Shrunken phone book reflects city

Thursday, August 24, 2006 Two big additions in the phone book are in housing and repair categories. NEW ORLEANS (AP) — On a recent hot day, the new phone book landed with a thud on the stoop of a house that one year ago lay under water, a notable sign of normalcy. The phone book's arrival is a mark of progress here, but it's also a window into how much has changed. With nearly half the city's population gone, two swollen books have shrunk to one, after a decision by the phone book's editors to fold the white pages into the rest of the book. Meanwhile, the yellow pages now include far larger ads for contractors, electricians, roofers and others crucial to the city's rebuilding. Lay the old and new editions side by side and the resulting contrast is a microcosm of a transformed metropolis. It's one in which people need help repairing their homes, but don't have time to fuss with their hair — the 'Contractors - General' section jumped from six to 14 pages and 'Roof Contractors' from 15 to 32, while listings under 'Beauty Salons' declined 42 percent from 541 individual businesses to 316. "Every single thing that people need to rebuild their lives is literally in that book," said BellSouth Corp. district sales manager Gayla Meilleur, who worked on the New Orleans phone book. Here's the focus Which is exactly the point: In a city in tatters, where a majority of homes still don't have electricity, the focus is on making whole what was destroyed. It's businesses that help people do that which are seeing a spike in sales and are now represented with larger, splashier ads. People need to buy mattresses and couches to replace their soggy ones, but they can't afford to do so with antiques: The 'Furniture' heading leaped from three to over four full pages, while 'Antique Dealers' is thinner, having shed 26 out of 145 businesses. Businesses that offer luxury goods, or else services that are not essential, are struggling and so scaling back their presence in the new book. So are those catering to tourists — the 'Gift Shop' category dropped to 139 listings from a pre-Katrina high of 167. "Everything is housing right now. Nothing else matters," said window installer Sam Criscione, owner of Classic Vue Exteriors Inc., who's installing three times as many windows as he did before the storm. His lean, rectangular ad didn't change size, but instead he added a splash of aquamarine blue to the lettering — a way to call attention to his 44 years in business and to differentiate himself from out-of-town "storm chasers," he said. Windows are one of the first items to get replaced — as are roofs. Within a month of the storm, one of New Orleans' oldest roofing businesses was fielding 10,000 calls a month, up from around 1,000 at the same time the year before. The call volumes tracked by BellSouth offer a portrait of frantic rebuilding: Businesses under the 'Roofing Contractor' heading saw, on average, an 833 percent increase in calls. Those under the 'Contractors-General' were up 333 percent. 'Gutters & Downspouts' leaped 483 percent. Analysts had predicted the construction industry would thrive in the wake of the destructive storm. But they had also forecast that nearly all other sections of the economy would shrivel. The spike in calls to other headings in the phone book reveals they were largely wrong: Calls to businesses under the 'Attorneys' tab jumped 183 percent. 'Chiropractic Physicians' spiked 108 percent, a result of people throwing out their backs as they struggled to repair their homes. and in spite of the burden of rebuilding, families still needed to see the dentist — calls leaped over 107 percent. Thousands of businesses provided goods and services that are not rebuilding-oriented, yet are still essential to the day-to-day life of the city. Because many of them flooded, those that managed to reopen are now reaping the bounty their competitors left behind. Making changes Those that don't provide essential services changed their business model to cater to the new economy, like high-end landscapers, who pulled out the chain saws and joined the ranks of tree cutters. Calls to businesses under 'Tree Service' ballooned 488 percent. The part of the economy that's limping are shops like the one in the French Quarter that sells hats dressed in vintage brocades and South African feathers. Unlike cashing a check or getting a pair of new glasses, a hat is a frill. So are attempts to pamper oneself — 'Massage Therapists' has 21 percent fewer businesses listed than last year. And between tearing out wallboard and battling insurance adjusters, many have fallen off the diet bandwagon — 'Weight Loss' has 39 percent fewer listings in this edition than in last year's. Yet one can deduce from the new phonebook that large swaths of the economy are doing better than expected. It has 44,579 individual businesses listed — just 1,046, or 2 percent, less than last year. It's not cheap to advertise in the phonebook — a quarter-page, full color ad costs over $960 a month, according to BellSouth — so it stands to reason that businesses making that kind of investment are up and running. At the same time, the fact that the white and yellow pages have been consolidated into a single phone book is a testament to how much this once vibrant city has shrunk: To date, only 235,000 people, or around 45 percent of the city's original population of 485,000, has returned, according to state estimates. It's an estimate which jibes with the rate of utility hookups — so far only around 47 percent of customers in New Orleans have resumed their electric service. Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.