Start the Presses: The humble payphone and its mysterious patrons

Dan Evans

Dan Evans

Near the corner of Coombs and Division streets, across from the main branch of the Napa County Library, sits a payphone. It works. I dropped in a few quarters and made a call the other day, and everything went through more or less as expected. But who uses it?

A sticker below the keypad advertises $1 for a five-minute call to Mexico, with the same price for other countries lasting two minutes. Still, even a brief call to your abuela in Guadalajara would require feeding several dollars' worth of quarters into a machine while standing outdoors, tethered to a 3-foot cord. The appeal has to be pretty low.

I emailed Anthony Halstead, the county's library director, to see if he had any insight. He said that a few years ago, the library explored buying the phone and making it a free public amenity. It didn't work out, though, due to issues with toll numbers and other logistical hurdles.

"...We frequently have patrons who need a phone, and we don't do that (‘it'll only take a second' turns into ‘just a few more minutes'), but I also hate to say no to things," he said.

So the coin-operated phone remains. Local calls are listed at 50 cents for 15 minutes, though the robotic voice demanded two additional quarters when I tested it by calling my cell phone, making the actual cost $1 for four minutes.

At first, that confused me. My cell phone was mere inches from the payphone, making it about as "local" a call as possible. But I have a Southern California area code - a nod to my roots - which presumably made the call register as long distance.

(In an era of widespread cell use, the concept of a "local call" is a strange one. Phones - even business lines - are often tied to a person, not a place. If I had called a 707 number whose owner was, say, in New York, I suspect I would have been charged the local rate. But because I have a 213 area code, I apparently paid more than someone calling Mexico City from the same phone.)

Also: the payphone by the library does not permit incoming calls. As it turns out, almost none do - a vestige of their heavy use by drug dealers back in the parachute-pants era. But what happens if you try?

It does ring, but only once. If you pick up the receiver immediately, a robotic voice repeats "Error 48" over and over. Wait even a moment longer, and you'll get silence when you lift the handset. On the caller's end, dialing the number listed on the payphone produces a high-pitched electronic whine, similar to the sound of an old dial-up modem.

I lingered near the payphone for a while Sunday afternoon, waiting to see if anyone might use it. No one did. I pass that phone nearly every day - it's on my route from home to the Register's new downtown offices - and I've yet to see it used in any way, much less as a communication device. Given what Halstead told me, there does seem to be a need, but cost may be a barrier.

But are there other payphones in Napa? A website - one that appears to have been designed during the Geocities era - lists around 50 active numbers in Napa County. That seemed incredible, as in not credible. It wasn't.

I called about half the listed numbers. Almost all - 21, to be exact - had been disconnected. One led to a generic voicemail. One had a busy signal (that familiar "buzz-buzz-buzz" I hadn't heard in a decade but immediately recognized). And one just rang and rang.

That last one intrigued me. It suggested a lonely payphone ringing somewhere, unanswered because no one felt the need to pick it up. (And, to be fair, a ringing payphone feels like the opening scene of a Stephen King novel. I'm not sure I'd answer it.)

Another way to figure out who still uses payphones in 2026 is to ask the people who own them. PTS Communications, based in San Ramon, operates about 3,000 phones from the Midwest to the West Coast, according to Michael Keane, director of national field operations.

Keane (unsurprisingly reached via cell) said in addition to the one outside the library, the company maintains a handful at Napa State Hospital, with few - if any - others in the county. Elsewhere in the region, phones are often located in parks (particularly in Marin County) and along stretches of Highway 1 where cell service is spotty or nonexistent.

He said most clients keep them as a convenience rather than a revenue source. Even so, PTS operates on thin margins, making the cost to clients relatively modest.

"I tell my kids we outlasted Blockbuster," he said with a laugh.

Well, payphone patrons, whoever you are: May your calls go through, your connections stay clear, and may you always have a quarter handy when your time runs out.

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This story was originally published April 17, 2026 at 7:19 AM.