Sad City Classic: The Pay Phone Contest

Originally posted by Hakaan July 13, 2010, click on the Pay Phones tag to see the progress.

If your like us (and you know you want to be) you probably spent a lot of time in your early teens hanging out in front of convenience stores. For those of us who grew up without cell phones (never mind a smart phone) convenience stores were a great hang out spot for a variety of reasons. The local convenience store offered a place where one could meet their friends, purchase Mountain Dew, burritos, cigarettes, and of utmost importance, communicate with friends through pay phones. 

Hartford Pay Phone #40: Baker's Cafe

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, all Hartfordites can exhale as Pay Phone #40 is unveiled in the greatest scavenger hunt to ever hit Hartford. While Sad City is determined to make pay phones Hartford landmarks, Pay Phone #40 itself is located in a Hartford landmark, the legendary Baker's Cafe on New Britain Ave.

Hartford Pay Phone #39 Stale Beer Edition

We never like to stray too far from our roots and The Great Hartford Pay Phone Search continues with our 39th confirmed Hartford pay phone. Pay phone #39 is located at a very nicely painted bodega at 166 Ward Street across from the Zion Hill Cemetery. While we are sure the purveyors at this fine establishment only intend to trade in the finest of wares, we have acquired some very interesting information regarding their supply of Budweiser.

Hartford Pay Phone #38: Suspicious Package Edition

If there is one thing all Hartfordites can agree on, it's our love of everything pay phone! Pay Phone #38 is located on the corner of Hungerford and Park and is the first Pay Phone to be featured on Sad City in 2012. Newer readers might not be aware that we have been conducting a citywide search for Hartford Pay Phones since the summer of 2010 when we learned that the first pay phone in North America was located in Hartford.

Pay Phone #37 - Grocery Store Edition

We haven't featured a pay phone in our great Pay Phone Search in quite awhile and what would the Sad City holidays be without one? Pay Phone #37 is located outside the Stop & Shop on New Park Avenue. One thing you'll notice about living in Hartford is that grocery stores, or the lack thereof in downtown, is a topic of continuous hand-wringing in our fine city.

At this point we all realize the short lived, poorly executed, Market at Hartford 21 is not going to return. Yet we still don't think that Hartford is all that lacking in grocery stores. There's hardly anywhere you can live in Hartford and not be 10 minutes away from at least a grocery store.

Sad City Artford

Here's the idea...an art exhibit that features nothing but paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations that focus on Hartford mattresses and pay phones. The work would be created by either based in the city or with roots in the city. Our blog readers would serve as the jurors and curators of the show. Over the next few months we would run polls where you could vote on whether or not a piece was show-worthy.

Vote now.  (NOTE: We couldn't figure out how to embed the stupid survey into the post. Sorry.)

Voting closes at 9 pm on Sunday. Expect to be spammed over Twitter as we whore for votes.

Hartford Pay Phone #36 - Marathon Edition!

Pay Phone #36 in our Hartford Pay Phone Search comes to us from attorney/blogger/marathoner (Sad City will never be one of these. You guess.) Ryan McKeen who somehow in addition to blogging, lawyering, having a family, and taking pics of pay phones, found time to run the ING Hartford Marathon last weekend.

It's hard for us to decide whether running 26.2 miles at a clip is insanely admirable or just pure insane. The furthest we've ever gone is about 4 miles and it is just miserable. That said there is no lack of contestants in the Hartford Marathon so people seem to endure enjoy  it.

Hartford Pay Phone #35 - Fan Request Edition

At Sad City Hartford our mantra is give the people what they want and the commenter is always right. Following up on our own advice we present Hartford Pay Phone #35 in the Hartford Pay Phone Search at the request of yesterdays commenter, who felt so strongly that they needed a pay phone post they took time to comment on it.

Hartford Pay Phone #34

Hartford Pay Phone #34 is located at the Ravi Smoker's Discount on Maple Ave in the South End. The phrase "Smoker's Discount" is becoming ironic as we see a pack of Newport going for over $7 and a pack of generic cigarettes is over six dollars. So for two sawbucks you can barely get yourself a pack of Newport, a soda, and a phone call.

Hartford Pay Phone #33

Sad City reader Bruce B. sent us Hartford Pay Phone #33 in our great pay phone search. This pay phone is located at the corner of Main and Talcott, most people familiar with Hartford would recognize at being near the G.Fox building and of course the now demolished and much maligned Butt-Ugly building.

Hartford Pay Phone #32

This very urban pay phone marks the thirty-second phone tracked down in our long running Hartford Pay Phone mapping contest. Located in the North End at the corner of Guilford and Bethel, this pay phone could no doubt tell a good deal of stories.

