Five Americans – "Zip Code" (1967)

Zip code

Postman says it’s faster

Do you remember the days before there was such a thing as ZIP Codes?

I grew up in a small city.  The local postal workers were expected to know it well enough that they could sort the mail properly based on just the street address.  

But those who sorted mail in larger cities needed to know more than just the street address in order to handle incoming mail.  

In 1943, the U.S. Post Office assigned postal zone numbers to larger cities – for example, “New York 5, New York” or “Los Angeles 12, California.”

On July 1, 1963, the USPS revamped its mail-delivery system by introducing five-digit ZIP (“Zone Improvement Plan”) Codes that covered every mailing address in the country.  

At the same time, the USPS assigned a two-letter abbreviation to each state, which initially resulted in some confusion.  

For example, there are four states whose names begin with the letters “M” and “I” — Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Missouri.  Any one of them could have been assigned the MI code, but the honor went to Michigan.  The other three were assigned MN, MS, and MO.

MO always struck me as a rather arbitrary choice for my home state, but that abbreviation must have been in use long before 1963 because the yearbook at Joplin (Missouri) High School was called the Joplimo back in the 1940s.

In 1983, the USPS rolled out “ZIP+4,” which assigned nine digits to an address instead of just five in order to make mail sorting quicker and more efficient.

It’s hardly necessary to prove that the American legal system has lost its mind – most of us figured that out long ago.  But if you’re still not convinced of that, here’s an example of just how little common sense some courts have from CNN.com:

California's high court ruled [February 9, 2011] that retailers don't have the right to ask customers for their ZIP code while completing credit card transactions, saying that doing so violates a cardholders' right to protect his or her personal information. . . .

The court concluded that requesting a ZIP code is not much different than asking for a phone number or home address.

Knowing someone’s ZIP Code is NOTHING like knowing his or her phone number or home address.

(Shhhhh!  You're spoiling
it for the rest of us!)

The last time I checked, you don’t share a particular phone number or address with other people – your phone number and your mailing address are unique to your and your family. 

But you probably share your five-digit ZIP Code with thousands of other people.  After all, there are 320 million Americans sharing some 42,000 ZIP Codes — that’s an average of 7500-plus people per ZIP Code.  That doesn’t narrow it down very much, does it?

Here’s the more fundamental point.  The plaintiff could have told the retailer who asked for her ZIP Code to eat it.  (Eat it raw!)  

No retailer in its right mind is going to press a customer for his or her ZIP Code if he or she is reluctant to provide it.  If it does, it runs the risk that the customer will get p*ssed off and walk out of the store.  

You might well ask why the customer who was asked for her ZIP Code would take the case all the way to the state supreme court.

A California class-action complaint

Because the case was filed as a class action, that’s why.  In a class action, the lawyers represent not only the individual plaintiff whose name is on the complaint, but also all those who are “similarly situated” – that is, all of the thousands and thousands of California consumers who shopped at the large retail chain that was the defendant in this case.

The statute the plaintiff cited in this case provides for penalties of up to $250 per violation.  Multiply that by the number of people who used a credit card at that retailer – 10,000 customers? 25,000? 100,000? More? – and you’re talking real money.

Keep in mind that the lawyers who file class actions usually walk away with the lion’s share of any judgment or settlement, and you will understand why this case was appealed all the way to the highest court in the state.

Class actions lawyers often make a lot of money.  Class action clients rarely do.

*     *     *     *     *

“Western Union” was a top-five hit for the Five Americans – not to be confused with Jay and the Americans of “Come a Little Bit Closer” fame – in 1967.

Later that year, they released a single about a much newer method of communicating.  “Zip Code” made it into the top 40, but just barely.

In “Zip Code,” the singer has fallen for a girl who was sitting in the front row when his band performed in New York City.  He puts the appropriate ZIP Code on his letter because the USPS has promised that doing so will speed up the letter’s delivery to the girl.  

We know approximately where the girl lives because the song specifies her ZIP Code.  It’s 10036, which cover a good-sized hunk of midtown Manhattan (including Times Square and Rockefeller Center).

Here’s “Zip Code”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Five Americans – "Western Union" (1967)

Got your cable just today

Killed my groove I've got to say

(It sucks when your groove gets killed, doesn't it?)

The United States is a very different place than it was a decade ago, thanks primarily to an explosion in the number of microbreweries and bicycle-sharing networks.

Here are some fun facts about microbreweries:

– There were 4131 breweries in the United States in 1873.  But there were just 89 in 1978, most of which were operated by a just a few large breweries.  

– That increased to 110 in 1985, 858 in 1995, 1477 in 2005, and 4269 in 2015.

Some of the beers brewed in the Washington area

– There are 70-plus breweries in the Washington, DC, area – that’s more than any other city in the Eastern time zone except for New York City.  Many of those are in the city, and are very accessible even if you don’t have a car. 

And here are some fun facts about bicycle-sharing programs:

– More than 700 cities worldwide operate bicycle-sharing networks, which allow riders to borrow a bike at one station and return it at another station a short time later.

 – The Chinese cities of Wuhan and Hangzhou operate the largest systems in the world, with 90,000 and 60,000 available bikes, respectively.  The only non-Chinese city to crack the top 12 is Paris; its Vélib’ system has over 18,000 bikes, or one bike for every 97 residents. 

