Back in August, 2002, there were payphones-a-plenty on the boardwalk at Brooklyn’s Coney Island. In addition to the phones seen in these photos you’d find 10 or more at the Stillwell Avenue subway station, and at least one on the sidewalks at every block along Surf Avenue.

A quantity of CityBridge payphones hung on until the bitter end along Surf Avenue as late as January, 2021, before finally getting chopped, while the PTS phones at the Stillwell Avenue subway station disappeared in 2018.  A small quantity of sidewalk phones lingered in Brighton beach through 2021 as well, as I documented in this video over on YouTube.

The photos below are from August, 2002, borrowed from my personal website at sorabji.com. Whilst clicking through the whole series of these Coney Island photos I do not believe I spotted a single cell phone. It even looks like I caught somebody using one of the payphones in the second photo.