Area Code Overlays.

This LA Times (registration required) article is pretty fascinating. It is about beginning ten digit dialing in Santa Monica, and it treats the whole thing as a horrible imposition, right down to the requisite local activist opposing it.

What is really fascinating about this though is that aside from what the story says about "guinea pigs" and "if the experiment works," ten digit dialing is actually pretty common in the US. Houston and Minneapolis/St. Paul have been doing it for years. It is pretty amazing that California has resisted it all this time.

I don't know how related this is but one thing that always amazed me about San Francisco is that calling the City from Oakland, or vice versa is a long distance call. But calling San Rael in Marin is not, the same goes for LA where calling across town is long distance. In Houston, where I grew up, nothing even remotely in the city was a long distance call.

Ah well, another California oddity like no mileage posts, which I am weirdly getting used to.