It's happening. Long the land of 510, which residents held onto as a point of pride and badge of East Bay cred, the area including Oakland, Berkeley, Hayward, Alameda and other towns west of the hills will soon be getting a second area code: 341.

SFist first reported on the dwindling number of available 510 numbers back in 2016, and a second "overlay" area code for the region was then scheduled to be announced in December 2018. As with so many things in these parts, the powers that be are six months late, but now we get word via ABC 7 that 341 is coming, and soon.

People with 510 area codes will of course be able to keep them — and most people just keep whatever cell phone number they were given as a teenager, anyway, wherever in the country that may have been. But new cell accounts and new businesses installing land lines may not have the 510 option anymore, going forward. But still, there is going to be some groaning about this.

San Francisco already weathered this crisis with the rollout of the 628 area code four years ago, which we first spotted in the wild in mid-2016. And, honestly, in that time I can't say I've noticed too many 628 numbers cropping up — all new businesses I've called, it seems, have still been able to score 415s. But, as ABC 7 notes, people are selling 415 numbers on Craigslist, because they are a rarity.

The 415 area code was one of the first established in California when area codes became standard under the Bell system and AT&T in 1947. At the time, the state only had three: 415, 213, and 916. The 510 area code, along with the other regional codes like 408 and 925, didn't come along until 1991 — as some longtime residents and natives will surely remember.

Sadly, though SFist did its part to float the nomination, the East Bay can't claim 420 as an extra area code, which remains unassigned.