Per capita wine consumptionPay phones remaining in the US
As American pay phones vanished from street corners between 2002 and 2022, American per capita wine consumption climbed through bottle after bottle, and the two trends have moved in inverse lockstep (r = -0.958) with an appropriateness that feels almost lyrical. One quarter is no longer needed; one glass is poured with precision. The phone booth is empty; the cellar is not.
US pay phones fell from about 1.9 million in 2002 to fewer than 100,000 by 2022, killed by cell phone saturation (by 2012 more than 90% of US adults had a mobile phone) and the collapse of the coin-return economics. Per capita wine consumption climbed from about 2.3 gallons per person to over 3 gallons, with a particular boom in the sub-$15 premium segment, the rise of winery clubs, and the broader cultural shift that associated wine with 'adult' in a way it hadn't been since the Boomer generation's parents. Both are stories of 21st-century middle-class Americans gaining something portable (the phone) and something stationary (the dinner-table bottle), each at the expense of an older infrastructure.
The booth is gone. The glass is full. Neither transition required a vote; both were noticed only in retrospect.
As an Amazon Associate, getspurious.com earns from qualifying purchases. Learn more.
Want to learn more about why correlations like “Per capita wine consumption” vs “Pay phones remaining in the US” don't prove causation? Read our guide to statistical thinking.
