Say you’re the pope.
Play along with me here.
Say you want to phone the Chicago Cubs — maybe tell them they’re in your prayers, maybe suggest putting in a proper pipe organ at Wrigley, whatever. What do you do?
You roll up the sleeves of your vestments and let your fingers do the walking through the pages of Informator Polonijny, a Polish yellow pages published from an office on Chicago’s Northwest Side, that’s what.
You (the pope) can do this because you have a copy of the directory. You have it because Leszek Jozef Gil, founder of the Informator Polonijny, gave you a copy when he visited the Vatican last year on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of your pontificate.
“Yes,” Gil said, “I presented it to him in person. Well, not into his hands. Someone else took it. It’s heavy.”
Indeed it is. At 1,832 pages, the Informator is only 155 pages slimmer than the English language Yellow Book and 84 pages larger than the SBC Yellow Pages. And the hefty Informator, like Chicago’s other ethnic “yellow pages” — not all of which are printed on yellow stock or have the term as part of their names — evidences the strong presence of such communities in the life of Chicago.
“The buying power of the Hispanic population and businesses in the Chicago area is more than $17 billion,” said Alan Bresloff, general manager of Guia (guide), the Spanish-language directory targeting the Chicago area’s 1.6 million Hispanics (that’s a Bureau of the Census figure, probably an undercount).
“Chicago is the second largest Serbian city in the world, second only to Belgrade,” said Goran Veselinovic, one of the principals behind the Serbian Yellow Pages. He estimates there are more than 400,000 people of Serbian heritage in the Chicago area.
His book, while focusing on Chicago, embraces all Serb speakers in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana.
There’s also the Pakistani Business Association of Chicago directory, published from offices above the Sabri Nihari restaurant on West Devon Avenue; the Asian American Business Directory; a second Polish directory called the Polish Yellow Pages (causing Gil to add the words, “The Real Polish Yellow Pages” to his cover).
There is a Russian-American directory, the offspring of the Chicago Russian daily newspaper, Novo Svet (“New World”). Similarly, three Korean language newspapers here publish the three Chicago Korean business directories.
Such directories have a value that goes deeper than the phone numbers they list. They are about having a pride in heritage, about maintaining cultural and linguistic connections even while melding into the everyday life of this city. To the extent that many of the directories contain extensive business information on the homeland, they become part of the connective tissue that makes Chicago viable as an international city.
Read as a compendium of immigrant success stories, these books also can inspire. Listing after listing testifies to hardworking people who arrived hungry at the table, reached for a share in the feast, and got it.
A success story
Steven V. Bonica, 38, is one of the success stories. Not only is his Realtor business listed in the Niles-based Romanian-American Yellow Pages, he is the publisher of the directory.
While the scope of the Polish Informator is primarily Chicago and suburbs, the 344-page Romanian-American directory additionally features listings from all across the country, as well as businesses back in Romania.
When he started his Yellow Pages in 1999, Bonica had a hard time explaining to potential advertisers the concept of a directory containing phone numbers and other information.
“People who had been under Communism couldn’t understand the idea of freely available information,” he said. “When Romania was Communist, only the government had information.”
Veselinovic, the marketing and sales force behind the similarly Niles-based Serbian Yellow Pages, at first found his directory a hard sell to people whose community was far larger than they knew. “Serbs here would say, `Why do I need a directory? I know Alexandar, I know Ruzica.'”
When Gill started publishing the Informator Polonijny in 1989 (at 144 pages, less than a tenth its current size), he found that telephones themselves sometimes needed explaining.
“Not all the people understood area codes or things like voice mail,” he said. “In Poland, call waiting meant asking to have a phone installed, then waiting 10 years for it.”
Sometimes the challenges in publishing these directories are overwhelming. There was, a few years ago, a Chicago Jewish yellow pages put out by Mazel Publishing in Detroit; but with a community so spread out here, distribution proved impossible. Abdu Wahid, president of the Pakistani Business Association of Chicago, said that the 2001-2003 directory would be the last.
“Our community believes in saving money, not spending money,” he said, causing Scotland to demand its stereotype back. “For us, it’s one person working and 10 people eating. Too many were not ready to pay the money [for a listing]. Producing the directory was a pain in the neck.”
That’s a shame because the book has, in addition to 147 pages of listings, an extensive, 70-page history of Pakistan, including discussions of U.S.-Pakistani relations and a statement of that country’s investment policy. That section is followed by 76 pages about America and Chicago. Each of the 44 U.S. Presidents is given about a half page of space — way more than most of us likely know about, for instance, Franklin Pierce.
The beauty of Chicago
The section on Chicago begins, “Yes there is a beauty to this vigorous, tough and sometimes brutal town that startles newcomers.” Later, there’s a brief history and a walking tour including, “Down the street on Chicago Avenue is a strange, almost comical white limestone turret that is in fact the city’s most cherished historic monument, the pumping station for water from the lake.”
There’s a subsection on the U.S. economy containing a list of the top 50 banks. Another subsection on U.S. business contains a list of the 25 largest franchise operations.
The Romanian book lists the phones of every member of Congress and every state’s governor.
The Informator shows the range of a Polish language radio station and photos and biographies of the staff.
The Guia has illustrated instructions on what to do in case of choking or electrocution.
Information with real, street-level practicality is a hallmark of almost all of these directories. Ethnic yellow pages tell their audiences how to get a visa, what to do if you get a parking ticket, how to get a driver’s license, how to get to O’Hare Airport. The Informator even tells the name of the person to ask for in a bank or government office if you speak only Polish.