A Capital Bikeshare bike

– In 2008, Washington, DC, became the first city in North America to build a bike-sharing network.  Today, Capital Bikeshare is the third-largest system in the United States (after New York City and Chicago), with over 3000 bikes available at 370 stations in DC and three adjoining suburban jurisdictions — Alexandria and Arlington, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland.

Put microbreweries and bikesharing together and what have you got?  You’ve got my day last Friday.

After lunch with my older son and his wife, I headed to the Capital Bikeshare docking station nearest to my office in downtown Washington, DC, and checked out a bike.

Capital Bikeshare docking station

Like most bike-sharing networks, Capital Bikeshare is easy to use as long as you have a credit card.

You insert the card at a Capital Bikeshare station and choose between a single trip for $2, a one-day pass for $8, a 30-day pass for $28, or an annual membership for $85.   Enter the code into the docking mechanism to unlock your bike, and off you go.

Capital Bikeshare stations are
everywhere in downtown Washington

I chose a one-day pass, which allows as many rides as I want to take for a 24-hour period.  I can pick up a bike at any docking station and return it at any another station.  The only catch is that any single ride that is not completed in 30 minutes or less triggers an additional fee.  (This isn’t as big a problem as you might think.  If you’re trying to get somewhere that’s more than half an hour’s ride from your starting point, you can always stop at an intermediate station, return your bike, check it out again, and continue your ride.)

My first stop: the Right Proper brewpub

From 7th and F — which is just in front of Washington’s most beautiful public building, the Old Patent Office Building, which now houses two Smithsonian art museums — I rode 1.3 miles north on 7th to T Street, docked my bike at about 2:00 pm, and walked one block to the Right Proper Brewing Company’s brewpub and restaurant, where I tasted Blanc Slate (a farmhouse ale) and Baron Corvo (a strong “keeping beer” that is fermented in large oak barrels, which gives it a somewhat vinous character).

The first beer of the day

At 3:30 pm, I walked back to the same docking station and rode 3.5 miles (east on T, right on Florida Avenue, left on R, right on the Metropolitan Branch Trail, left on M, right on 4th Street N.E., left on L, left on West Virginia Avenue, left on Fenwick, and right on New York Avenue) to the bikesharing station nearest my second stop of the day, Atlas Brew Works.  From there it was about a half mile to the brewery, where I arrived about five minutes after it had opened at 4:00 pm.

Tasting at Atlas Brew Works

Atlas CEO Justin Cox and my older son were at Vanderbilt University together.  Both then went to law school.  My son went to work at a big Washington law firm, while Justin founded a really cool microbrewery.  (Justin’s dad is sooooo lucky!)

I sampled several Atlas beers, including its District Common and its 1500 (similar to a German Helles lager).  Unfortunately, the Atlas tap room had just run out of Town and Country, a Belgian strong ale that’s aged in red wine barrels. :-(

A recycled beer-barrel urinal at Atlas

At 4:30, I returned to the same docking station, checked out a bike, and headed for the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station, which was 1.7 miles away.  (I went south on Fenwick, left on West Virginia Avenue, left on Montana Avenue, left on W Street, right on Brentwood Road, through the Home Depot parking lot, and left on Washington Place, which dead-ended at the Metro station.)

A Red Line train

I headed north on Metro’s Red Line and got off at the second stop, Fort Totten, where I checked out my fourth bike of the day at about 5:30 pm and rode 0.8 miles to Hellbender Brewing.  (I went up the hill on 1st Place N.E., right on Riggs Road, left on 3rd, and left on 2nd.)

A yoga class at Hellbender Brewing

There were no Capital Bikeshare stations near Hellbender, an unpretentious and out-of-the-way little brewery, so I knew I was going to miss the half-hour deadline for the first time all day.  Keeping the bike for an hour instead of 30 minutes cost only $2 more, and it was happy hour at Hellbender, which meant I saved a buck on the four-beer flight I ordered.

My Hellbender favorites were its Bare Bones Kölsch and its appropriately-named Red Line red ale, but all four of the beers I sampled there went down easy:

Beer and dill-pickle-flavored chips at Hellbender

At 6:20 pm I was back on the Red Line, heading for a classy downtown eatery for one more beer (a Devils Backbone Schwarzbier) and some tasty deviled eggs topped with even tastier fried oysters.

By 8:00 pm, I was back on the Metro, where I promptly fell asleep.  Fortunately, I woke up just in time to hop off the train at my stop.

*     *     *     *     *

The Five Americans, who were originally called the Mutineers, met each other in 1962, when they were students at Southeastern State College (now Southeastern Oklahoma State University) in Durant, Oklahoma.

I used to pass through Durant when I was driving home from college and vice versa.  It is home to the “World’s Largest Peanut” statue, although many say that statue is most definitely not the world’s largest peanut.  

Never a dull moment in Durant!

“Western Union,” which was a #5 single for the Five Americans in 1967, has nothing to do with breweries or bicycles — shared or otherwise.  But it’s a great little sixties Top 40 tune that popped up on my iPod while I was on the microbrewery-by-bicycle tour I wrote about in this post.  That’s enough to qualify it to be today’s featured song.

Thanks to TV and the movies, I know all about telegrams even though I never received one.  But I'm guessing that my kids don’t have a clue what these lines from “Western Union” mean:

Western Union man

Bad news in his hand . . .

Fifteen cents a word to read

A telegram I didn't need

Here’s “Western Union”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: