"After Sandy, Wired New Yorkers Get Reconnected With Pay Phones: Coin-Eating Retro Devices Baffle Some, Frustrate Many; Moment Merits a Tweet."
, about folks in lower Manhattan who have been forced by the power outages and damages in the wake of Superstorm Sandy to seek out an old-fashioned way to make a call, has struck a chord.
With cellphones running out of juice, once again a tried-and-true technology has proven itself in a time of trouble.
Well, it's proven itself, that is, if you can find a phone that hasn't been damaged or wasn't vandalized before Sandy. To help in that search, "reliable pay phones you can use" in the lower third of Manhattan. "Of the 20-odd pay phones we visited," says the site, "nearly all had some sort of malfunction. Whether it was a lack of dial tone or gunk plugged in the coin slot, issues abounded." It recommends these three:
-- Northeast corner of Orchard and Delancey
-- Outside Casa Mezcal on Orchard Street
-- Bowery, just south of Delancey
Lines have been long at some phones. For now, at least, the answer to a question Planet Money asked last October — " " — is yes.
If you've got a story to tell about a time when a pay phone came through for you, please share it in the comments thread. Meanwhile, we've also got a question (and this blogger has to confess, his answer would be "I can't remember").
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