Photo: badgalriri/instagram
For a few glorious weeks, toward the end of 2014, the flip phone was heralded as the tech trophy of the truly cool. But everything that gives a flip phone that something (retro conversation piece, unavailability of its user) is even more heightened by the pay phone. Once a useful public good, then briefly a disgusting public urinal, now pay-phone stands are the most fashionable form of communiqué. This afternoon, Rihanna has officially initiated this method by phoning from a pay phone at an exclusive location (the White House). This will be the only way that anyone who is anyone will speak in the future: Take note, lackeys.