Posted on: Thursday, September 23, 2004
OUR HONOLULU
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By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist
You may have already discovered that the new telephone book is BIG news, the most gigantic best seller in the history of Our Honolulu. It weighs more than many babies at birth and is thicker than a quadruple whopper cheeseburger.
I can think of all kinds of ways to put it to use. Carry it from the living room to the kitchen a few times and you won't have to buy one of those exercise machines. Throw away the high chair for your 2-year-old. Just set her on the phone book and she can reach the table. Use it as a footstool.
This epic, all-in-one volume is 3 1/4 inches thick. Last year's separate phone books of white and yellow pages measure about an inch less even when you put one on top of the other. Rebecca Breyer • The Honolulu Advertiser It's not that this edition has more information, just more pages of advertising and cardboard inserts. Finding a number is like surfing the Internet.
Buried under the blizzard of ads is evidence of some interesting developments in Our Honolulu, most of it reflecting the upsurge in Hawai'i's economy. Real estate listings vaulted from 10 yellow pages last year to 16 in the new book. All the business activities that I checked, from plumbing to computers, have more pages.
For the last five years, schools filled eight to nine yellow pages. This year, schools jumped to 13 pages. Is there a renewed, grass-roots interest in education?
Here's another provocative statistic: Attorneys once again are the yellow page champions. For the last three or four years, restaurants and attorneys competed on fairly equal terms, as if we haven't been able to decide whether we'd rather go out to dinner or sue somebody.
Twenty-five years ago, the automobile ruled the yellow pages. Then our interest in cars declined and we fell in love with attorneys. This was followed by a healthy interest in doctors. Cars fell to fourth place and restaurants competed for first.
Now attorneys have made a strong comeback, from 66 yellow pages last year to 82 this year. Restaurants gained five pages, from 64 to 69. Physicians jumped 13 pages, from 46 to 59 pages to remain in third place. Autos gained only nine pages to come in fourth.
What does it all mean? Do good times encourage litigation? Is our love affair with cars going on the rocks?
Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.
I took the new directory to the dispatch office down the hall where the ladies weigh themselves on a bathroom scale. The directory checked in at 5 pounds. But the ladies admitted they use the scale because it lies. So we went to the the heavy-duty scale in the old press room where we used to weigh newsprint. The book weighs 8 pounds — twice as much as last year's white and yellow pages put together.
The new phone book, bottom, dwarfs the 2003 volumes.
