NAKED CITY: THE LAST POSTAL BOX SHOW

A few years ago when The Naked City show was still alive and kicking on FBi radio, we decided to do a program focusing on the disappearing number of pay phones in the USA. The idea came from a website that listed a number of the remaining pay phone numbers and paid tribute to a remote phone booth in the Mohave Desert that had become legend because of its infrequent use.

We decided to ring the list of pay phone numbers at random in the hope that somebody would answer from a bar, a Deli, a bus station or just about anywhere at all – including the Mohave Desert. At first the exercise proved fruitless – nobody was picking up the receiver and when somebody finally did it was a Spanish speaking man in El Paso, Texas who couldn’t understand a word we were saying. After another twenty or so unsuccessful attempts we finally connected with a convenience store in LA. The patron seemed happy to chat at first and then we dropped a bombshell by mentioning we were ringing from “FBi”. Not surprisingly the line suddenly went dead.

Payphones are becoming a rarity in this country as well and the old Superman style telephone booth is now just a distant memory. Even more disturbing is the current culling of post boxes brought to our attention by an Australia Post notice in last week’s City News which indicated that the box at 45 Boundary Street in Darlinghurst was about to be decommissioned as a result of low patronage.

Admittedly ‘snail mail’ is an endangered species these days, with email and social media reducing it to barely a slug trail. Remember the good old days when people actually sent letter boxes full of Christmas and birthday cards, wrote love letters in cursory writing and inundated their friends with postcards from their holiday destination. Gone! These days you get a near illiterate text message reading “I luv u” and a Facebook flag from Bali reading “Wish u were here”.

The problem with disappearing pay phones and decommissioned post boxes is the increasing sense of urban alienation felt by those not yet totally seduced by modern technology. The post box for example has been a regular fixture on the urban landscape for what seems like an eternity – a familiar friend at the end of the street and a communication conduit to just about anywhere in the world.

If you are fit and able it’s probably no big deal to trudge another two or three blocks to find a working post box office but what about the elderly or disabled person that relies on the box just down the street. Like the phone booth in the Mohave Desert (now long gone), which was lucky to ring once or twice a month, the postal box at 45 Boundary Street has supposedly outlived its practicality, assigned to the scrap heap by the heartless bureaucrats at Australia Post.

The box has apparently been given 30 days (on death row) before it’s ripped mercilessly from the nature strip and surely that’s an invitation for all and sundry to make their protest. Even if you haven’t posted a letter in the last six months, now is the time to do so, even if it’s addressed to yourself!. We would love to see that old red bin busting with letters, jiffy bags and post cards over the next few weeks before Australia Post turns Boundary Street into another urban landscape resembling the Mohave Desert!