Observers will note many Hartford urban area trademarks are present in this photo. The multi-family brick building in the background is common to the area and many, presumably built around the same time, can be found throughout the city in various stages of repair. The bodega is painted a blue color that looks like it was just slapped on to cover up whatever the previous color was. Finally there is the mysterious metal strip across the number pad that seems to exist only on urban phones and for which nobody seems to know the purpose of.

Hartford Pay Phone #31

It's actually quite surprising that this particular pay phone didn't get listed on the Sad City Pay Phone Search until #31. Located at the busy intersection of Park and New Park Ave, we drive by this pay phone all the time. There's a lot going on around this intersection. There is the Parkville Community Elementary School which has tons of different flags hanging on it. At a long line at the light it's always fun to try and see how many flags you can recognize. Turn one way down Park Street and you get great Asian food, turn the other way and you will get great Mexican and Latin American food.

Or just stop, get out and make a call. But whatever you do, don't go into the store hawking DirecTV. It's a whole other story for another time but trust us, you do not want to deal with DirecTV. Ever. Probably the most predatory company operating in Hartford.

Hartford Pay Phone #30

Occasionally we return to last summers and a classic Sad City project, the charting of Hartford's remaining pay phones. This project came about when we realized that Hartford had been home to the first pay phone in the United States. While it would have been easy to write an essay lamenting the rise and fall of both Hartford and the pay phone over the last century, we thought that to be a little too obvious and instead decided to go about tracking down all over Hartford's still working pay phones.

Sad City Classic: Hartford Pay Phone #29

 

It's been a long time since we visited our Hartford Pay Phone Contest, charting the remaining pay phones, but this one was too good to leave out.  We found this phone at the Wal-Mart on Flatbush Ave.  Since this Wal-Mart was built only about a decade ago, we are guessing this might be the most recent, and possibly last, pay phone that will be installed in Hartford.

A Hartford Drug House, Mattress, and Pay Phone #28

A week ago Hilda Munoz of the Hartford Courant brought us a story about the arrest of a Hartford man, Henry Hernandez, for allegedly operating a drug factory out of 184 1/2 Ward Street. Found along with 800 packets of Heroin in the drug factory were some cocaine, raw heroin, a stolen handgun and a submachine gun. Sounds like some good clean fun. We've been known to like to check these types of scenes out, and what we found was quite an interesting representation of our beloved city in the span of a few hundred feet.

Hartford Pay Phone Contest: Pay Phone #27

Hartford Pay Phone #27 is on Market Street not far from where we got spooked by an animal in a highway walkway. It is reported that when asked if the portable bathroom located on the parking lot of #27 could be used the parking lot attendant directed the person to the tire store right next door. This brings up a quandary that one can face when traveling. When entering a near empty store solely for the purpose of using the bathroom does one make a show of pretending they are interested in purchasing a product? In this case the answer was yes. A good 10 minutes of time was wasted for everyone pretending a tire purchase was going to be made in an effort not to appear rude. A good call?

Hartford Pay Phone Contest: Pay Phone #26

Hartford Pay Phone #26 is located at the corner of Albany and Magnolia  outside of Ivana's Fashions. Phone #26 appears to have adopted some fashion sense from Ivana's as it is one of the more fashionable phones we have seen. The color scheme of the building, the phone, and the clothes drop box are very fashion forward. Phone #26 is housed in a black box,, more fashionable than the usual silver housing. Finally a splash of graffiti gives the area around #26 a contemporary feel. #26; where all the "in" people make their calls!

Hartford Pay Phone Contest: Pay Phone #25 - WNPR Edition!

Hartford Pay Phone #25 is located at the corner of Albany and Chestnut, one of our favorite areas of town. There is something very interesting about the this area. It's kind of like a Bermuda triangle of Hartford. It marks the end of downtown, the Albany and Main St split, and of course  the infamous "Butt-Ugly Building." Earlier today our little Pay Phone Contest got us invited to visit WNPR in-studio during The Colin McEnroe Show and we had a blast. If you missed it you can hear the whole show here.

Hartford Pay Phone Contest: Pay Phone #24

Pay phone #24 is located at the corner of Webster and Barnard outside of Victoria's Market. #24 is actually a dual phone set up, but only one of the two phones is functional. It makes us wonder how long the non-functioning phones sit around. Are they of any value to the phone company? Is the phone company under any obligation to remove them?

Hartford Pay Phone Contest: Pay Phone #23

Pay phone #23 is located at the corner of Albany & Bedford in the North End outside of the Wonder Package Store and the Super Deli. When we approached number #23 we asked the gentleman in the picture if he was going to use the phone. He responded that if he was going to use a pay phone, we would use the two around the corner, that are #15 & 16 in our search. We didn't think much of it, but after todays Hartford Courant story of wire taps and controlled drug buys in the North End, we wonder if maybe this guy knew something about something.