do we REALLY need another?

i remember when i was a kid there was just the big four…

…and i don’t mean the metal fest. they weren’t around yet. okay, so there were six:

no, i mean area codes in texas. there was “817” for fort worth (and the areas there ’round), “214” for dallas, “210” for san antonio. and then “512” for pretty much everything else. it went into south texas, down to the coast, all over. “512” was pretty much the bastard are code for anything that wasn’t the bigger cities and wasn’t the panhandle or god-awful west fucking texas, who each had their own – but over time all those cities have expanded to multiple area codes, and a lot of the other areas (the rio grande valley, the coastal bend) have all gotten their own area codes, as has every other nook and cranny of the state:

leaving “512” to austin, which has attached itself to it to the point where people in austin actually get it as a tattoo to identify themselves as austin proud.

then came two weeks ago.

two weeks ago austin got it’s second area code. personally, i think this is a sign we should stop letting people move here.

this isn’t as big a deal as i make it out to be for the most part in my little world because, purely for cosmetic reasons, i always dial all ten digits when i use my mobile. sue me, i like the way it looks. but when i’m at the shop? and need to call another shop, or food, or whatever? i NEVER dial the area code. hell, until june one of this year the fucking phone wouldn’t dial right if you typed the “512”…but now you HAVE to.

it’s kinda fucking me up.

when it happened and people bitched all the dallas and houston folk got on facebook and went after the bitching austinites with, “oh, we’ve had to do it for years”. but you know what? that’s why us bitching folk didn’t live in dallas or houston – it’s too big, too homogenized, too much traffic, too much crime, too much bullshit. those problems and issues and hassles are for YOU people, not us.

so now it’s us as well. i suppose soon the higher crime will follow. we already have the shitty traffic.

to be honest i don’t even know what the new austin area code is…and i don’t want to. to me it will always be “512”. fuck the (fill in new area code here).