Zip codes! The original gerrymander.
First off, I think it’s important to acknowledge that the United States Postal Service has put a restricted symbol at the end of the POSTAL FACTS® header on the Postal Facts page on their website. We can disagree about federal fiscal policy, but this is bullshit. You can’t restrict me, USPS, and if you don’t like it, maybe your Austin branch should have kept functioning during Covid like the rest of us. I am done running interference for the Postal Service. Too many mailmen have crossed me (and mailwomen, let’s not let them get away with this based on traditional nomenclature). I’m on the side of the dogs now.
Anyway, POSTAL FACTS® is where we got this map below, which is helpful, and where we learned zip codes originated in 1963, which is a bummer. I was hoping they started in the East with 00000 back before there were 50 states and just made a savant-like guess on the number of digits they’d need. Now I’m more curious what they did in the days before zip codes, but that’s a discussion for another day (Tuesday, specifically, as posts are currently scheduled).
As you can see, the first digit of the zip code corresponds to a region, and since the Postal Service doesn’t have them labeled in this picture and this post could get a little boring if I don’t jazz it up, I’m going to guess what their names are here.
0: Ugh Great New Jersey’s With Us??®
1: Wow Cool New Jersey Isn’t With Us®
2: Virginia & Friends ®
3: The SEC®
4: Basketball®
5: Oh We’re Talkin’ North North®
6: Crops®
7: The Wilder West®
8: Still Nuts That These Are Inhabitable®
9: Libs®
Kind of weird they didn’t go West to East. Please don’t point this out to Kanye.
After staring at the map for those two minutes and doing one google because of a note I saw regarding the IRS, I have more to report.
First, Hawaii and Alaska do have zip codes, but the Postal Service didn’t put them on the map because the Postal Service is still pissed we made their job harder by adding an island state and an exclave. Fair. We should have asked them about that.
Second, I don’t really understand why the Salton Sea made the map but the Great Salt Lake didn’t. The Salt Lake is more than four times the surface area of the Salton Sea. I’m feeling better about the cost of stamps now.
Third, for some reason Holtsville, New York has a few zip codes that start with a zero even though Holtsville, New York is not in New England or New Jersey or the New York-y parts of Connecticut. That reason is the IRS. Holtsville is on Long Island, and it must have some IRS offices, and the Postal Service must not want us to know. Should we march on Holtsville? Absolutely not. I cannot afford to piss off the IRS right now. Not because I owe them money, but because getting audited would be a gigantic pain in the ass for all parties involved. I lost a lot of money flipping Cubs tickets last year. I run an NIT blog. I have giant lists of odometer readings from various days of delivering food and those are not as neat and tidy as they are supposed to be. An audit of NIT Stu would be fun for nobody involved.
Fourth, the Army is involved in this. They sneak into some of the zip code groupings. So if you’re kidnapped but you steal a piece of mail and you see a zip code starting with a 0 and somehow nothing else (this is a terrible example of this being useful knowledge, but alas, here we are) there’s a chance you’re not in New England, New Jersey, the New York-y parts of Connecticut, or even the IRS buildings in Holtsville. You could also be in Europe. (Also Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, those get covered by zeros too). Similarly, some of the Army spots in U.S. territory get thrown in with the threes, and some get thrown in with the nines, alongside all our Pacific territories and for some reason Palau, which I thought was a sovereign nation? (Palau post coming next Thursday, schedule subject to change.)
I was hoping the second digit meant something, but it doesn’t. I was hoping that by looking at the first two digits, you’d know what state you were working with, but that’s only sometimes the case. Here’s the full map if you want it, according to a website I haven’t taken the time to vet. I have to go now. I’ve opened too many image files (two) and my computer is going to crash.
I am so old, I remember when zip codes were a new thing. I was five years old (I know this, because I can picture myself at the little desk in the little house we rented for exactly one year–the year I was five, which was, to save everyone the trouble of pondering the math, 1965). I loved to write letters to my grandparents. In an echo of my kindergarten worksheets, I would write out: “How are you? ___ good ___bad”, and expect them to check the right answer. Anyway, I had to ask my parents for the mailing addresses for my grandparents. In 1965 I didn’t have a smart phone with a “Contacts” app… I can remember my dad saying, “You have to add this number now. The letter will get delivered sooner, I guess.” No more Des Moines, Iowa. Now it was Des Moines, Iowa 50310. This means that even though the zip codes may have been invented in 1963, they were still optional, at least in the 5xxxx swathe of the country. I think the two-letter abbreviations of the states came later. You can check that out for a follow-up post.
Wow, cool! What a time. Thanks!