“The original search engine”

For years  - well beyond the point where anyone who lives in my building was interested in them – Yellow Pages were delivered (or perhaps forklifted: those packages were plenty heavy) to the front stoop. Shrink-wrapped in sets of four, they would sit there until I dragged them into the foyer. There they would sit for a few days, at which point I would lug them out back for recycle day.

There were, I believe two competing versions of the Yellow Pages, one published by the phone company, the other by someone else.

Anyway, the delivery of the unwanted Yellow Pages occurred, as I recall, twice a year.

There didn’t seem to be any way to get of the list to receive them. The advice, as I recall, was to recycle. And I would have felt bad to cancel the delivery. What about the printers? The sales people? The delivery folks? I didn’t want to contribute to their loss of work.

Ah, the Yellow Pages.

Although we never used them, my husband for some reason did like to hang on to one of them, perhaps to use as a doorstop. He also had a little trick he would show kids in which he could somehow ram a pencil through the book. But since Jim’s death in 2014, those tomes go straight from stoop to recycle.

Then a couple of years ago, the Yellow Pages stopped coming.

That is, until the other day, when darned if a couple of shrink-wrapped packages full of The Real Yellow Pages showed up. They’re a lot thinner than they used to be – maybe a quarter of the width of the fatsos of the good old days. But there sitting on my stoop nonetheless.

Why us?

I guess because we are largely a building of mostly olds, so there are likely a couple of landlines still in operation in the building. I’m one of those olds. Although I rarely use it, I still hang one to mine, if only to try to catch most of the spam calls I get. And it’s part of my Xfinity account, and only costs a few bucks a month. So on I hang.

But I neither want nor need the Yellow Pages. And neither did anyone else who lives here. After sitting in the foyer for a few days, out the latest delivery went (with one hold out, for research purposes only).

The arrival of the Yellow Pages did leave me wondering who exactly does want and need them.

It’s actually pretty obvious: folks who don’t use the internet.

And that group is pretty obvious, too.

Overall, 90% of Americans use the internet. Of those over 65, 27% don’t. Income less than $30k? 15% aren’t internet users, vs. only 2% of those with incomes $75K of over. 

People of color have lower usage rates than whites; those without a high school diploma have far lower usage rates than those with a college degree (29% non-users vs. 2%). And rural dwellers, likely because there are still remote areas with spotty broadband, use the internet less than city folks and suburbanites. (Data source: Pew Research)

So there you have the folks who might need to rely on the Yellow Pages when they want to find a florist, a dumpster, or a dentist

The Yellow Pages, after all, are according to their tag line “the original search engine.”

Or, as they used to say, “let your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages.”

I flipped through the skinny new Yellow Pages to find that my dentist, of all things, has a listing. But not an ad. I guess someone could let their fingers walk through the list and stop at the “R” for “Riley” because the address showed that they’re convenient. But it seems like such a crap shoot. Maybe next time I’m at the dentist, I’ll ask the office manager why they still keep a Yellow Pages listing. I’m guessing that it’s cheap enough and they do it for old time sake.

There’s also a little White Pages stuff up front, so I guess if you don’t have internet access, and you don’t want to pay for a 411 lookup, you can look up Riley Dental in the white-pagey front end of the book.

The three pride-of-place advertisers – full-page colored ads on the inside front cover, and the back cover (inside and out are a curious mix.

FTD makes sense. And maybe the ambulance chaser who’s grabbed the back cover. (“We help people who are injured in auto accidents.” Well, I’ll give them credit. From a marketing perspective, it’s pretty clear what they do.) But how much demand is there for new and used restaurant equipment? Well, Ed Smith must find that there’s plenty, because he has a big old ad inside the cover. Auctioneers! Liquidators! Appraisers! I’ll keep them in mind if I feel the urge for a commercial pizza oven or bar glasses.

And now I’m faced with a decision. Now that I’ve browsed the latest edition of the Yellow Pages, should I recycle it or hang on? Given how thin this year’s is, this might be it in terms of a print publication. If I give it a toss, what if the internet’s down? What if I have the emergency need for an antique shop? Aromatherapy? Podiatry? Pizza? A pianist?

What to do? What to do?

Maybe I’ll just leave it in the recycle bin for now, but not leave it out back for the truck quite yet. Who knows? Maybe some day it will be worth something on eBay. You never know. The 1971 Houston Yellow Pages (pre-owned) is going for $49.99.