Gil, a journalist in Warsaw for a dozen years before coming to American, takes pride in the ease of finding information in his book and the generously cross-referenced index he calls, “my hobby.”
He was asked if the Informator could be looked on as a handbook for the newly arrived immigrant.
“Yes,” he said proudly, “Oh, yes.”
Veselinovic, of the Serbian Yellow Pages, a directory with the motto, “One home, One Book,” said his directory is intended to help Serbian speakers “realize where they are, know the law, get a credit card and insurance, find a school for their children. It tells them how to use the goodness of this country.”
Some of the people behind these directories have an especially keen appreciation of that goodness.
Steven Bonica’s family lived in Oradea, a Romanian city about 14 miles from the Hungarian border. In 1982, seven years before the release of the Soviet grip on that nation, he tried to escape and was captured. That was in the fall. In the spring, he tried again, this time with a friend, both hoping to make it through Hungary west to safety in Austria.
” The first time, I think my parents had no idea,” he said. “The second time, they didn’t want to know.
“My friend and I went where the border was not patrolled, but someone had turned us in for a reward. I was beaten up. My friend was shot in the shoulder. He survived but was jailed because he was 18.”
Within weeks of returning to school, Bonica was kicked out, told that education was a privilege and that he was a traitor. The government already had an eye on the family because his grandfather was a Baptist pastor and, later, a Pentecostal pastor in a country in which Orthodoxy was the only accepted religion.
A year later, having pulled some strings through a relative in the U.S., Bonica and his parents were able to come to America, to Detroit.
“We left everything behind,” he said. “Basically we traded our house for passports.”
In Detroit, Bonica finished high school, then signed on with Royal Queen Enterprises and learned marketing and sales on the job as he sold vacuum cleaners and kitchen knives door to door.
The family moved to California, and Bonica attended a community college, worked as a waiter and took additional courses in computer-data entry. On a visit to friends in Chicago, he met Simona, a young woman who had come here from a town not far from his in Romania. Three weeks later, he proposed. She accepted. He moved to Chicago. They’ve been married 17 years.
Bonica took a job in construction here, later added work in real estate sales.
In 1994, a Romanian private school, the Norwood Park Christian School, opened. Bonica offered to produce a yearbook. He took the photo of every student and every teacher. To make his pictures look as professional as possible, he bought a backdrop and portrait lights.
“The book was printed by a Polish guy,” he said. He told me about the Polish newspaper, the Polish magazine the Polish yellow pages; and he asked if there was anything like that for the Romanian community.
“I said, `A directory in the Romanian language here in America? That’s crazy!'”
To cut the losses of the first yearbook, Bonica sold ads for the second one, and was amazed at how many came in. He began to think that a Romanian-American directory might not be so crazy.
Relocating
For the first several years, the directory was housed in Bonica’s basement. It’s now in space owned by A-American Custom Flooring, one of the largest Romanian-owned companies in the U.S. Also in that space are Bonica’s other ventures, the Romanian-American Cultural Center of Chicago and a 4,800-book Romanian library. All these come under his not-for-profit Romanian-American Network Inc.
“Isn’t it strange,” he said, “for someone who tried so to escape Romania, that I now am an activist for the community.”
The soon-to-be-published 2004 edition of the Romanian-American Yellow Pages will have more than 400 pages and 3,600 listings as opposed to last year’s 1,200.
“My goal for next year is that I’m shooting for 600 pages, and I can do it,” Bonica said.
His first printing was 5,000 copies distributed through churches and businesses. The next was 10,000 copies, then 30,000, then 50,000.
Last year, he, his wife and daughters, Stephanie, 13, and Rebecca, 9, all piled into their van and made a 7,000-mile swing through the western states. He gathered names for his growing database of Romanian-run and Romanian-friendly businesses, sought distribution points, and spoke at church services.
“In those talks, I praise God for making us Romanians and even more for the opportunity to live in this blessed country. We are Romanians by birth,” he said, “and Americans by choice.”
– – –
Taking a page (white and yellow) out of Chicago’s ethnic history
I did not know that: Things we learned from ethnic directories:
– The Polish directory, or Informator, features a full-page entry, including positive reviews from Publishers Weekly, on “A Question of Honor,” a book about the squad of Polish fighter pilots who fought bravely in the Battle of Britain and beyond.
– Who was the first Romanian in America? The Romanian-American Yellow Pages tells us it was a Transylvanian priest named Samuel Damian, who once had a conversation in Latin with Ben Franklin about various electricity experiments Damian had conducted.
– According to the Serbian Yellow Pages, the Chicago Police Department will provide interpreters in more than 140 languages; all a caller to 911 or to the city’s non-emergency number must do is tell the operator what language he or she would like to communicate in, and an interpreter should join the call in short order.
– Know your U.S. history: The quiz on civics in the Korean Yellow Pages asks how many amendments have been made to the American Constitution. (Answer: 26). Bonus question: What year was the Constitution written? Answer: 1787).
– Bush-Gore? That was nothing. According to the Pakistani Business Directory, the president who endured “the most fiercely disputed election in American history” was Rutherford B. Hayes (1822-1893). When Hayes finally took office in 1877, his temperance-minded wife, Lucy, banned all alcohol from the White House.
– Know your rights: If you rent in Chicago, the Asian American Business directory lists the procedures that landlords, by law, must follow. So if you don’t get a receipt for your security deposit– and your deposit is not returned, with interest, within 45 days of leaving your apartment — your landlord is breaking the law.
– Artificial respiration techniques are different for children and adults, and the Spanish Yellow Pages provides helpful tips, complete with diagrams, on the right way to assist an adult or a child who is choking or unconscious.
— Maureen Ryan
