Here in the heartland we take great voyeuristic pleasure in eavesdropping on the angst of our urban cousins. Right now, the big trauma in New York is the soon-to-be division of Manhattan into two area codes. Of course, they couldn’t adopt a plan as simple as dividing the island geographically, say along Fifth Avenue or across 59th Street. That approach, though good enough for the other boroughs, would require half the people in Manhattan to relinquish their current prefix, the coveted 212. Even Mayor Rudolph Giuliani could never convince upwards of a million contentious Gothamites to give up the three-digit designation that identifies them as living at the very epicenter of the telephonic world.
The obvious solution was to stick it to the rubes, meaning anyone who doesn’t currently have a phone listing in Manhattan. So beginning April 1, every new telephone in Manhattan will be given a new area code–646. That way, everyone already living in Manhattan can keep their glamorous, sophisticated deux-un-deux.
The panache of the ultimate area code will be denied to all newcomers, making a Manhattan pedigree as evident and important on the phone as an Etonian accent is at Buckingham Palace. And as for the soon-to-be 646 peons, well it’s their own fault for not having the smarts to move to Manhattan sooner.
But there’s a gaping problem with the plan, and it’s not simply the injustice to new subscribers. It’s the uncharacteristic failure to figure out a way to cash in on the status-hungry demand for the 212 area code. If so many people want it, why not sell it? If I’m not mistaken, Wall Street and Madison Avenue are both still in New York City.
I’m not suggesting that phone companies be allowed to charge extra for the 212 prefix. That would just be an invitation to price gouging, a pastime in New York that is reserved for apartment rentals, restaurant reservations and tickets to Broadway shows.
I’m proposing something far more egalitarian and democratic. Why not create an efficient market in area codes? Why not let people sell their old 212 numbers to parvenu newcomers, much the way that British nobility has taken to marketing its estates and titles. Not everyone cares about status symbols, and lots of New Yorkers could use extra cash.
Imagine two families. Let’s call them the Kramdens and the Nortons. Ralph and Alice Kramden have lived in Manhattan for years. He is a bus driver and she takes care of their small apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. Earnest, humble, working-class folk, they care little for the outward trappings of prestige. As it turns out, their single most valuable possession is their phone number.
Ed Norton, a sewer worker, is a social climber. He and his wife, Trixie, are freshly arrived from Bensonhurst, anxious to sample all that the big city has to offer. As recent immigrants, though, they are stuck with the maddeningly nouveau 646. Solution: Let Ed and Trixie buy the area code of their dreams from Ralph and Alice. The arriviste Nortons will have the “old line” image they crave, while the pragmatic Kramdens will have a bit more financial security.
And why stop there? The phone companies might prattle on about running out of numbers, but it can’t be true. Simple logic tell us that they will never really exhaust the 212 area code. People will move away, die, disconnect, consolidate households. Businesses will close or downsize or relocate. Cell phones will be stolen. There’s no denying that the hot prefix will continue to become available indefinitely. With almost 8 million usable 212 combinations, an annual turnover rate as low as 1 percent still results in about 80,000 numbers to be reissued every year.
Who gets the recycled 212 numbers? They could be distributed at random, but that’s just asking for graft and corruption. They could be sold to the highest bidders, but that’s a windfall for the phone companies, rewarding them for devising the near-devilish 646 in the first place and encouraging who knows what sorts of opportunistic behavior in the future.
After all, it’s the allure of New York that makes the area code valuable in the first place. So why shouldn’t the city reap the benefit by confiscating the 212 numbers as they are retired? Then they could be sold for public purposes, the proceeds used to finance civic works like cleaning up the subways or cracking down on squeegee men.
Heck, why wait for retirement? Why not commandeer the whole area code right now? Give Mayor Giuliani control over all of the 212 numbers and let him auction them off–with two new area codes for those who won’t pay to play.
Chicagoans, to their credit, would never be foolish or faddish enough to pay good money for a trendy area code. But in New York, fashion rules. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. And now it’s simple–just take a number.
