spotlight || insider’s guide
How to Flash a Twenty This isn’t Vegas, but that doesn’t mean a crisp $20 bill doesn’t open doors. |
M
BY ALYSSA FORD
ore than a decade ago, the brilliant, funny Tom Chiarella penned an article for Esquire called “The $20 Theory of the Universe.” He surmised that a well-placed $20 bill could offer far more than its paltry face value. To prove it, Chiarella greased palms all over New York City. Sometimes he was plainly rebuffed. But most of the time, he got what he wanted: a better seat at the show, an unpaid-for upgrade, a peek into cordoned-off places ubiquitously closed to the rule-following masses. Inspired, we replicated Chiarella’s experiment, but with several new and untested variables. First and foremost, the Twin Cities setting (after all, it’s one thing to slip a twenty in Vegas; it’s entirely another to try it in St. Paul). Also, there’s the inflation issue. Chiarella worked his experiment in 2003, when $20 sang a significantly sweeter tune. The same bill today is a bit flat and nasal at $14.48. And then there was the last, possibly most significant variable of all: me.
222 Artful Living
| Summer 2014