A crowd recently gathered in Times Square to remove what the city advertised as New York’s last payphone. The “End of the Era” proclaimed the headline of a news release, even though the days when payphones played a meaningful role in New Yorker life certainly ended long ago.
You may be forgiven with a little nostalgia. Payphones are a remnant of the analog world, and long-distance was considered and people calling in public had their own private booths before the text “15 minutes late.”
“People miss the period when the phone means something,” Payphone project I told the Times. “When you planned it and thought about it, you took a deep breath and put in your quarter.”
I’ve been looking at the familiar refrains for smartphones. Smartphones have made it easier for us to navigate our lives at the expense of etiquette, attention and safety while driving. We may be physically present, but we are not actually there.
The pay phone was a fixed monotascar. Before my cell phone, if I wanted to talk to someone, I would do it at home, at work, or at the booth. Your telecommunications was contained in these discrete spaces, separate from the rest of your life. Payphones may be almost outdated, but nothing prevents us from reviving some of those boundaries in the post-payphone world.
What does this look like to you? For me, it means pulling to the side of the road to send the text, rather than dictating the message to Siri. I got out of the pedestrian stream and stepped into my heart’s phone booth to hear voicemail. I didn’t check social media while waiting for my friends to arrive at the bar. The long phone calls were made at home, not when I was walking or sitting on a park bench, and seemingly enjoyed the outdoors.
My sentimental ideal of a phone booth— Richard Dreyfuss calls Marsha Mason from outside the apartment In the rain at the end of “Goodbye Girl” — a time capsule, a romantic vision of the past. However, the telephone booth as a metaphor as an inspiration for creating the boundary between virtual and real seems to be still useful today.
Programming Notes: Starting this week, my colleague Gilbert Cruz, Culture Editor at The Times, provides recommendations for what to see, read, and hear. Scroll down to the culture calendar to check it out. — Melissa
Cultural calendar
🎭 Tony Awards (Sunday): It’s hard to see every show on Broadway, even for someone like me whose job is to experience a lot of culture. (And that’s not possible unless you live in or near New York City.) So I’m excited to see the highlights of musicals like “Six,” “Company,” and “Musicman.” .. It’s exciting with the capital “T” and it’s rhyming … you understand what I’m saying.
📚 “Hotel Nantucket” (Tuesday): It doesn’t feel like summer unless I read the Erin Hilderbrand book that I read every year for almost 10 years. They are mainly done in Nantucket and are full of secrets and romantic dramas and beaches. I’ve read a good deal of the novel, including magic and dragons, but the fantastic New England island life often feels more fantastic to me than anything else in George RR Martin.
🎥 “Spiderhead” (Friday): Speaking of islands, this Netflix movie, based on George Saunders’ short story about future drug experiments, is set in one of the beautiful things in the middle of a place where dubious things happen. If you need to take a large amount of Chris Hemsworth before this summer’s “Thor: Love and Thunder”, you can find it here.
This week’s recipe
Padkey Mao (Packy Mao)
Who doesn’t like flexible recipes that can absorb all the possibilities, end up in the fridge and produce something really delicious?This speedy Drunken noodles Chef Hong Taimy’s recipe is a perfect example. The important thing is to add a lot of garlic, fresh peppers and whole basil leaves. This makes everything taste great. Choose protein and quick-cooking vegetables (recently using shrimp, broccolini, and chard) and use the widest rice noodles available. Please note that if you do not have strong soy sauce, adding brown sugar to regular soy sauce will result in insufficient sweetness. Once you cook this, you can play forever. A spicy and spicy weekday evening meal that you can make from what you have.
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Azerbaijan Grand Prix, F1: We are about one-third of the F1 season and it’s thrilling. The redesigned car helped the Ferrari team climb near the top while seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton struggled. If you’re in the United States and don’t want to get up early and watch the race, check out Netflix’s documentary series Drive to Survive, which focuses on the individuality of the sport. It turned countless Americans into fans. Sunday at 7am, ESPN