"It's not the end of the world if you have to do it," one citizen told the San Francisco Chronicle's Steve Rubenstein. "If this is the biggest inconvenience in your life, you’re lucky. You could have some terminal disease instead.”

"Don't get rational with me, miss," let's hope Rubenstein replied.

The conversation concerned the new requirement that phone users in San Francisco and parts of Marin and San Mateo counties must dial the 415 area code even when dialing another 415er.

That's because a new, interloping area code, 628, is inexorably headed our way, courtesy of the North American Numbering Plan Administration, an organization that I believe is referenced in the Book of Revelation. Starting March 21, phone numbers coming online will be assigned the new, crummier area code, which will serve the same purpose as the majestic 415 but will not have nearly the same cachet.

"(T)he once-mighty 415 area code, which six decades ago stretched from the middle of California to the Oregon border, has suffered the final blow," is the way Rubenstein put it in his story.