They were kind of small and were black with (I think) red foil lettering. Basically just blank address books with the name of the city you were buying them in. I loved those things. No need now I guess with the advent of smart phones.
I wonder when They stopped making them?
Heck, I even miss regular phone books. Address and phone number for anyone in the city at your (analog) fingertips.
It sounds like digs is referring to city directories, which listed the residents and businesses in a town indexed by street addresses (as opposed to phone books, which listed them alphabetically). These were useful to door-to-door salespeople. They were also used by junk mailers. One company who published them was R.L. Polk, with whom I once had a job updating the entries.
The OP seems to be referring to something different. He specifies that the books were blank, and presumably, the user entered addresses of people they knew. Am I reading this correctly?.
I think you are. I was saying I ALSO miss phone directories.
But why would you want a city name on the front of your personal notebook that you write addresses and phone numbers in? Wouldn’t you be filling it with all your friends and relatives who live all over?
I ain’t buyin’ a separate notebook just because my brother-in-law decided to live in Sagging Horse, WY.
Yes, in the 1990s there were publishers of pocket datebooks and pocket address books that had a few pages of local info bound into them to customize them for a few large cities. In the US, I doubt that any city smaller than Atlanta or Philadelphia ever got one.
They came to my attention in two ways: first, as a consumer always browsing stationers anywhere I traveled, looking for the ideal back-pocket datebook. But second, because they would typically want to include the city’s schematic transit map—and I was the designer of Chicago’s. If the publisher made the proper approach to CTA, I’d get an email asking me for artwork at a certain, precise size.
It got really hard to find pocket datebooks in the US after about 2014. I’ll say address book sales fell off around the same time—due to smartphones—enough that no one continued to customize them for cities; they just put wildflower or cute puppy covers on them for the 400 maiden aunts who were still being given them for Christmas.
The same reason some people wanted them with cats on them, their favorite football team or Elvis. Or any of the millions of other things people are fans of or have pride for.
Pfft, there is no such place.