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. 

5

My friend and general girl-crush Melena Ryzik (aka the NYT’s Urban Eye) did this funny piece on… people who make siren sounds and visit from the moon. All in a day’s work. BUT, did you know: visitors from the moon take direction via typewriter? Yuh-huh!

Ira, take two.

A couple of days ago I was at the cafe on Third Avenue where I met Ira earlier this month. A few weeks ago I did an online video about payphones in which I interviewed Ira (You can see it here — the Ira part starts a little before the two-minute mark.) So, guess who I saw at the same cafe the other day! Ira!

Ira and I hadn’t met until I talked to him on that street corner. We didn’t get this part on film, but he actually told me and my friend Dan a little bit about himself and it turns out he is a songwriter—he wrote the song he sings in the video. Among other things, he and Cy Coleman wrote the music to The Life, a show that was on Broadway maybe ten years ago (I remember seeing the poster—an image of a big red stiletto heel). He told me “I am very Googleable.” Indeed he is! He has a Wiki-page! I don’t have a Wiki-page! He had a newspaper column! I don’t have a newspaper column! (Although, if anyone is hiring…)

So, yesterday, Ira and a I locked eyes as I opened the door to the cafe. He was sitting outside. “You’re a woman of mystery,” he said to me. I went over and asked how he was. He wanted to know where I’d been. I asked him if he got the video—I’d emailed it to him. He said he hadn’t checked his email recently. So, I asked him if he’d come sit with me in the cafe for a minute and I’d show it to him on my laptop. Actually, it’s a netbook. But more on that in a minute.

Inside, I met my friend Ian and we tried to get the wireless signal in the cafe so that I could show him the video on YouTube. It took a while. “I just was talking to this guy outside,” I said. Ian gave me an encouraging I’d-be-lifting-one-eyebrow-if-I-knew-how kind of look. The door opened and in came a squat oval-shaped man with a white-beard and a baseball cap. That would be Ira.

I put on the video (is that an obsolete thing to call it?) and Ira and Ian, who also hadn’t seen it, watched on. While it buffered, Ira and Ian discussed that great antediluvian topic: having a three-lettered name that starts with I. Then Ira gave Ian a hard time because Ian lives in Westchester. Westchester! The shame!

The speakers on my netbook are my only complaint about this little device—they really suck. Neither Ian or Ira could hear anything. So, they lost interest pretty quickly, even though I was breathlessly trying to explain to Ira how bizarre it seemed to me that between the last time we met and now, thousands of people around the world had seen him in this little clip. Many of them had said they wanted to be his new best friend! Okay, it’s not the Cory Kennedy story, but still. Ira seemed unimpressed by this fact. Then he looked at the video for a moment longer. “Oh!” he said. Apparently, he was mentally scrolling through the list of all the women on the street who have recently asked him to sing and then let him use their cell phones (he’d said it was the first time he’d ever used one). He lit up. “You’re the girl who was doing the movie with the pay phones!”

This didn’t seem exciting to him for long. He had moved on to other areas of interest. Specifically, he wanted to know where I got my netbook and how much it cost. I swear, having this thing is like walking around with my young cute cousin. I’m all “ahem!” I was actually meeting with Ian to give him a digital video camera that he’d lent to me. So, Ian recorded a little bit of me and Ira yucking it up. I haven’t looked at it yet. If it’s not too awful, I’ll put it up here. We could be the next Kelly and Regis.

Ira gave me the above business card. No, it hasn’t been shoved in my pocket: it looked exactly like this when he handed it over. Then he told me he needs to get new ones and asked me if I could suggest a place where he could get cards like mine. Mine are shiny and thin and look like crap. His card, however, is a work of art. You know how many guys on Bedford Avenue would kill to have a card that looks just like this? This is the business card equivalent of a rent-stabilized loft in SoHo. You don’t part with it. You aspire to it yet know that you were born a few decades too late to have gotten it in the first place. You know that the golden age preceded you. Ira, if you’re reading this: keep those business cards in a cool dark place. And don’t give them to just anybody.