The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi doesn't have one. La Fonda on the Plaza tore its out and replaced it with an ATM machine. There was one on Marcy Street outside La Boca Restaurant, but it didn't work and was removed earlier this week.

Yes, we're talking about pay phones. Though conversations with people on the street suggest most folks think the pay phone in Santa Fe has gone the way of the video and cassette tape, you can find quite a few working phones in town — if you spend some time searching.

The one in front of the Main Library on Washington Avenue still works, for instance. Teen Anna Stahl was making a call right there in front of the pay phone the other day — but she was using her cellphone.

"I see them, but I never see anyone using them," she said of pay phones. "I associate them with old movies." She said she doesn't know anyone who still uses a pay phone, "except maybe my grandpa."

The pay phone on Water Street, outside Cafe Pasqual's, has a receiver that is cracked in half, making it unusable. But you can wander into the nearby Five & Dime General Store on West San Francisco Street, which sports three small pay-phone booths near the concession stand in the back of the store.

But only one of those booths has a working phone. The woman working the concession stand said people use that phone all the time, though no one was seen using it over the course of several visits last week.

Down San Francisco Street, near the parking garage opposite the Lensic Performing Arts Center, stands another working pay phone. A group of teens walking past it reacted with surprise when asked if they ever used the phone. They not only never used it, they never noticed it.

Visits to about 20 pay-phone sites — hotels, gas stations, gyms and stores — almost always revealed dirty, sticky, grimy phones. The cleanest pay phones are in the two lobbies of Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center.

Genevieve Armijo, an auxiliary volunteer at the hospital since October, said a few people use the phone near her information booth every day. But, she added, "They usually complain about having to pay."

There is a working phone outside the Lowe's grocery store on St. Michael's Drive. Assistant Manager Sandy Zamora said, "Every day I see people on it. Older people use it to call for the senior van or a ride. Sometimes people don't have coins on them, and they ask if they can use our phone."

Down Cerrillos Road, by Baja Tacos, the new Fil Er Up station (formerly a Shell station) has an old pay phone that doesn't work. It doesn't even have any identifying labels on it. "We inherited it, but we inherited it broke," said Assistant Manager Steve Taylor.

Still, about once a day someone pops into the store to say, "Hey, do you know your pay phone is broken?" he said — an indication that someone is still using the darn things.

The Walmart on Cerrillos Road has two working, in-need-of-a-good-cleaning pay phones outside. A store employee said, "They are constantly in use," but no one stepped up to use one during a recent 30-minute visit to the site. Perhaps a handy bottle of disinfectant spray would draw more customers there.

Out at Santa Fe Place mall, all the pay phones are gone. Mall management took them out around the beginning of the year, according to Jolene Mauer, marketing director.

"No one ever used them," she said, adding that it took the mall "forever to figure out who was responsible for them. We finally got ahold of Qwest, and they told us we didn't have a contract for them!"

One pay phone remains inside DeVargas Center, near the CVS pharmacy. Only one person stopped by to use it during a recent one-hour visit — a married man who said he uses the phone to call his mistress. He declined to give his name.

The old pay phone at Fort Marcy Complex was torn out earlier this year, replaced by a treadmill machine. The Allsup's off Guadalupe Street, near DeVargas Center, no longer has a working pay phone. The Allsup's at Guadalupe Street and Cerrillos Road has one working phone and two nearby empty booths.

The Santa Fe Municipal Airport does not have a pay phone. Nor do St. John's College (though an old-fashioned booth with courtesy phone service for students still sits in Peterson Hall there), the Santa Fe Community College or the Santa Fe University of Art and Design.

City Hall does not have a pay phone anymore, either, but it does have a courtesy phone in the hallway for visitors.

A 2009 Columbia News Service article by Candy Cheng reports that, at that time, there were fewer than 1 million pay phones in the United States, down from about 2 million in 2000. It notes that the first public pay phone was installed in 1889 at a bank in Hartford, Conn.

The glory days of pay-phone usage were from the 1950s to the 1970s, when pay-phone booths were used by college students looking to cram as many bodies as possible into them. Clark Kent would sometimes pop into a phone booth to change into his Superman outfit, though it was never quite clear where he left his civilian clothes.

Though a representative for Sterling Payphone, an East Coast company that operates many of Santa Fe's pay phones, initially sent an email offering assistance, the rep did not follow up on requests for information on the number, location and income generated by pay phones in Santa Fe.

Maggie Ryan, an employee of La Boca on Marcy Street, was present the day work crews removed the old phone outside the restaurant. She offered the best reason for why pay phones are fading into the sunset.

"They're kind of archaic," she said. "Why would you use one? If you don't have a cellphone, you can turn to the person next to you."

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.