First came the rhinestone-encrusted
rotary. Then the cherry-red lips. After that, the cheeseburger.
By last summer, Chanell Karr had amassed a
collection of six landline phones. Her most recent, an orange Trimline
originally made as a promotional item for the 1986 film “
Pretty in Pink,” was
purchased in June. Though she only has one phone — a more subdued VTech model —
hooked up, all are in working order.
اضافة اعلان
“During the pandemic I wanted to disconnect from all
of the things that distract you on a smartphone,” said Karr, 30, who works in
marketing and ticketing at a music venue near her home in Alexandria, Kentucky.
“I just wanted to get back to the original analog ways of having a landline.”
Once a kitchen
staple, bedside companion, and plot device on sitcoms such as “Sex and the
City” and “Seinfeld,” the landline phone has all but been replaced by its
newer, smarter wireless counterpart.
In 2003, more than 90 percent of respondents to a
survey conducted by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they
had an operational landline in their homes. As of June 2021, that number —
which includes Internet-connected phones and those wired the old-fashioned way
(via copper lines running from a home to a local junction box) — had dropped to
just over 30 percent.
But like record players and VHS tapes, landline
phones are being embraced by nostalgic fans who say their non-scrollable and
non-strollable nature is an antidote to screen fatigue and over-multitasking.
The crescent shape of many phones’ receivers, users say, is also a more
natural, comfortable fit against a cheek than the planar body of a smartphone.
And with a non-cordless device, one must commit more to the act of
conversation; the phone call becomes more intentional.
In January,
Emily Kennedy, a communications manager
in the Canadian public service, started using an old Calamine-lotion-pink
rotary phone from her father’s office as a way to detach from her work in
social media.
Ironically, it was on Twitter where Kennedy got the
idea. When
Rachel Syme, a staff writer at The New Yorker, tweeted in January
about a landline phone that she had hooked up via Bluetooth, Kennedy was one of
many who replied saying that Syme had inspired them to set up one of their own.
“Having my old phone as an object in my house is an
identity signal that I like a slower pace,” said Kennedy, 38, who lives in
Ottawa, Ontario.
Like Syme and many other modern users of analog
phones, Kennedy doesn’t have her landline copper wired — so it doesn’t have its
own number — but uses a Bluetooth attachment to connect it to her smartphone’s
cellular service. (In other words, when she’s connected, she can take a
cellphone call on the landline.)
Matt Jennings has worked at Old Phone Works, a
company in Kingston, Ontario, that refurbishes and sells landline phones, since
2011. Now its general manager, Jennings, 35, said that in the past two years,
customers’ demand for candy-colored rotary phones from the 1950s and 1960s has
skyrocketed.
“About a year and a half ago, it absolutely
exploded,” Jennings said. “Over the past six or seven years, we might get one
or two orders for them, and now it’s probably one of our primary sources of
revenue.”
Of what has motivated the recent desire for landline
phones, Jennings said, “It’s a return to basics.” He added, “You can’t really
go anywhere with a corded phone, you’re basically stuck within a 3-foot radius
of the base. You can have a real conversation without being distracted.”
Rachel Lahbabi, 37, noticed a similar surge in
interest after she started selling landline phones online through her
Etsy store, Robert Joyce Vintage, in early 2021. By that October, they had become
some of the most viewed products she offered, said Lahbabi, who lives in
Charlotte, North Carolina.
“The ones I was putting up were just going so
quickly,” she said. “I thought, ‘OK, people are clearly looking for this, so I
should really focus on this trend.’ ”
Pink phones shaped like lips have been particularly
popular among her customers, Lahbabi said, as well as models that are clear or
neon. Also in demand: Garfield phones.
All of these styles, she added, “are probably
similar to a phone they had when they were younger.”
Across Etsy, there was a 45 percent increase in
searches for Y2K and ’90s phones and a 26 percent increase in searches for
rotary phones in 2021 compared to 2020, said Dayna Isom Johnson, a trend expert
at the company.
While many who have recently acquired landline
phones are using them with newer technology, some prefer a more traditional
approach.
As appealing as landline phones may be, even their
most ardent fans recognize it is basically impossible to use them exclusively.
Alex McConnell, 30, a personal banker at
KeyBank in
Fort Collins, Colorado, has a Western Electric rotary phone wired to copper
lines at his home. On Feb. 14, he did not celebrate Valentine’s Day, but the
146th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell submitting the patent application
for the telephone.
“I prepared a meal with ‘Bell’ peppers and ‘Graham’
crackers,” McConnell said. “Then I made a circular cake that I used blue icing
to put the Bell logo on, and the original patent number for the telephone.”
His landline phone is not only more reliable than a
cellphone, he said, but also encourages him to memorize friends’ phone numbers,
which he considers a form of intimacy.
“Since I actually have to dial my friend’s phone
numbers, I find it really does help me connect them to memory,” McConnell said.
But even he cannot avoid the call of modern life.
“My secret sorrow is that I do have a cellphone.”
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