![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Window-Decorated-With-Mostly-Two-Dollar-Bills-in-Bensonhurst-20180326_155543.jpg?resize=1024%2C768&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\nThis window display, if you could call it that, struck me as a little risky. It’s enough money to at least tempt someone into busting the window and stealing what they could. Or maybe the glass is bulletproof.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Window Decorated With Mostly Two-Dollar Bills, in Bensonhurst<\/p>\n
That picture is from March, 2018. I wouldn’t remember the exact storefront where I spotted these bills but GPS pins them at 61st Street and 18th Avenue in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. That sounds about right, based on my recollection of that little excursion. I was, of course, payphone hunting, and this time found so many phones it got monotonous<\/a>. I know not the payphone population of that area now.<\/p>\n I still have a couple of two-dollar bills I got in high school. I went to a bank for the only purpose of procuring $20 worth of two-dollar bills. They had been in circulation for a number of years but never lost their novelty status. They remain legal tender, though using them has been known to cause problems<\/a> among store managers or cashiers who fail to recognize them as legal.<\/p>\n I procured the bills having heard that store owners confused them with twenty dollar bills, and made change accordingly. So if you bought a $1 item with a $2 bill an unobservant cashier might hand you $19 in change. I wanted to get in on this little scam but it never worked for me, and I came to suspect the anecdote’s legitimacy.<\/p>\n The back of the bill depicts the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Until today I maintained a lingering question about that image, which I never got around to investigating, and which serves to illustrate my less-than-comprehensive knowledge of American history: Was an African-American present at the signing? If so was this him, at the center of this cropped outtake from the back of the bill?<\/p>\n Was an African-American Present at the Signing of the Declaration of Independence?<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Was-an-African-American-Present-at-the-Signing-of-the-Dedclaration-of-Independence.jpg?resize=370%2C402&ssl=1\")