January 30th, 2010
Fire and police call boxes are passe already….
For once, I agree with Mayor Bloomberg. He wants to take all those fire and police call boxes off the city streets and save $2.5 million. I say, take ‘em out, although, of course, the fire dispatchers union thinks otherwise. Any move you can conceivably think of in this city, you can bet there is a union to take the contrary position. When you think of it, it’s a miracle we don’t have fire towers anymore. Where was the fire towers sitting union when that happened?
Every once in a great while when I’m stuck in traffic (insert sarcasm emoticon here), and I’m looking around, I spot one of those fire and police call boxes and think to myself, “Why the hell do we need those when everyone — and I mean everyone — carries a cell phone.”
I swear to you I saw a homeless guy with a cellphone last week. He may not have really been homeless but he did have five shopping bags with him and appeared quite dirty and was hanging around a Starbucks — looking at his cell phone.
Street call boxes have already been pulled from cities all over the country. They seem like an anachronism to me, better suited for the Museum of the City of New York than a street corner. Of course, a law has to be overturned for this to happen, and I’ll bet the legal costs of that to the city will probably be, oh I don’t know…I’m just guessing here…maybe $2.5 million?
Sorry Paul, but not everyone carries cell phones – I don’t. Call boxes are a good idea, because you might be able to pull a call box faster and keep on running and you won’t drop it. A female would more than likely have to dig in her purse to find the cell, whereas the guys just pull it out of their pockets.