Ben Cohen, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

After Sandy, Wired New Yorkers Get Reconnected With Pay Phones

November 1, 2012 at 8:43 am PT

Alison Caporimo, a 24-year-old who lives in Manhattan’s East Village, is undaunted by newfangled smartphones and computers.

But as for old-fashioned, coin-slot pay phones? The magazine editor had never really trained her Warby Parker eyeglasses on the contraptions.

“I lost a lot of coins,” confesses Ms. Caporimo, who didn’t even know how to work a pay phone before Tuesday.

With power knocked out in her Sandy-ravaged neighborhood — rendering her cellphone useless — she got a crash course in the low-tech, low-status devices. She returned to her local pay phone Wednesday with more quarters and better knowledge of the pay-phone locations in her area.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

Tagged with: Ben Cohen, cellphones, Hurricane Sandy, New York, pay phones, smartphones, The Wall Street Journal

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