Specializing in connections to Latin America, the stores offer everything from calling booths and long-distance phone cards to help with travel arrangements and money remittance.
But I've been nearly in tears on the phone, saying: "I don't know how to feed you!" We've got this really swanky supermarket now called Booths in Salford Media City.
When I emerged unharmed a week later in Vietnam, I forgot to call home on the agreed upon date and my poor mom spent several days distraught, waiting by the phone, refusing to leave the house (at that time we had no e-mail, no Facebook, just expensive calling booths).
A practice that had originally been instituted to ward off electoral scams like ballot-box stuffing (we call it "booth capturing") was transformed into a proud reaffirmation of faith in Indian democracy.
Each shelter, called a booth, sleeps six in a small muddy room.
"It's more than just a landmark, it's functional," said Marlene Zucker, 71, another resident of 100th Street, who called the booth an integral part of the neighborhood.
The fact that, since 1995, he has pursued this research program from a perch at Chicago's Graduate School of Business, which is now called Chicago Booth, makes his work doubly interesting.
For the remaining New Yorkers who still cherish the solitary experience of placing a phone call from a booth, the situation at 60 Hudson Street represents the latest in a long, losing battle against modern technology, when even a lobbyist as strong as Superman seems powerless.
