Val Vashon checks in again from Seattle, Washington, with a random collection of payphones from the downtown core:
“We’re here at the National Building, 1008 Western Avenue in Downtown Seattle. It’s a former warehouse now on the National Register of Historic Places, and home to lots of empty office space…”
“And this beauty, located between the rest rooms in the first floor hallway. This is in as nice of shape as you’ll probably ever find a pay phone. It still sports Qwest signage, even though Qwest was bought out by Century Link a couple of years ago. 50¢ calls are a bargain!”
(206) 386-9212. Payphone at the National Building in Downtown Seattle
“It’s got a dial tone, of course, and you can call it! It rings nice and loud, but you’ll probably have to let it ring a long time before anybody answers it. The lower floors of this building seem especially vacant.”
“This pay phone is also in nice shape, and is, inexplicably, inside the SODO office of a major package shipping company. I wasn’t able to try calling it and my usual guy wasn’t there to ask questions of, like ‘Who the heck needs to use a pay phone in a package pickup and drop off place?'”
“Here we are inside of Safeco Field, home of your Seattle Mariners. Our second investigative team (Mark and Elliott) didn’t try the phone while they were at the stadium that day, but I have dialed the number — (206) 634-1331 — several times while a game was in progress and didn’t get an answer. It rings and rings on my end and I was hoping somebody would pick up so I could ask them the score of the ball game, but nobody did. Either it doesn’t ring there or nobody felt like answering.”
“On the outside of Safeco Field there is this attractive Kiosk next to an ATM and the ticket windows.”
“However, the front panel fluorescent display scrolls the ‘Out Of Order’ message… Dialing this number — (206) 682-1570 — gets you the standard ‘This number has been disconnected’ message.”
Payphone News is happy to see that Safeco Field in Seattle has at least one working payphone, one which appears to also include a Pay Phone TTY unit for use by handicapped stadium visitors. Pay Phone TTYs (text telephones) are probably the most rarely used feature of public telephones, but under some circumstances federal regulations mandate that they be provided in stadiums and arenas. Most older stadiums should have Public Pay Phone TTYs units, but newer ones might not. A recent visit to the New Yankee Stadium, for instance, revealed that the Yankees appear to have made a deliberate decision not to have public telephones or TTY units at their stadium. It appears this does not run afoul of the American With Disabilities act (ADA) of 1991. The ADA states: “If an interior public pay telephone is provided in a stadium or arena, in a convention center, in a hotel with a convention center, or in a covered mall, at least one interior public text telephone shall be provided in the facility.” Thus, if a payphone is already present at a stadium then it cannot be removed, and a TTY unit must be installed to complement it. By not having a single public telephone at their new stadium the Yankees avoid having to install a Public Text Telephone unit as well.
For a nostalgic perspective on payphones at baseball stadiums look for The Baseball Stadium Project at BaseballProspectus.com.