A once ubiquitous part of the urban landscape is quietly crumbling before our eyes.

Pay phones. There used to be more than 2 million of them in the U.S., on city corners, at airports, inside bars. But then we all know what happened.

Cell phones.

Hawaii, for debatable reasons, hung on longer than most. Between 2008 and 2016, while the number of pay phones nationwide dropped 86%, the decrease was only 37% in Hawaii, according to the Federal Communications Commission. That’s the year the FCC stopped counting — who cared anymore?

One of my first stories for Civil Beat in 2016 was about the persistence of pay phones here. I was struck by how many there were compared to the mainland, and that they were still maintained and useable. The ones in Kapiolani Park were even being spiffed up.

How much has changed in eight years.

Now, forget trying to find one that works. Their side panels are smashed in. One in an Aina Haina beach park is spray-painted neon green and haloed in a rainbow of other colors — an art project.

Another, in Hawaii Kai, is behind a fence where someone has hung an official-looking sign with a city of Honolulu emblem announcing that it’s a “Historic Public Pay Phone.” It seems to be some sort of prank. If so, I would love to meet the person or people who went to such lengths.

I was walking by the public library in Kaimuki the other day, and there was a pay phone hanging from its post at a 90-degree angle, blocking the sidewalk, orange cones on either side. It looked like it just decided to give up the ghost and keeled over.

Some of this inevitable evolution is being actively managed, with government agencies asking the current owner of the pay phones — more on them below — to take them away. In other cases, it seems that the structures will just be left to return to a state of nature. Kind of bizarre and slipshod.

The disappearance of pay phones has also spawned a nostalgia movement, in the U.S. and Hawaii in particular, with photographers and others chronicling their demise.

They were, after all, a cultural icon. The 2002 film “Punch Drunk Love,” for instance, includes a scene of Adam Sandler making a call from a Hawaii pay phone, its hallmark side panel of hibiscus gorgeously lit from inside.

An episode of “Magnum P.I.” in 2021 contained a plot element involving the use of a pay phone.

“Pay phones might be dying out, but in the Aloha State, they’re alive and well,” Magnum says in a voiceover. “In fact, Hawaii’s got the most per capita in the country.”

(Side note: this episode centered on illegal adoptions of babies from the Marshall Islands, not long after my year-long investigation on that subject. Did some Magnum writer looking at those stories also happen upon my 2016 pay phone story, in which I calculated that Hawaii had the highest per capita number? Anyway, Magnum, feel free to contact me for more fodder, my rates are reasonable.)

When New York photographer Joe Rovegno posted on Reddit that he had embarked on a project shooting Hawaii pay phones, many people were willing to pitch in by identifying ones he hadn’t found yet.

People also started waxing nostalgic about them.

“It’s going to sound corny and I know you didn’t ask, but I had my first kiss right next to that phone booth back in ’99,” one man wrote. “We had just seen a move at Enchanted Lake/Keolu cinemas and had called my mom for a ride. Every time I drive past that phone booth, I think about it and breathe a little sigh of relief that they haven’t torn it down yet.”

Rovegno made a print of that booth and sent it to the man.

He got interested in Hawaii’s phone booths during his regular trips to the islands with his girlfriend, who grew up in Kailua and whose parents still live there.

He says he’s catalogued more than 100. Some are banged up, some still look presentable, but not a single one works. Some still had Yellow Pages attached to them, dating from 2012. For younger readers, Yellow Pages were thick paper directories containing the phone numbers of businesses grouped by type in alphabetical order. The White Pages listed people’s home numbers. Also, people used to have phones attached to the walls inside their houses, or standing alone on a desk or counter.

Rovegno is a close observer of Hawaii’s phone booths and has noted slight stylistic variations that apparently developed over the years. An earlier version featured panels of pink and white hibiscus flowers with green leaves on a semi-transparent blue background. The later ones were simpler, just white flowers on a solid blue background.

The earlier ones, Rovegno said, are more delicate and are more likely to be smashed today.

He said he has photographed some pay phones only to come back a few months later to find that they have been removed, leaving only the signs and some dangling wires. There’s a slideshow of his haunting images, tinged with melancholy, at the bottom of this story.

Which brings us to the other part of this story. Who’s responsible for these relics, and what are they doing about them?

It’s a surprisingly murky tale.

In the old days, when the only realistic way to make a call outside the home was a pay phone, telephone companies were required to provide one for each “exchange” — the company’s small geographic service divisions.

But in 1996, as cell phones were coming into greater use, the FCC deregulated pay phones. Independent companies not connected to the local phone provider could buy up pay phones and compete with each other.

In 2017, Hawaiian Telcom sold its pay phones to a Canadian communications company called viiz, also known as WiMacTel. You can tell how disruptive the company is by its refusal to use capital letters.

“viiz has a strong presence in Canada and the continental US and is pleased to expand its market coverage into Hawaii,” according to the 2017 press release. “Pay phone service remains crucial to those without other access to cellular networks, and viiz is happy to be able to provide this service for those who need it.”

The following year, Hawaiian Telcom got a Hawaii Public Utilities Commission waiver from a provision in state law requiring it to provide pay phone service. It seems a little odd that this happened after the sale of the pay phones, but whatever.

So viiz/WiMacTel became the keeper of Hawaii’s pay phones, numbering about 3,500 at that time. The company must have thought it was still a going business. But what happened then?

I called every number I could find for viiz and WiMacTel. Nobody responded.

I did, however, get a response from the Honolulu Department of Parks and Recreation, which I called because many pay phones can be found in beach parks.

The department, it turns out, is working with WiMacTel to remove them, spokesman Nathan Serota said. It’s fine-tuning a list of pay phones within its jurisdiction and getting the permits for WiMacTel, aka viiz, to access the sites and remove the pay phones, securing any loose wiring.

The removal of about 100 pay phones should take nine months or so, Serota said.

The department has previously removed some pay phones on an ad hoc basis. One occasion was on the Fort Street Mall in 2022, when murals were installed on old phone kiosks.

So that accounts for 100 out of maybe a few thousand. What’s happening to the rest? Will viiz come and take them away if you call them? Can individuals do it on their own? Will they simply rot in place?

I don’t have the answers. I am a mild-mannered reporter — it’s not like I can turn into Superman by, well, you know …