Yellow Pages no more. Flickr/Thomas Hawk. CC BY-NC 2.0.http://test.test The announcement that the Yellow Pages will be ceasing its 50 year print run in January 2019 reminded me of the grimacing strongman Geoff Capes. In the 1980s the ability to rip a phone directory in half seemed to be an ultimate symbol of human strength. In fact, the Guinness Book of Records still carries a number of records for phonebook tearing – the greatest number of phonebooks ripped from the spine in one minute is 33. Yet when the last copy of the Yellow Pages is delivered, its ongoing legacy will not be limited to such trivia.
Launched in 1966, the Yellow Pages is perhaps the best known classified business directory. Known for its bulky presence, hence the wonder at ripping, it became a staple prescence in homes and workplaces. When a business or service was needed, the Yellow Pages was a trusted source. The most recent version stretches from abattoirs to yoga, covering everything from taxidermists to graffiti removal. Inevitably the rise of the internet has led to a dwindling interest in these artefacts of a slower age. The comparative slimness of the recent editions is testament to this: the book is getting smaller with each passing year. Ripping the Yellow Pages is no longer quite such a feat.
The famous Yellow Pages TV adverts give a sense of the importance and cultural reach of these hefty yellow books. Stretching across the 80s and 90s, the best known of these adverts involved a man attempting to track down a book. Working his way through the list of booksellers, JR Hartley finally tracked down a rare copy of his own book Fly Fishing. This was part of a series of adverts in which people turned to the Yellow Pages for help – in another case a house party leaves a young man in need of a French polisher to remove a scratch from a table before his parents arrive home from holiday. Yell, who are behind Yellow Pages, even have a ‘classic adverts’ section of these adverts on their YouTube channel. In all cases, these books were depicted as a comforting presence that could impose order, find the things we need, resolve problems and allow us to negotiate a complex world. The adverts stick in the mind partly because of how smart they were, but the apparent power the Yellow Pages to render a messy world knowable and accessible also played a part.
