Broadview phone booth choked with leafy weeds
Everybody likes lush greenery, but not when it starts to take over a phone booth and muscle out callers.
All this rain has made for an excellent growing season; lawns baked brown during the parched summer of 2016 are a deep, luxurious green this year, one of the positives of too much wet weather.
It also provides sustenance to weeds, which look to be winning the battle for survival in even the unlikeliest of locations.
Cathi Gibson-Gates emailed us a startling photo of a phone booth on Broadview Ave., so choked with leafy weeds there’s little room for people.
“On the west side of Broadview Ave., just south of Mortimer, there is a Bell Canada phone booth — a rare sight in this day and age,” she said.
“However, it is the inside of this phone booth that is garnering attention from people walking by. Weeds have grown up so high inside the booth, they are winding around the receiver and the phone box.
We went there and found the phone booth next to a TTC bus stop; the weeds were even taller and bushier than in Gibson-Gates’ photo. And there was no dial tone when we picked up the receiver. Status: Bell spokesperson Jacqueline Michelis emailed Friday to say the phone isn’t working because an underground cable was recently severed by a third-party contractor. She included a photo that shows the weeds have now been cleared, but also had some bad news: “Since this is a low usage location, our plan is to permanently remove this phone booth soon. There are other pay phones close by in the neighbourhood that will remain in service.” What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. Send an email to jlakey@thestar.ca. Report problems and follow us on Twitter @TOStarFixer.