Via Media Bloggers Association‘s aggregator, “More on the Pizza for Pesos Scandal“:
And the Republic is still standing.
Indeed. Up here at this end of the woods, I remember a time when most places actually accepted Canadian coin, and I remember that was quite convenient. Now days, I still get slipped Canadian coin every once in a while, but can’t use them. I just put them in a jar until the next time I’m up north of 49.
Every time I check my pockets these days there’s some new coin or greenback design. I find myself doing a double-take trying to suss out whether I’ve gotten slipped a Canadian coin or plug nickel or who knows what. All of the new designs are frankly a bit ugly, either they look and feel like cheap arcade tokens or the bills just look intentionally ugly … except for those lovely Sacajawea dollar coins. I cried a little, inside, when the Post Office downtown put in the lame ATM stamp machine because I would love going in there and buying a book of stamps with a $20 from the old machine and get a jackpot of Sacajaweas back in change to throw around town.
And, while I’m on the topic of funny money: what’s up with the 10 dollar bill? I swear it looks like someone urinated on it. Is that a ploy to get people to spend it faster? Like the studies that restaurants did on what color schemes would get people anxious so they wouldn’t sit in a seat for longer than it took to eat. Is the new bill designed to look soiled so people won’t want to hold on to it for long?
Update 12jan07 @ 9:39am:
Boing Boing picked this up, and links to an AP wire article about the issue. The article points out, apparently, that there are still places along the border that accept Canadian coin in the US. I am pretty sure I remember using Canadian coin in Seattle back in the day. I remember when I worked retail in Seattle a decade ago there were still tourists that would come in and try to use Canadian currency.
Heck, I’d use Canadian currency here if I could. I have a jar full of coin and bills that just hang around, sometimes for years, until I have the chance to use them. It’s really the coin that sucks, because a while ago banks stopped accepting coin for currency exchange. I found that out when I got back from my first trip to Europe and I had a small bag full of coins that I didn’t bother to spend or convert because I figured I’d just do it when I got home. The excuse was that it’s too heavy to ship and exchange bags of coin.
(Huh, I still have that bag around here somewhere … only I think I agreed to give some of the coin away as gifts at some point. Do the airport exchange booths at SEA accept coin at some usurious tithe?)
Heck, I might even use Canadian currency, if I could, just to be strange.