Nerds the world over often find themselves filling out online address forms with nonsense data.
Perhaps you're making a free account at some newspaper that doesn't have any entries in Bugmenot. Perhaps you're trying to download drivers for your old scanner. Perhaps you're registering some product you actually did just buy, but not on the understanding that you'd agree to sign up for junk mail.
A large subset of the sites dumb enough to request personal information from people who'd rather not give it are also dumb enough that they only accept US addresses, with five-digit postal codes. And, heck, if you're entering nonsense data anyway, you might as well leave everything set to defaults, which almost always means a US address.
If you actually live in the USA, you can just declare yourself to live at 123 Foo Street in the suburb and zip code where you actually reside. If you don't have such information at your fingertips, though, you have to come up with something.
The result of all this is that the raw data pouring into marketing databases the world over contains a disproportionately large number of people who say they live in Beverly Hills, California. Because even if you never watched the soap opera, you probably still know its name. And that name, complete with handy zip code, constitutes the only US postcode that most people around the world, from New Zealand to Iceland, can think of.
You can just type random digits into the postcode box instead, of course. But then you hit those fabulous sites that check to see if the postcode is valid, or even whether it's valid and matches the string from the "town" box.
So 90210 it is, for nonsense-enterers the world over.
But I, for one, am moving my database-polluting 97-year-old Ecuadorian-born Jewish grandmother alter ego out of boring old Beverly Hills, and into Compton. Compton's zip code is easy to remember: 90222. And "Compton" is faster to type, on those tiresome occasions when you have to.
And, of course, Compton is cooler.
27 July 2007 at 11:14 pm
I always use 10048 myself.
And Wikipedia's article on the damn things might have some useful information as well.
27 July 2007 at 11:42 pm
As well, when asked for my age, I always use 1/1/1901.
28 July 2007 at 1:18 am
I always fill those things in with the address of people I don't like. Hopefully their mail/inbox overfloweth.
28 July 2007 at 2:27 am
Having actually lived in Compton... well, cooler is not quite the word I'd use. ;) Most folks are trying to move Grandma OUT of compton!
Personally I use Adak, Alaska (99546) which is the westernmost town in US - way out in the Aluetian Islands. It amuses me to think of a company spending the money to mail crud all the way out there. Specifially they are mailing to: Mr. Bevriezen Ballen, 123 Frosted Over Way, Adak AK
Extra points if you get the joke in there.
28 July 2007 at 2:48 am
I presume Mr Ballen is well acquainted with spitzensparksen komputermaschinen.
Regrettably, "Gefrorene Messingkugeln" (machine-translated; I don't know much German beyond "schadenfreude", which I can of course type from memory) doesn't sound much like an actual name.
28 July 2007 at 10:13 pm
The canonical fake address is 1060 West Adison, Chicago, Il 60601.
28 July 2007 at 10:24 pm
Orange whip? Orange whip?
30 July 2007 at 8:39 am
Three orange whips.
I've always been one for random digits myself. Or just 55555. No idea if that one is real or not. A quick google indicates it is in Minnesota.
31 July 2007 at 4:19 am
You could always have your mail sent to 742 Evergreen Terrace.
20 June 2008 at 12:52 am
i once picked up a hustler magazine, i was young, i was scarred, but i've almost recovered. point being, hustler is also in the 90120 area(was?), this particular issue made specific mention of that fact, calling their locale 'hustler hills', could very well be a better choice that beverly hills, being obscure is a benefit.
10 December 2009 at 10:20 pm
I know this thread is dead and I should leave it rot, but I can't :)
Mr Bevriezen Ballen is Dutch. Bad Dutch, but Dutch nonetheless. It should really be Mr Bevroren Ballen, meaning mr Frozen Balls
So there :P