When was the last time you used a payphone and do people in your area/city still use it?

27 comments

1. I think the last time I saw a payphone was at an airport. I wouldn’t know where to find one in my neighborhood; I assume they’ve all been removed.

2. Never used one

3. 2002

   Payphone in front of the movie theater my sister and I used to walk to during summer

   I was 12 ish? I think?

   we would call our mom collect and say we wanted a ride home really quickly in the prompt

4. 2004 I think

5. I used one for the lols like 5 years ago.

6. I am honestly not sure if I ever have.

7. They have all been removed. I can’t remember the last time I saw one.

8. I’ve had a cell phone for 23 years, so, before that. I have no idea where to find one, maybe at the back of a bar?

9. I got my first cell phone in 2006 so probably sometime around then was the last time I used a pay phone.

10. I couldn’t use one if I wanted to, all the ones I remember are removed. They just arent there anymore. Id say sometime in the 90s.

11. I think something like 15-20 years ago. I barely even see them anymore.

12. It was probably around 2000 at my high school. I can no longer remember exactly when I got my first cell phone–one of those indestructible Nokias–but it was within a year or two of that.

13. I used one just for funsies because I found a still working one in like 2007 in Chicago.

    I think that’s the last time I saw a working one. I saw one at a gas station recently but it was just a decaying unworking relic.

14. I truly can’t remember. Maybe in middle school (late 90s/early 00s for me). I remember that I had a card pre-loaded with money to make calls… I think I used it at summer camps and maybe on school grounds as well.

15. Maybe 2000. No. I haven’t seen a functional payphone in over a decade at least.

16. Mid nineties.

17. When I was at basketball camp around 2000. Before I had a cell phone. Called home every other night to check in and say hi.

    There was a time in 2016 when I wish I had a pay phone. My battery was dead and I was super drunk and downtown. Luckily I was able to flag down a cab. But like, flagging down a cab is not normal here. So I was lucky.

18. 20+ years ago. I wouldn’t even know where to find one. They are not common.

19. I don’t think I’ve ever used one. I think I’ve seen them irl but idk where I’d even find one now.

20. I’ve never seen one before in my life, and I turn eighteen in a month.

21. I can’t even remember the last time I saw one.

    I’m also 38 and I don’t think I ever used one. When I got my license my mother gave me a hand me down cell phone to keep in the glove box of the car.

22. I think in BWI airport in days after 9/11, when I was trying to get a flight home and they kept announcing and then changing when airports would re-open. I had a cell phone at the time, but that was when long distance and roaming charges meant calls cost like $2/min. I still ran up like $250 in cell phone charges during those days but tried to offset with pay phone use when I could.

23. I don’t think anyone under the age of maybe 35 has really used one.

24. 2018. My cell phone broke when I was in an airport and needed it to call the person who was picking me up

25. The lobby of the Hawthorne Hotel in Salem in 2019. My buddy got married there, and there was a payphone in the lobby. I called my sister on it and the connection absolutely sucked, but it worked.

26. I’ve never used one, and the only one I’ve seen outside a museum is the fake English village in Lake Havasu City. The pay phone there worked until the 90’s, but no longer did by the time I went to Havasu for the first time in ‘02 or so.

27. I don’t think I ever used one.