I just saw this wonderful story on a CBS station - the new uses for the old phone booth
https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/arts-culture/blogs/amazing-afterlife-british-phone-boxes<snip>
In a photo-driven piece for the New York Times, Palko Karasz explores how blazing-red pay phone booths (or phone boxes, as they’re better known across the pond), which for nearly a century have served as an enduring symbol of London and the United Kingdom as a whole, are experiencing "something of a comeback" after a long stretch of neglect hastened by what Karasz calls "the march of technology." And by and large, they're coming back as completely new things.
Mirroring popular sentiment regarding the monarchy, it seems that most Brits are proud of old-school phone boxes — they’re beloved pieces of British heritage, after all — and don’t mind having them around, so long as they’re useful, modern, different.
British Telecom is steadily removing many remaining public phone boxes across London and beyond due to plunging usage rates.
And Britain’s newfangled red phone boxes are certainly different.
With a keen eye toward historic preservation, an impressive number of red phone boxes have been plucked from junkyards and transformed into ATMs, free little libraries, info booths, pop-up art galleries, cellphone repair stands and dainty coffee dispensaries. In some rural stretches of England where emergency medical help can be slow to respond, outmoded phone boxes have even been outfitted with defibrillators. And because this is Britain, there's also been a one-night-only phone box pub.
"Today, they are once again a familiar sight, fulfilling roles that are often just as important for the community as their original purpose,” Karasz writes for the Times.
great pics at link
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thanks for the reminder!
Loved this one the most - the rural one with defibrillators
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"With something as serious as a cardiac arrest, time is of the essence. Unfortunately, ambulance services often can’t reach country villages in time," Martin Fagan of the Community Heartbeat Trust explains. "To install defibrillators in disused phone boxes is ideal, as they’re often in the centre of the village. And it means the iconic red kiosk can remain a lifeline for the community."
Hehehehehe 
Of course people used to do this too -
Thanks malaise! I love the British phone booths. I would have been so sad if they had disappeared from the landscape. I am glad they are finding a new use for them.
Thanks for posting! 
Turning old cigarette vending machines into ones that vend art. Been around for twenty years now. As of now, there are about a hundred working machines out in public.
I love those British phone booths! 
I didn't see the story on CBS so Thanks for posting this!
