June 11, 2022

Good morning. Phone booths may be obsolete, but they still offer a good model for keeping our phones from taking over our lives.

Allie Sullberg

Call waiting

A crowd gathered in Times Square recently for the removal of what the city promoted as New York's last public pay phone. "End of an Era," declared the news release headline, even though the era when pay phones played any meaningful role in New Yorkers' lives certainly ended long ago.

One might be forgiven for feeling a bit nostalgic. Pay phones are vestiges of the analog world, before the "I'll be 15 minutes late" text, when long-distance was a consideration and people on calls in public got their own private booths.

"People miss a period of time when a call meant something," Mark Thomas of The Payphone Project told The Times. "When you planned it and you thought about it, and you took a deep breath and you put your quarter in."

I've been considering the familiar refrain about smartphones, that they've made our lives easier to navigate at the expense of our manners, our attention, our safety while driving. We may be physically present, but we're never really there.

Pay phones were stationary monotaskers. Before cellphones, if you wanted to talk to someone, you did it at home, at work or in a booth. Your telecommunications were contained to these discrete spaces, separate from the rest of your life. Pay phones may be nearly obsolete, but there's nothing stopping us from reinstituting some of their boundaries in a post-pay-phone world.

What might this look like for you? For me, it would mean pulling over to the side of the road to send a text rather than dictating my message to Siri. I'd step out of the pedestrian flow and into the phone booth of the mind to listen to voice mail. I wouldn't check social media while waiting for a friend to arrive at a bar. Long phone calls would take place at home, not while I'm on a walk or sitting on a park bench, ostensibly enjoying the outdoors.

My sentimental ideal of the phone booth — Richard Dreyfuss calling Marsha Mason from outside her apartment in the rain at the end of "The Goodbye Girl" — is a time capsule, a romantic vision of the past. But the phone booth as metaphor, as inspiration for creating boundaries between virtual and real life, still seems useful today.

Programming note: Starting this week, my colleague Gilbert Cruz, the Culture Editor at The Times, offers his recommendations for what to watch, read, listen to and more. Scroll down to the Culture Calendar to check them out. — Melissa

For more

Was that really the city's last pay phone? Perhaps not.
How cellphones made the world your office.

THE WEEK IN CULTURE

Jennifer Lopez in the documentary "Halftime."Netflix

The Tribeca Film Festival started this week. Natalia Winkelman unearthed its gems.
Many "great men" who shaped theater were tyrants. It's time to let go of their influence, Jesse Green writes ahead of tomorrow's Tony Awards.
Steph Curry is promoting clothes by Black designers during the N.B.A. Finals.
The Gay Days parties at Disney World took on added significance this year, after Disney was ensnared in a heated cultural debate.
Kelly Clarkson's song covers are one of the last reliably good things on network TV, Lindsay Zoladz writes.
The actor Michael Fassbender, who has also been carving out a career as a racecar driver, will compete this weekend in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The cast of "The Wire" broke down five pivotal scenes for the show's 20th anniversary.
The Grammys added a songwriter of the year category.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art named a new director.

THE LATEST NEWS

A man walks out of the international arrivals gate at Newark International Airport.Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

Tomorrow, the U.S. will end its requirement that travelers flying in to the country provide a negative Covid test.
Consumer prices rose last month at their fastest pace in four decades.
After the Jan. 6 attacks, cabinet secretaries discussed invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Donald Trump as president.
Ukrainian troops are running short on ammunition to keep Russian forces at bay.
Teenagers and adults under 25 make up roughly 43 percent of the U.S. transgender population, a report estimates.
President Biden announced a deal to accept more migrants from Latin America in return for other countries doing the same.

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CULTURE CALENDAR

By Gilbert Cruz

Culture Editor

🎭 The Tony Awards (Sunday): Even for someone like me, whose job it is to experience oodles of culture, it's difficult to see all the Broadway shows. (And if you don't live in or near New York City, it's impossible.) So I'm thrilled that I'll get to see highlights from musicals like "Six," "Company" and "The Music Man." That's thrilled with a capital "T" and that rhymes with … you get what I'm saying.

📚 "The Hotel Nantucket" (Tuesday): It doesn't feel like summer unless I read an Elin Hilderbrand book, which I've done every year for almost a decade. They mostly take place on Nantucket and they're full of secrets and romantic drama and beaches. I've read my fair share of novels involving magic and dragons, but fancy New England island living often feels more fantastical to me than anything from George R.R. Martin.

🎥 "Spiderhead" (Friday): Speaking of islands, this Netflix movie based on a George Saunders short story about futuristic drug experiments is set on one of those beautiful ones in the middle of nowhere where shady things happen. If you need a strong dose of Chris Hemsworth before this summer's "Thor: Love and Thunder," here's where to find it.

RECIPE OF THE WEEK

Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.

By Melissa Clark

Pad Kee Mao (Drunken Noodles)

Who doesn't love a flexible recipe that can absorb all the odds and ends in the fridge and result in something truly delicious? This speedy pad kee mao recipe from the chef Hong Thaimee is a perfect example. The key is to throw in loads of garlic, fresh chiles and whole basil leaves, which make anything taste amazing. Just pick a protein and a quick-cooking vegetable or two — I recently used shrimp, broccolini and chard — and use the widest rice noodles you can get. Note that if you don't have thick dark soy sauce, adding brown sugar to regular soy makes up for the missing sweetness. Cook this once and it's yours to play with forever, a zippy, spicy weeknight meal that you can make from what you've got.

A selection of New York Times recipes is available to all readers. Please consider a Cooking subscription for full access.

REAL ESTATE

Clockwise from left: Dale Kurtz/Kurtz Aerial Photography; Matt Frates; Dustin DeLuca/MultiBeast Media

What you get for $430,000: an 1846 house in Dover, Del.; a condo in Woodstock, Vt.; or a bungalow in Durham, N.C.

The hunt: She wanted a Manhattan loft. Which one did she choose? Play our game.

Rising costs: The jump in mortgage rates could add $100,000 to housing costs.

Record rates: The median rent in Manhattan was $4,000 last month, a new high.

LIVING

Nicolas Ortega

Swimming safety: Avoid pool germs.

Skin saver: Lots of people apply sunscreen wrong. Here's how to do it right.

Who needs cash? Travelers abroad can increasingly skip the currency conversion.

Staying healthy: Walking may be a simple way to avoid knee pain.

GAME OF THE WEEKEND

Lewis Hamilton practices for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters

Azerbaijan Grand Prix, Formula 1: We're about a third of the way through the Formula 1 season, and it's been thrilling. Redesigned cars have helped the Ferrari team climb near the top, while the seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton is struggling. If you're in the U.S. and don't want to wake up early to watch a race, check out "Drive to Survive," a Netflix documentary series focused on the sport's personalities. It has turned countless Americans into fans. 7 a.m. Eastern on Sunday, ESPN

For more:

Charles Leclerc is contending for the No. 1 spot this season. When he needs to relax, he enjoys scuba diving and flying.
The Times created a 3-D model showing how the new F1 cars work.

NOW TIME TO PLAY

The pangram from yesterday's Spelling Bee was fraught. Here is today's puzzle.

Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week's headlines.

Here's today's Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.

Before You Go …

Watch actors singing the fast parts of "Getting Married Today " from Stephen Sondheim's "Company."
Check out LACMA's online collection.
"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow." Here's Theodore Roethke's "The Waking."

Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa

Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.