Recently there's been quite a bit of talk about the value of paper. More specifically, if something were designed fleetingly with the intention of being disposed of - but then it wasn't - what is that item's current value? This week, in a blog post you will surely forget about by the time Friday rolls around, our expert in ephemera finds out what we can learn about our surroundings from these slowly composting slices of recycled trees.

By: Tenderloin Geographic Society

Congratulations, everyone has figured out that ephemera is cool. All the kids these days are making tumblrs devoted to Victoriana and mid-20th century typography reblogged from other similar tumblrs, and your designer friends keep a hard drive or two stocked with 19th century porn. But do you get your fingers dirty--filthy, really--with the past?

Paper enthusiasts will tell you that while they’re valuable assets, online archives are child’s play. You can’t count yourself a true collector until half of your Western Addition apartment is given over to foxed and yellowing pulp and Texaco maps of the 1940s: all in all, a charmingly dusty and entirely convenient excuse for not having extended house guests (hi, mom!).

So, far from feeling threatened by the notion of a populace well-armed with ye olde paper, we welcome the “everybody’s doing it” challenge. Part of the trouble with acquisition is that living space gets shunted in favor of the past. At what point does trash stay trash, and at what point does it take on the mantle of worth?

To this end, and because San Francisco could potentially see a ban on unsolicited Yellow Pages, let’s see what we might have missed if 1962 were a little less reliant on paper. Come with us to that sore year when the Yankees beat the Giants, and let us look at the city through Polk’s San Francisco City Directory.