PHOTO: Empty Elm Street Phone Booth

Every morning, Meredith Bennett, owner of Found, a new vintage designer clothing store in Davis Square, cleans trash and debris out of a broken phone booth in front of her shop.

It's a phone booth without a phone.

Well, to be fair, there's space for two phones, and while one side is completely empty, the other side does have a phone installed. But it doesn't have a dial tone, and the buttons don't seem to work. In an emergency, don't rely on it to call 911.

"People leave food" in the empty phone booth, Bennett said, and sometimes people with mental health problems pick up the broken receiver and scream into it.

One time, a blind woman almost hurt herself by running into it, Bennett said.

"It's an eyesore. It's very dangerous," she said.

The Board of Aldermen have taken up the issue. At the board's Sept. 8 meeting, they asked that the commissioner of public works "direct Verizon to remove empty or abandoned telephone booths throughout the city, in particular, the booth in Davis Square on Elm Street." The measure was proposed by Ward 6 Alderman Rebekah Gewirtz.

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