Comment by wolvoleo

I've seen those back in the day during a visit to London but they were usually really dirty and completely plastered with adverts for escort services :) Not that I am against that kind of thing but it made it a bit low-rent. Ps the same ads were also constantly studded

Do they want to preserve the real thing as it was or some glorified abstract of it?

Of course one or two should remain but people don't use these anymore. If they all remained they would just be used as makeshift urinals and for addicts shooting up.

In my own country we didn't have the ads (one can simply advertise such services in the paper) but we did have torn phonebooks, smokey booths and often destroyed phones.