An old phone booth stands in the back of a coffee shop off Manitou Springs’ main drag ー an inconspicuous portal to the past and bridge to the present. 

That’s the power of the Story Booth, as Justin Snyder sees it. 

He owns The Loft, a local gathering place for coffee and homemade bagels and pastries. And, yes, stories. Personal stories of finding this little mountain town; of local lore and traditions; of colorful characters throughout history who have defined this undefinable “Hippie Mayberry” that has always been sought by nature-seeking wanderers.

That includes Snyder. Dial 3-2-0 in the Story Booth, and his recorded narrative comes through the phone. 

“Hey, what’s up?” he starts, before recounting his youth on an Ohio farm, far away from the library. Every Sunday, he would call in to hear a pre-recorded story. 

“And when I saw the phone booth, I thought of sitting there and listening to a story,” Snyder continues over the line. 

He saw the phone booth on Facebook Marketplace, this 1953 box of faded wood. It seemed ideal for the coffee shop he imagined, to be free of any working phone or Wi-Fi. Instead, The Loft implores customers to unplug, to get to know each other. 

And they can get to know Manitou. 

In the Story Booth, they can dial 2-5-0 to learn about Emma Crawford, for whom the annual coffin race is named; 1-1-0 for more about Charles Rockey, another local icon who looked like Gandalf and painted the town in a fantastical way; 2-6-0 for more about Pikes Peak’s peanut pushers; 2-2-0 for more about the drum circle; 3-6-0 for more about a ghost named Happy Chappy and 1-0-0 for the story of a haunted doll displayed at a storefront. 

The stories go on. Here’s Del Hokanson at 1-4-0: “I happen to have discovered that I live in Emma Crawford’s house,” she says, continuing on about the young woman who perished in 1891 to go down in coffin racing legend. 

Hokanson has told Crawford’s story to countless tourists and visitors to her house over three decades, she explains over the phone. Originally from Australia, “we have been very lucky to feel grounded in this house,” she says. “We love this town, we love her story, and we love life being in these beautiful mountains.” 

There are more stories about finding peace and love in these mountains, about other transplants becoming proud Manitoids. There’s a story about the mineral waters behind the name Manitou, said to be a healing spirit. There’s a story about playing violin on the streets and a story about losing a pink bike. 

Here’s Mayor Natalie Johnson at 3-4-0, recalling the bike that was stolen and put up for sale outside a Safeway. 

“I get to the Safeway, and people were standing around my pink bike, guarding my pink bike for me,” Johnson says. “And it just makes me think about the community I live in, and why I like to be involved in everything that’s happening here, and it’s because I believe in that story of the pink bike, and I believe that in Manitou everyone can get their pink bike back.” 

It was the kind of story Audrey Gray loved to hear as the Story Booth was coming together.

Ultimately, “I wanted it to tell a love story to Manitou,” she says. 

Gray leads Creative Alliance Manitou Springs, the nonprofit fostering art in town. She was exactly the person Snyder needed to meet over a year ago ー the next customer with whom he shared his idea for the old phone booth in the back of his coffee shop. 

Snyder had the Story Booth idea, “but I didn’t have the time nor the skill to bring it to fruition,” he says.

Which is why he would share the idea with any customer who remarked on the phone booth: “I knew there would be someone who thought it was a good idea, too.”

He figured that’s how Manitou was, how life was, as long as one reached out: serendipitous. And as Snyder served her food and talked about those boyhood calls to the library, Gray indeed took to the idea.

Gray got to thinking about her organization: “We don’t do anything cool with spoken word art, and it could be a different kind of project.”

She sees spoken word art popularizing. And she sees it as timely: “I feel like it helps us feel connected in this world where disconnection is rampant.”

She went on to connect with storytellers ー local historians, community organizers and everyday residents with precious memories. They would be recorded in the home studio of a local man with a passion for recording and painting miniature figurines. Meanwhile, Gray secured a state grant for a contractor to reengineer the old payphone and play back the recordings. 

More than a year later, the Story Booth is exactly what Snyder imagined. And it’s more than he imagined.

“I’ll see parents sit their child down, and they’ll go, ‘This is what I used to make phone calls with,'” he says. “And it’s that child’s first experience with a phone like this, and it makes me think about how my most memorable experience with a landline was hearing stories. It’s just the coolest thing to me.” 

The Story Booth is a bridge beyond generations, Gray likes to think.

“I feel like it represents community and what community can and should be,” she says. “We live in this time where anger and public ugliness is modeled for us every day. And it’s like, no, wait, this is what’s really important. It’s people and connections, and trying to build something together.”