When it comes to Queens’ zip codes, there is a fine line between five-digit numbers and four-letter words.

Flushing Postmaster Bill Rogers

After reading a series in the Tribune in which residents and elected officials criticized the disappearance of Queens neighborhood names from our mail, Flushing Postmaster Bill Rogers said he was going to "punish" the paper.

Rogers told two Tribune sales representatives that if "Jerome" continues to write those stories, he would pull all of the Postal Service’s advertisements from the paper. "Why should we advertise in a paper that has unfavorable things to say about us?" Rogers said.

Rogers added that "We are not going to change our policy. What you are advocating would slow our mail processing into a state of chaos."

Despite Mr. Rogers’ insistence that Queens neighborhoods be relegated to the land of make-believe, a group of residents and elected officials have joined in the fight to preserve the borough’s heritage.

"The Post Office has stripped us of our communities," said Assemblyman Mark Weprin. "We are very pleased with all the support we have received, but all the support in the world isn’t worth anything if we cant get the Post Office to change their procedures."

The postal boundary lines, which were drawn as part of the U.S. Postal Service’s 1963 Zoning Improvement Plan (ZIP), divided us into numbered districts. With zip codes came the promise of the more rapid completion of carriers’ appointed rounds. However, there was also a strange by-product — numeric nationalism. In the same way that we were attached to our telephone exchanges, and later our area codes, zip codes became part of our collective identities, from "Beverly Hills 90210" to "Bayside 11361,"

In Queens, zip codes are the last remnants of our past. Created out of a group of distinct villages, Queens was a collection of separate towns and villages until 1898, when the borough was consolidated into Greater New York City.

It is for this reason, that unlike the other four boroughs, we do not think of ourselves as residents of "Queens, NY" but rather Woodside or Forest Hills or Jamaica or Astoria. Zip codes provided the license to do this; the Postal Service maintained the boundaries that city government would and could not. For nearly three decades, our mail arrived at our doorsteps properly addressed.

Then, with the advent of mainframes, mass mailing, and the U.S. Postal Service’s National Zip Code database, Mr. Zip and the neighborhoods of Queens were betrayed.

As a result, all neighborhoods with a 113- zip code are now called "Flushing," all neighborhoods with a 114- zip code are called "Jamaica," and all neighborhoods with a 111- zip code are called "Long Island City."

While this does not affect personal correspondence between friends and relatives, the mislabeling has spread from magazines, to credit card bills, and to junk mail.

This policy has been irritating Queens residents for over a decade, but with the coming of the information age, and as the use of the Postal Service’s database increases, the automatic mislabeling of our mail has become more widespread.

"All my life I have lived in Woodside" said Dorothea Osborne. "Now I am constantly telling people on the phone that ‘I am not a Flushingite’."

Ms. Osborne is not alone. When the Tribune began its crusade for more accurate addresses, dozens of residents wrote in with similar stories. Many residents are overcome with frustration when they receive free mailing labels from charities like Amnesty International, only to discover that the address is incorrect.

"We have all agreed any advertisements written to Bayside residents under ‘Flushing, NY’ will be ignored," said Thomas Natoli, of the Concerned Citizens for a Better Bayside. "All name and address stickers using Flushing instead of Bayside will be destroyed, and any organization sending them with requests for donations will have their requests ignored."

To find the cause behind Queens’ postal purgatory, one must travel to the headquarters of the U.S. Postal Service in Memphis, Tennessee. Enshrined in the Office of Address Management is the national zip code database, or in postal lingo, "The City State File Address Information Systems product file."

For every zip code in the nation the Post Office has both a preferred and an acceptable community name. For example, for 11375, the "preferred" name is Flushing, while Forest Hills is just "acceptable." Since mass mailers automatically use the preferred listing for every zip code, Forest Hills residents are effectively an annex of Flushing.

While it would probably take about 10 minutes to switch the preferred and acceptable community names, this, according to the Postal Service, is not the problem. And as one postal employee put it, "You are dealing with the Federal government. Nothing takes ten minutes."

Washington officials for the U.S. Postal Service would not comment on the actions of Flushing Postmaster Bill Rogers, nor would they address the request of residents.

In fact, when Assemblyman Mark Weprin wrote to Washington, the response was both curt and rude. When he wrote to President Bill Clinton, the letter was forwarded back to the Post Office.

"What it comes down to," said Postal Service spokesman Tom Gaynor, "is that there is no operational benefit in eliminating something that is already successful. We are mandated with efficiently delivering the mail. And to change this would not only force the Postal Service into a massive reprogramming of millions of addresses, it triggers a need for a revision of our bulk postal rate."

This explanation was not enough to convince Congressman Gary Ackerman. "We are still having meetings and discussions on the issue in both New York and Washington," he said.

Flushing Postmaster Bill Rogers maintains that choosing what and where to advertise is his prerogative.

"This is a business," he said. "I am not looking to censor you in any means, but any other business would do just the same. Besides, this decision is really now entirely in the hands of Washington."