Shabby phone booth could really use a makeover
Providing phone booths is more of a public service than a source of profit, but that’s no excuse to not take care of them.
In the age of pocket computer/ cameras that can also be used to make an old-fashioned phone call, there isn’t nearly as much demand for phone booths as there used to be.
The last time we ran to a phone booth and said “get me rewrite, sweetheart,” was in 1995, and only because the stone-age cellphone issued to us went dead.
These days, booths are for people who can’t afford a cellphone, or the rare person who doesn’t want one.
That means Bell Canada is doing a good deed by continuing to provide at least a few pay phones on city streets; it isn’t doing it for the money.
But if the omnipotent communications utility is putting itself to the bother, it should try harder to keep them neat and clean, in case somebody actually needs to use one.
Lorraine Tinsley sent us a note about one at the northeast corner of St. Clair and Alvin Aves., saying it is a worthy addition to our list of “phone booths gone terribly wrong.
“We have had to endure this horror for years outside the Deer Park Library,” Tinsley said.
“Don’t the nice people at Bell ever inspect their assets?”
We went there and found a battered phone booth with glass so grimy that it’s hard to see through some of the panels. Graffiti is liberally scrawled across it. It’s listing to one side, as if a vehicle bumped into it, and the receiver and phone are so grubby that we were loath to touch it.
But when we picked up the receiver we heard a dial tone. So it works, if anyone is desperate enough to use it.
Status: Jason Laszlo, who deals with media for Bell, said he was looking into the derelict booth and would get back to us. What’s broken in your neighbourhood? Wherever you are in Greater Toronto, we want to know. To contact us, go to thestar.com/yourtoronto/the_fixer.