UPDATE:
We made a mistake with our “We Saw You Paying With Pennies At the PCC.” We apologize for this. We did not mean to shame the poor. Our writer, Charles Mudede, certainly didn’t.
He says:
“I apologize. I did not mean to shame the poor. I came across the two men counting a mountain of coins at the counter. (One wore a theatrical robe that made his coin-counting look like something out of a 17th-century Dutch painting—indeed that was the reason why I took the pic; I wanted to capture this strange resemblance.) I saw them as off-the-grid-ish hippie types in theatrical costumes trying to make a point about consumerism by paying with a mountain of coins. This annoyed me, not because I love consumerism, but because I was tired and wanted to buy my groceries and go home. That is why I wrote my cranky little dispatch. I have no bias against people who don’t have enough money to shop at the PCC. I do have a bias against people completely hogging a whole line at the urban grocery store. Also, I have to get over my hatred of the woods.”
The Stranger does not condone poor-shaming or classism. In our daily and weekly coverage we are committed to covering income inequality with sensitivity and accuracy. Indeed, our cover story this week, written by Charles Mudede, is about that very subject: the lack of housing affordability in our big cities. We regret the error.
PAYING WITH CHANGE AT PCC
We saw you at a checkout counter of the PCC in Columbia City buying a bottle of Schooner Exact beer, some berries, eggs, yogurt, and sausages with a mountain of pennies, nickels, and dimes. Most of your coins were brown and looked very old. PCC is not cheap. It takes a lot of coins to buy even three or four basic items. But you came prepared. You had a bag filled with the hardest currency. You held it in your hand with pride. You did not look at all poor. You looked perfectly mad. And as you counted, coin by coin, the amount you owed, the counter became all yours. No one could wait. You were going to take forever. You had saved your pennies, but you were wasting time—and not only yours but others’…