Payphones are an endangered species, soon to be extinct. Though they continue to be taken out of service, one after another, technicians across the country have been leaving their iron stalks behind. Given the expense and labor required to remove them from the concrete below, this is understandable. They have likely grown thick roots over the years, having been watered by thousands of voices.
Eventually, these skeletal forms will also be removed when the walkways are paved anew. For the time being, however, I have heard rumor that throughout the city of San Francisco, several have been made into wayshrines to the god of obsolescence. Worshippers arrive at night and burn cigarette-flavored incense on the interior of their husks. Sometimes entire phonebooks are burned, too.
Devotees of this new god seek many different ends. Some seek power and riches, hoping to uproot some aspect of society and claim it for themselves, while others seek atonement, begging for forgiveness from the spirits of machines that they’ve thrown away over the course of their lives. Their patron deity helps when he can, but he's not always available; for the past few years, he's been hard at work engineering mankind's replacement.