The elusive 212

“Does an area code even matter when most of us make calls by selecting names from a contact list, and not dialing digits?  “I find that I’m using the phone less and less. Physical talking on the phone is something old people do.”  — Doug Jaeger

This is from an article by Caroline Wexler in The Wall Street Journal about how numbers in the 212 Manhattan area code are the new “old” thing in the exciting world of phone number selection. According to the article, you can buy them on eBay.

My dad’s number might actually get us some good money. It’s 925-1965, a number which has the same digits as Malcolm X’s birth and death dates (minus the first 1). We only know this because one day, back before you had to dial area codes in Manhattan, someone called my dad asking for Malcolm X. My dad reported to the caller that Mr. X was a) not a member of our household and, b) dead. The caller had, in fact, dialed the numbers printed next to his name in the newspaper.

You know, come to think of it, my parents have at least five 212 numbers wired into their rent-stabilized apartments in Manhattan.  Let me check out this eBay thing. Ah yes, you can sell them! Some are up to $1000. No wait, one person is asking $1,000,000 for a number that ends in three zeroes.

This could be a model for quite the business idea. All you have to do is cross-reference the NY Times’ obits and the white pages. Duh. 

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My Radio Days

I just read this great piece by Michael Byrne on Motherboard:

The DJ Is Dead; Long Live The DJ: How the Cloud Is Changing Music

 I liked this graph:

The other thing I wonder about is community. I think there is a thing to radio that has nothing to do with listening to a song. It has to do with with doing something with other people at the same time. As very, very imperfect as it is, our 92Q here in Baltimore is a thing that brings a great many people together. It’s not exactly a peaceful or equal togetherness, but there is a shared identity there. It is a way that we can feel together with people that we may not know, but have Baltimore in common. The cloud is about individuation, on the other hand. Every listener their own station. Every listener their own city.

I’ve never been much of a radio listener. At least, not since 1994. That was the year that Z100 called to offer me $1000 if I said “Z100-means-today’s-best-music-now-give-me-my-money” when I answered the phone, but I was at volleyball practice, so they left me a message on my answering machine telling me I didn’t win. If only I’d had a cell! Of course, it would’ve had to have been one of those Zack Morris phones:

Funny to think of that kind of promo now. Ah, the world pre-Twitter. At one point I had actually said the phrase on my answering machine. Point is, it was a distressing moment in my life. I’d listened to Z100 year after year. The Z Morning Zoo boomed from my Dream Machine clock radio each dawn, and then I was lulled to sleep by the sex doctor’s words of wisdom each night (only thing I recall from that education had to do with blow jobs and Halls cough drops). And here they called in the middle of the day! Didn’t they know my schedule?  

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Did you hear the one about the unstamped letter? You wouldn’t get it.

I just went to the post office in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and was told that they no longer will postmark an envelope for you—you have to buy the correct number of stamps and then apply them yourselves. This, of course, is inconvenient if you already have one stamp on an envelope but need to add more. I needed 54-cents. The lady said “We don’t have 54-cent stamps right now, but I can give you 54 one-cent stamps.” I was mailing something smaller than my hand. I ended up buying a 61-cent stamp, suffering a 7-cent loss. Last year I noted that the Post Office seemed to be trying out the music business in order to make money, apparently unaware the music business now makes most of its money on creating reality TV characters. Now, the institution has shunned commerce all together and is embracing the hustle. What’s next? Soliciting sandwiches on the N train?  

The post office clerk then told me that I couldn’t have the return address on the backside of envelopes going internationally; return-addresses have to be at the top left corner. Why? Because machines read them and don’t know which address to read. I’m both surprised and, oddly, glad that the post office doesn’t have machines that are smart enough to tell the right side from the wrong side of the envelope. So primitive! You know? LIke, I bet they’re still running OS X Leopard. 

My last Andy Rooneyism of the day: There were no pens! They used to have pens on chains! Someone asked to borrow my pen. I said sure. It was a 7-Year pen my friend Sarah just gave me—supposed to be able to write up to 2 meters a day for 7 years, so I figured I could spare the ink. The woman goes ahead and starts writing her last will and testament on the customs form. She was a writing fool! After standing there for a good 5 minutes watching her write at a slug’s pace, I finally asked her if I could have my pen back. Harumph. 

Library Saga: News Flash!

I found my library card! Yay! It wasn’t in the wallet (which, as careful followers of this odyssey will know, is no longer in my possession). Apparently, at some point before the wallet went missing, I’d taken it out of my wallet and placed it on my dresser under some magazines. Wasn’t that a clever place to put it?

Excited about my find, I went back to the library this afternoon. (If you’re just tuning into this Very Exciting Adventure, all you need to know is that I threw a tantrum at the feet of the librarians at the NYPL Mulberry branch the other day because their selection was lousy and they wouldn’t let me check out a book because I didn’t have my card). This time I went to the Mid-Manhattan Branch. This is the branch I usually go to, and, in the future, it’s the only one I’ll go to. Was it a perfect experience? No. Of the four books I was looking for, all were marked as “available” but only two were actually on the shelves. But, hey, 50 percent is pretty good in my book. They also had many many many Spanish text books.

But here is the really exciting part: I met a really nice librarian!

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OBSOLETE CONTEST SUBMISSION DAY 2: Male subway etiquette

From Vicki Morgan, NYC:

I’ve noticed that male etiquette on public transportation is obsolete. Men often sit with legs splayed, taking up two rather than one seat. Six men on a row of seats can take up the room of twelve people. They do not stand for pregnant women, older women, or any women. Women who know the weight of pregnancy and discomfort of menstruation and tiredness of age will stand up for another woman and keep their knees discreetly together to allow for another person to sit.

(Click her for contest information)

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