Goodbye Landline

Baby Zan starting on her lifetime of calls — all photos copyright Andy Romanoff

After fifty years I’m kissing our old phone goodbye

323 463 2240. How many times did I give that number to someone over the half-century it connected me to the world? It was the path to Darcy when we were dating, the place where production managers called me all too infrequently to say “Are you available for a shoot next week”, the phone from which I called all those drug dealers to ask if they were holding.

I got that number when I moved to LA in the seventies, using it first from a soulless little apartment on Kings Road where I called producers begging for work, then transferring it to a party-time place called The Monastery on Vista Del Mar. Next, me and 2240 moved to a Spanish two-bedroom on Manhattan Place, the one where the downstairs neighbor played Sweeny Todd all day long, and finally, we moved to Ridgewood Pl. where we lived happily ever after. Wherever I went, the phone company followed close behind, making new connections to insure a dial tone reached my ears, and so we carried on through the long succession of phones as years went by.

One phone was enough in my little place on Vista Del Mar

When our children were small 2240 was THE number for all of us and even after cell phones had taken over our lives…