Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Uncommon

This might be a tourist photo one would take in London. These red telephone boxes stand inside The Commons shopping plaza off of South Lake Avenue. It's mildly interesting for a couple of reasons: first, you don't typically see this type of phone booth in America; second, you don't typically see phone booths at all anymore.

Then I looked them up on Wikipedia. Check out the first photo! It's our Pasadena phone boxes, right there next to Williams-Sonoma in the Commons. The very ones. How veddy British.

11 comments:

Unknown said...

It's so strange to see some London phone booth in this light actually, that would never happen in London! I know, I've spent 6 years there before moving here, and believe me, most of the time you use them as shelter for the rain more that to phone :)

Stefan Jansson said...

London Calling! That is a bit unexpected I guess.

Petrea Burchard said...

Hello, Stef and Steffe! Have you met? Stef, your sketches couldn't be getting better, could they? You make it look easy.

Steffe, your 100 Strangers project is marvelous: http://tinyurl.com/5glw3r

Pont Girl said...

Oh, I thought I was at Cheltenham Daily Photo :)!

These are cute - I wonder what has little tragedy has befallen the booth on the right - it looks like crime scene tape ;)

marley said...

That is very spooky! Of all the red phone boxes in the world and its your ones!

I had some in the background of my post yesterday:)

Petrea Burchard said...

I don't think it's a crime scene, Pont Girl. Probably a phone out of order! As for Cheltenham, go look at Marley's Cheltenham post, it's wonderful. Makes you want to go there for lunch.

Anonymous said...

When I worked in London I used them a few times - they are normally used for photo opportunities.

I can think of two right now in Leicester Square - always surrounded by tourists!

Anonymous said...

I can still recall one of the old Superman movies (1st one maybe) where Clark stops and looks at a "hang on the wall" type phone as he's unbuttoning his shirt, he then shakes his head and runs down an alley to switch to his Superman suit.

That was when the US had reciently ditched booths in favor of the "hand on the wall" type - it was funny...

(For younger readers, in the early 20th century, Superman comics regularly featured Clark Kent ducking into a phone booth to perform his transformation into Superman)

Petrea Burchard said...

Oh, Craig, I'm disappointed! Don't people use them to make phone calls? (I just spent some time getting lost in your Cape Town photos, by the way. Enjoyed it.)

Yorokobi, thanks for the Superman reference. I believe I vaguely remember... We still have some phone booths. I think there are two or three around here. (Two in the photo and one other somewhere. I'll look for it.)

Chuck Pefley said...

We have the odd one here and there in Seattle, too. I really like these, but as you say, pay phones are few and far between these days. Cell phones have driven the wired phone business into the ground, I fear.

Patrizzi Intergarlictica said...

All I can say is the blather gives a lovely trip account. Recent, ya know and all that rot.