Tales of a pay phone

Nohemi Gonzalez, 40, doesn't leave her Mattapan home without quarters, phone cards and her pre-paid cellphone, but she tries to limit her use of the latter. "My minutes," she snaps her fingers, "just go like that," she says in Spanish. For half an hour she stations herself at a Park Street phone on whose receiver is affixed a sticker from the anarchist collective CrimethInc that says, "This phone is tapped... courtesy of the US Patriot Act." Gonzalez calls her husband in Ecuador ($5), her sister in Guatemala ($2), and her daughter in Somerville (50 cents).
(Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff)
Nohemi Gonzalez, 40, doesn't leave her Mattapan home without quarters, phone cards and her pre-paid cellphone, but she tries to limit her use of the latter. 'My minutes,' she snaps her fingers, 'just go like that,' she says in Spanish. For half an hour she stations herself at a Park Street phone on whose receiver is affixed a sticker from the anarchist collective CrimethInc that says, 'This phone is tapped... courtesy of the US Patriot Act.' Gonzalez calls her husband in Ecuador ($5), her sister in Guatemala ($2), and her daughter in Somerville (50 cents).