headline, although the era in which pay phones played an important role in New Yorkers’ lives is certainly long over.
One can be forgiven for feeling a little nostalgic. Pay phones are a vestige of the analog world, before the “I’ll be 15 minutes late” messages, when long distances were considered and people calling in public had their own cubicles.
“People miss a time when a call means something,” Mark Thomas about Payphone project told The Times. “When you’ve made a plan and you’ve thought about it, you take a deep breath and put your dick in.”
I examined the familiar chorus of smartphones, that they have made our lives easier to navigate at the expense of our manners, our attention, our safety when Driver. We may be physically present, but we are never really there.
Public telephones are fixed-price unit phones. Before cell phones, if you wanted to talk to someone, you did it at home, at work, or in a booth. Your telecommunications are contained in these discrete spaces, separate from the rest of your life. Pay phones may be almost obsolete, but there’s nothing stopping us from re-establishing some of their boundaries in the post-pay phone world.
What might this look like to you? For me, that means pulling over to the side of the road to send a text, not dictating my messages to Siri. I stepped out of the line of pedestrians and into the phone booth of my mind to listen to voicemail. I won’t check social media while I wait for a friend to come to the bar. Long phone calls will take place at home, not while I’m walking or sitting on a park bench, ostensibly enjoying the outdoors.
My sentimental ideal of phone booths – Richard Dreyfuss calls Marsha Mason from outside her apartment in the rain at the end of “The Goodbye Girl” – is a time capsule, a romantic vision of the past. But the phone booth as a metaphor, as an inspiration to draw the line between virtual and real life, seems to still be useful today.
Program Notes: Starting this week, my colleague Gilbert Cruz, Culture Editor at The Times, offers his recommendations for what to watch, read, listen to and more . Scroll down to the Culture Calendar to see them. – Melissa
CULTURAL SCHEDULE
Tony Award (Sunday): Even for someone like me, whose job is to experience a multitude of cultures, it’s hard to see all the Broadway shows. (And if you don’t live in or near New York City, that’s unlikely.) So I’m happy to see musical highlights like “Six,” “Company,” and “The Music Man.” . It’s emotional with the capital “T” and rhymes with… you know what I’m saying.
“Nantucket Hotel” (Tuesday): It doesn’t feel like summer unless I read a book by Elin Hilderbrand, which I’ve been doing every year for almost a decade. They mostly take place on Nantucket and they’re filled with secrets, romance, and beaches. I’ve read my fair share of novels involving magic and dragons, but life on the fancy New England island often sets me up for more than anything by George RR Martin.
“Spider Head” (Friday): Speaking of islands, this Netflix series is based on a short story by George Saunders about future drug experiments, set on one of the beautiful islands out of nowhere, where shady things happen. If you need a strong dose of Chris Hemsworth ahead of this summer’s “Thor: Love and Thunder,” this is the place to find it.
WEEKLY RECEIVED
Pad Kee Mao (Drunk Noodles)
Who doesn’t love a versatile recipe that can absorb all the odds and end up in the fridge and result in something really delicious? This speed pad kee Mao The recipe from chef Hong Thaimee is a perfect example. It’s important to add garlic, fresh chili peppers, and even basil leaves, which will make anything taste great. Just choose a protein or two and a quick-cooking vegetable or two — I recently used shrimp, broccolini, and chard — and use the widest rice noodles you can get. Note that if you don’t have concentrated soy sauce, add brown sugar to regular soy sauce to make up for the missing sweetness. Cook this once and it’s yours to play forever, a fun, spicy weekend treat you can make from what you have.
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Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Formula 1: We’re a third of the way through the Formula 1 season and it’s thrilling. The redesigned cars have helped the Ferrari team climb closer to the top, while seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton is struggling. If you’re in the US and don’t want to wake up early to watch a race, check out “Drive to survive,” a Netflix documentary series focusing on the personality of the sport. It has turned countless Americans into fans. 7 a.m. Eastern on Sunday, ESPN
