The Yellow Pages

 Yesterday there turned up at our house The Real Yellow Pages, a publication of Verizon. It has been a while since we had a phone book around the house, so I was curious to see what this one had. It is much smaller, of course than the Yellow Pages I remember from the days before Google. It does have many listings, some misleading

Under Book Stores, I was surprised to see Books-a-Million, which has been gone for some time from Dupont Circle. I was more surprised to see a couple of entries for Borders, which has been gone for a dozen years. Among the used book stores, Kultura is definitely gone, and I think that Books for America is, too.

The listing of churches is odd as well. Among Churches-Catholic, the first entry is Archbishop Carroll, which is a high school. There is an entry for St. Anselm's Abbey, with the correct telephone number, but a curiously wrong address, about five and a half miles away from abbey's actual location..

 Among restaurants, I see Equinox, closed for some years now. Mari Vanna is closed, replaced by a Persian restaurant. Naan and Beyond, a lunch counter and carryout at 17th and L is long gone. The Wendy's that contributed the name to Dave Thomas Circle is gone but still listed.

 Schools-Universities & Colleges-Academic is a mix. It includes secondary schools, and a couple of colleges that are associations of medical doctors--pathologists and surgeons--and an MD or two. A church or two find their way into the listings. Many of the listings are for distant universities that maintain a building or two in Washington. At first I thought this odd, but then who ever looked for universities in the Yellow Pages?

 It is possible that the Yellow Pages of my youth and middle age were just as bad. I suspect that they were somewhat better.