This article from yesterday's NYTimes demonstrates a modern way to display place-based allegiances: through your area code.
In a city known for its revolving door of young professionals, graduate students and eager-eyed Hill staffers, many a mobile phone number proves that home is where the cell is.
Like a rear-windshield decal or an old college T-shirt, a cellphone number has become as much a part of an identity as a Social Security number. It represents a hometown, a college or a first job, and such memories are not casually thrown aside for a few good years with a 202 romance. For these area-code clingers, those 10 little digits provide a constant in the face of changing locations and uncertain futures.
Certain area codes--also zip codes--have become the envy of others, because of demand but also the relative "buzz" of a place:
Samantha Test, 27, is the proud owner of the Cadillac of area codes, San Francisco's 415. Like its East Coast rival, New York's 917, it is has enormous cachet. A Californian who attended Berkeley and lived in the Bay Area after college, Ms. Test says she just "feels more like a 415 than a 202."
Feelin' like a 412 girl in a 617 world...
Posted by: Boomy | 02/23/2006 at 10:10