ADRIAN MA, HOST:
It's probably been a while since you used a pay phone or even seen one. So you might be surprised to know that there are actually more than 2,000 working pay phones just in California. A new online game has people racing to find them all before tomorrow, March 15, and NPR's Vincent Acovino explains why.
VINCENT ACOVINO, BYLINE: Twenty-five-year-old Maggie von Ebers (ph) was on a business trip in San Francisco and scrolling through social media. That's when she came across a post about an unusual game. It was called Payphone Go. It's basically a scavenger hunt where players are tasked with going out into the real world and tracking down California's old pay phones using their listed address.
MAGGIE VON EBERS: And I went and looked on the map and noticed that a couple of the pay phone booths were, like, right close to where I'm staying. And so I went into work late and decided to hit a couple pay phones on the way in.
ACOVINO: She followed the marker on the map, which brought her to the intersection of Stockton and Vallejo Streets. And that's when she reached her first obstacle. The pay phone was inside.
VON EBERS: But somebody immediately let me into this really cool old hotel and, like, introduced me to everybody.
ACOVINO: She found the pay phone and claimed her reward, several points on an online leaderboard, but also the opportunity to leave a recorded voice message.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VON EBERS: Hi, this is Maggie. Hey, Matt, how's it going? Miss you so much. And thank you to Cyrus for helping me find this. This is inside the Castro Hotel, and it's beautiful.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE LINE CLICKING)
ACOVINO: Over the next few days, Maggie, with the help of her coworkers, visited nearly 25 pay phones and, for a fleeting moment, was atop the game's leaderboards. For Maggie, the appeal of the game is simple.
VON EBERS: Most people, especially young people, kind of, like, live online these days, which I think is fine to some extent, except you're really missing out when you're not, like, filling all of your senses.
ACOVINO: Riley Walz is the game's creator. He came up with the idea for the project when he kept seeing all these pay phones around after moving to California.
RILEY WALZ: So I filed a Freedom Of Information request with the state of California and got the full list of pay phones, and I was kind of shocked to see that it included the phone number of each phone, too. Like, most of the phones on the list are still working and operating.
ACOVINO: Walz saw the potential for an interactive game.
WALZ: For a lot of these phones, we'll just say, like, a vague address. You got to go in and figure out where it is. Sometimes the phone is a little broken. You got to, like, really listen intently or push the buttons very hard. It's like an adventure.
ACOVINO: But Walz wanted something more for the project - to record and capture these moments.
WALZ: So I don't know who Maggie is, but I DMed her on Twitter because I was like, curious, 'cause there was one recording.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing) What so proudly we hailed at...
WALZ: It was some community center, and you could hear someone playing the piano and singing the national anthem.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Singing) And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air gave proof...
WALZ: It was, like, just such a beautiful piece of audio. It's crazy.
ACOVINO: The result is a new archive, the thoughts and feelings of real people but preserved with the help of old technology. Vincent Acovino, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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