tip o’ the hat to Coyote
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/30/nyregi…
…who is dropping all the coins in the fountain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new Greek and Roman galleries?
Not David Mendez, though he knows more about coins in fountains than anyone else at the Met. That is because he takes the coins out, once a week, every week, using an old wiper blade and napkin-size pieces of thin white cloth.
Since the waist-high fountain was switched on in April, it has become the latest of the Met’s coin catchers. The others include the pool known around the Met as “the Nile” that runs by the Temple of Dendur, and the stream in a corner of the Astor Court where the koi swim. Another, now closed, was a pool in the American Wing that had at its center a statue of Pan the museum had to give back to its lender - anonymous, of course.
In all these babbling places, the story is the same: Coins pile up, Mr. Mendez removes them and people’s fascination with tossing pocket change into water continues, unexplained…
In a better world, someone would launch a startup around this idea.
June 30th, 2007 at 11:19 pm
Having been to the Met numerous times, I can’t say I noticed any significant amount of change in the fountains – a telling comment about the efficiency of Mr Mendez, especially considering the size of both the crowds, and the fountains: The one in the Temple of Dendur, for instance, surround it, as the Temple is effectively an island in a very small lake..
July 1st, 2007 at 4:39 am
I was brought up for it too mean good luck if you threw coins in a fountain.
July 2nd, 2007 at 12:29 am
Thanks, TJIC.
A bit of back-story. I used to hate corporate functions, like cocktail parties and mixers, but my wife and I spent much of our early marriage in the corporate world. To entertain myself at my wife’s corporate events, I would make up occupations for myself. I had a friend at business school who used to try to pick up women in bars telling them that he played “big bird” on TV, and this got me started doing something similar.
The main occupation I hit on for myself was running the fountain coin business. I eventually got the business plan worked out pretty well. I remember working through the numbers with some Wall Street guys who were really trying their best to look down their nose at me, and I was trying my best to help them. I finally gave the bottom line – something like $5 million a year in cash flow, and the lovely woman who was standing behind me and who had never had the time of day for me whipped around and said “HOW MUCH do you make?” I laughed and laughed.
By the way, I have seen a lot of guys over the years try to pick up women with fake occupations, but never, ever has any of them had as much consistent success as the Big Bird story. I guess it is some compelling (at least to females) mix of sensitivity and fame.
July 2nd, 2007 at 7:35 am
That’d seem to be a decent approach if you’re looking for a one-time thing, but would be impractical if you were looking for an actual relationship.
The closest I once came to thins is once having a clerk at a Tower Records misunderstand the biohazard tag I had hanging off my backpack, and assume that it came from backstage at a concert, instead of from a laboratory supply catalog. I somehow slipped into telling him that I had once been a roadie for the band, and we discussed the kinds of wild things that happen backstage on a punk/hardcore concert.