HONOLULU (KHON2) — If you’re like everyone else on the planet over the age of 16, you probably have a cell phone. It’s a good thing because if you ever need to find a pay phone to make a call, chances are you’d be out of luck.
You may not notice them and you probably haven’t used one for years, or maybe even decades but they’re out there.
“Do you know what that is?” KHON2 asked. “Uh, a pay phone,” said one 16-year-old.
“Have you ever used one?” “No.” “Have you?” “No.”
Turns out, pay phones are more prevalent than you might think and they all seem to have one thing in common. They don’t work.
Now, the focus is on getting rid of them.
“About six months ago, we announced plans to remove about 100 payphones that were inoperable and remained in city parks,” explained Ian Scheuring, City and County of Honolulu. “The ones that are here on public sidewalks really bygones of a fallen era.”
According to the FCC, there were about two million payphones in the U.S. in the year 2000. Today, it’s well less than 100,000 with 20% of those in New York City.
In Hawaii, the best guess is between one and two thousand.
“The ownership of these payphones used to be Hawaiian Tel transferred from owner jurisdiction to jurisdiction largely forgotten and so in the case of City parks, has fallen on us on the city to remove those. These phones no longer work and really have no public value anymore,” he added.
Most of the phones you’ll come across are either tagged with graffiti, severely damaged or both. Some have been elevated to a higher calling.
“What’s the first thing you noticed when you pulled into the beach park?” KHON2 asked.
“This telephone booth. It says hello to heaven. I was like ‘Wow let’s go take some pictures,’” answered Mahealani Soberano.
A pay phone at Kawaikui Beach Park in East Oahu has become a tribute to an avid waterman who lived and sadly died in the waters off the park.
“It’s a memorial to a friend of ours who passed away here a couple of months ago. He was down here almost every day,” said Francis Brewer.
“You’ll see those airplanes on top and white night. Greg was a pilot for Hawaiian Airlines so as I as an ode to Greg, one of the guys went ahead and did this memorial for him. Pretty cool say hello to heaven I keep flying right,” Brewer added.
Although this particular pay phone may have meaning, most of them are nothing more than raunchy reminders of a bygone era and don’t be fooled by any historic designation.
“I’m not quite sure where that came from. We ran it by some of the lawyers that have been with the city for 25 to 30 years. They all say we’ve never heard of a historic payphone program so pretty sure that was just a clever decal put on the back. I thought it looked pretty cool. You know I have an official city payphone, but no nothing historic about this relic behind me,” Ian said.
Check out more news from around Hawaii
From Waianae to Hawaii Kai, KHON2 could not find a single pay phone that worked. So we called the company that owns them to see if they knew.
Unfortunately, the operator did not have information on where we could find a working pay phone.