So let me tell you a story. I’m at the Baltic Hotel, waiting for Angela. She calls me, says she’s downstairs. So I go downstairs, look around, don’t see her. I have my camera in my hand, of course.
I turn to look down the alley and here’s this guy. And I’ve seen him before. So I stop him and ask him for a portrait real quick, thinking I’ll just take one quickly and get back to finding Angela.
So then he tells me that pictures aren’t free. Crap. Not the Miami Beach hustle. Whatever. I tell him I don’t have any money, and I don’t. Then I reach in my back pockets and I feel a dollar. And then I make the rookie mistake of pulling out the dollar which is, in fact, a ten-dollar bill.
I hold it out, we look at it, and then he says he can make change. He says he’s gotta eat.
He gives me four two-dollar bills. I look at them and I actually ask, “Are these real? They don’t look real.” He assures me that they are.
And I think to myself, you know… I just wanted to come down here and meet Angela. After a couple of shots, I ran back to the front of the hotel, just as she was walking up. Perfect timing.
Later, and at the first chance I got, I spent all of the two dollar bills. And like me, the cashier looked and looked at them.
