Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!texbell!vector!telecom-gateway From: david@indetech.com (David Kuder) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Yet Another Area Code Split Message-ID: Date: 18 Oct 89 20:15:00 GMT Sender: news@vector.Dallas.TX.US Lines: 75 Approved: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.dallas.tx.us X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 460, message 1 of 8 This appeared in the Tuesday, Oct. 17, 1989 [Los Angeles Times]. Typed in without permission. All views are those of Robert A. Jones. One editorial observation, East L.A. is largely Hispanic, South-Central is largely black. Both are lower income areas. The Westside is an upper income area where the only color that counts is the color of your money. "Forget Signs - What's Your Area Code?" by Robert A. Jones There is a building in Pasadena where they make new area codes for Southern California. If you call directory assistance, the operator will not admit this building exists. Its number is unlisted. But somewhere in the dungeons of this Pac Bell office, right now, a new area code is being planned for L.A. Not all of L.A., of course. Just certain parts. Once again, the city has outgrown 213 and some neighborhoods must be marked for exile to a new number, a new identity. Eventually, in the next three or four years, a visitation will take place in the dark of night. Whole blocks, small cities, will be taken away, never to see 213 again. If you don't understand the repercussions, think of it this way: there are only three area codes that mean anything in this country. They are 212 in Manhattan, 202 in D.C., and our own 213. Everyday, from dawn to midnight, 212 gets on the horn to 213 and vice versa. In turn, both 212 and 213 light up the fiber-optics to 202. These three form a troika of codes; they run the country, and you're either in this troika or you're out. Soon, a big chunk of L.A. will be out. Take a look at a map of 213 and you will see how hard the choice will be. Compared to this, the 818 thing was easy. With 818, Pac Bell simply ran the boundary down the ridge line of the Hollywood Hills. Everyone to the north was out. Ther was such a logic to it that the whining of the 818's was fruitless. This time there is no geography to use. That means the company has to make its decision on cultural grounds. Should the Westside be lopped off? Just picture the wailing. Or should downtown become the cultural amputee, cut off from its telephonic roots? In truth, Pac Bell could go after the smaller players, like East L.A. or South-Central. There's one major problem with this strategy: it would leave the company vunerable to the charge that Latinos and Blacks had been gerrymandered out of the code, leaving 213 to the rich whites. As I say, this could get ugly. And there's the matter of the new number itself. This country has been gobbling areas codes so fast that only a few remain available. The phone company won't reveal these numbers, but that's O.K. We've made a our own calculations, based on the arcane rules of area code formation. This list of possibilites looks pretty much like this: 310, 410, 903, 909, 910. In my mind, there is only one choice. The numbers ending in 10 are entirely too friendly for L.A. They're codes for suburbs. And 903 is nowhere, a nebbish. That leaves 909, a great code. Nine-Oh-Nine has dark power, it's sort of a Darth Vader number. Nine-Oh-Nine could carry on the struggle with New York. All of which leads me to my modest proposal. As we know, show biz has always existed as a separate community in L.A., a world that's hidden and unavailable to the minions. Swell. Let's recognize that, draw a circle around the show biz neighborhoods and give them this new power code, 909. Then the rest of the city, with the old 213, could disengage and go its own way. =========================== [Moderator's Note: I won't even bother to correct some of his errors, but I have to wonder where he gets the impression that 212/202/213 is all that matters in the network. And I suppose the same sort of sinister implications could be made about our impending 312/708 split: Chicago (the minority is in the majority; blacks and latinos are about 2/3'rds of our population) gets 312, and the rich, white people in the suburbs get 708. To me, they are just numbers, and frankly, I think the author of this piece in the El Lay Times is one doughnut short of a full dozen. PT]