August 18, 2008
Does This Look Like 'Your' Community Phonebook?
A reader from Glover Park sent in this image of the cover of this year's Northwest D.C. Your Community PhoneBook, which was recently delivered to residents in the wealthier parts of the city. According to the Community PhoneBook web site, the telephone directory covers "Northwest Washington, D.C.", which by their definition includes only AU, Cathedral Heights, Cleveland Park, Foxhall Crescent, Friendship Heights, Georgetown, Glover Park, Palisades, Spring Valley and Tenleytown. Dupont Circle doesn't even make the cut -- so in other words, only the areas that could more accurately be described as Upper Northwest D.C. Community PhoneBook doesn't make a directory for any other part of D.C.
That this company only targets wealthier neighborhoods isn't the only thing that gets us -- it's hardly surprising, especially considering the D.C. Examiner famously delivers to more or less the same neighborhoods (plus Dupont Circle), and for that matter, you'd be hard pressed to find newspaper boxes for any (or certainly as many) other free publications like Express, Washington City Paper or The Onion in some of the city's poorest neighborhoods.
But look at some of those images: a kid on a tire swing, and water skiing? This is what comes to the publishers's mind when they think about Glover Park? Water skiing?
At least hardly anyone consults a paper version of the yellow pages anymore.
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I've seen water skiing on the Potomac. And I've seen kids in tire swings.
But is that a field of wheat along the bottom half of the cover? Because I've never seen that in DC.
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Who the f*ck still uses a phone book?
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I guess if they had to include all of the other neighborhoods in NW DC, they would have to add a homeless guy all dirty with a cup asking for change, drunk frat boys puking on the street and the prima donnas with their phones glued to their ears as they step out into traffic.
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*Yawn*
Speaking of phone books, where the heck did I leave my 8-tracks...
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oh please, dont tell me you've never water skied to cactus cantina
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Note to all telephone companies: please stop producing and distributing these dead-tree phone books. Nobody uses them, they end up littering our stoops and apartment building lobbies for weeks, and they just plain suck. OK, make a few, available free upon request, for those who don't have computers. Thank you.
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I had no idea! I'm outraged!
I'm immediately starting a campaign to get The Onion delivered to the city's poorest neighborhoods.
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>>AU, Cathedral Heights, Cleveland Park, Foxhall Crescent, Friendship Heights, Georgetown, Glover Park, Palisades, Spring Valley and Tenleytown.
aka "The Volvo Belt"
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"OK, make a few, available free upon request, for those who don't have computers."
Or for those of us too cheap to purchase stepstools.
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That's one fine looking carbon footprint!!
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Is LNS listed under "Douchebags" or "A$$clowns" in a yellow pages?
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The people on the cover must not actually be from DC. They appear far too happy. They must have been drinking the tap water.
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Jet ski maybe. Waterski, not so much. Anyway, this isn't about "reality" per se, but what the clowns in charge of this whole godawful fiasco want to convey as their neighborhood identity. Fun (waterskiing), old timey values (tireswing rope by the old watering hole where we found that dead body that one magical summer), and smiling, non-threatening Black people.
So what are the alternatives? A guy running away from a fireball? Alex and his droogs going on a joyride in a stolen Durango 95? Goatse? Because that big oval frame is begging, begging for a goatse.
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this company should be sued for gross misrepresentation! when it arrives upon my doorstep - ok, when i steal it from someone else's doorstep because it won't come to 'my community' - i think i'll be able to just call up all the local waterskiing outfits to compare prices on simultaneously fulfilling my dreams of waterskiing the potomac and getting maximum DC water fish rot.
but no. this travesty doesn't even cover the area around the potomac, apparently.
i guess the guy could be skiing the georgetown reservoir?
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If anyone doesn't know what a Goatse is, don't look it up at work. Trust me, it is not for anyone of a delicate mind.
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Free newspapers are not given away in poor areas of town as "the poors" canont read
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uh... holy crap, lookit dis!
www.dcwaterskis.com.
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Ha! ;)
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They should have also added a picture of Heller with his Smith & Wesson special edition handgun to show that DC is now a handgun friendly town.
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I think that image should be a candidate for the Photoshop Disasters blog.
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I think an appropriate cover would be a panoramic photo of the High Heel Race. Wouldn't the upper crust of NW like that sitting on their kitchen counter?
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Waterskiing in the Potomac is like drinking the DC water straight from the tap. You don't want to do either unless you like living on the edge.
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"Who the f*ck still uses a phone book?"
Old people - the phone book is like google for old people.
Also, on the rare occasion that a small child visits my home they make excellent temporary booster seats.
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wizzyliz -
the high heel race is far from appauling or anything remotley counter culture. half of bougie ass DC turns up...
the cover is wackadocious
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slow news day huh? keep up the great work....
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isn't this 'Upper Caucasia' per the City Paper's guide to DC?
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"Episcopalia" was the term the CP used.