It has been reported to me from a rock solid source that last night there was a celebrity Sidewalker pounding the local pavements here in Hoboken, N.J.

It was one of the chief architects of our current financial crisis. None other than the former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan. He was sighted on the corner of Washington & 14th Streets outside of the Madison Bar and Grill. On hearing this news my current change finding drought all began to make sense. Alan Greenspan it seems single-handedly destroyed Billions of dollars by actions he took while he was at the helm of our economy, and now he has been here in Hoboken ‘mowing my lawn’ as it were; vacuuming up every penny off the sidewalk like a Dyson, as if he hadn’t impoverished me enough already!

The image associated with this post is of Mr. Greenspan in the act of telling a whopper. I just cannot recall whether on this occasion it was about the size of the wide-mouthed bass he caught at the weekend, or about the size of the budget deficit, or maybe the size of unfunded social security liabilities. I can however guarantee it was a whopper, because you can clearly see his mouth is moving!

In other news, let’s not forget Veterans Day. A big thank you to all those that have given so much for us to live in freedom…

-Luke Sidewalker

-Current balance $24.42

It seems that someone has turned off the spigot of free cash on the sidewalk lately as my finds have become noticeably rarer. Perhaps it is a change in my daily routine that has taken me off the well trodden paths of  Hoboken, and led me to the cash desert of Edgewater. The only oasis I’ve found there is the odd penny or two in Panera.

The only notable find I’ve had recently wasn’t a find at all, but instead it was more of a saving. The other morning I took the 158 NJ Transit bus to Edgewater, the fare $2.15, I handed the driver a five dollar bill. He said he could not make the change, and my small change only amounted to $2.05. Now I was willing to pay, but not overpay. He was willing to make change but unable to do so, and we entered into some kind of Mexican stand-off. As he stared at me and I stared at him I began to hear the soundtrack of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly ringing in my ears. This bus was not big enough for the two of us, and something had to give. He eventually flinched when I went for my special sidewalker pocket in my jeans ( the little pocket on the right hand side that nobody knows what it’s there for) to show him my cupboard was well and truly bare. As the car horns behind us reached a crescendo the driver waived me on by.

His capitulation led to me taking my trip for a 10 cent discount to list prices! And that is about as good as it gets recently…

-Luke Sidewalker

-Current balance $24.41

Days since inception: 638
Cash balance: $22.55 (all time)
Cents per day: 3.5345(since inception)
Predicted day for $1,000,000: Sunday January 18th 77,339 AD

9/30/2009
$1,000,000
= 993.54 oz of Gold @ $1006.50 (as per Nymex close near month)
= 14,220.70 barrels of oil @ $70.32 (as per Nymex close Light Sweet Crude near month)
= 60,808.76 oz of Silver @ $16.445 (as per Nymex close near month)

Although I did not reach my target of $23 by the end of September, I fell 45 cents short, I did manage to knock 7,000 years off my predicted completion date. I started off the month at the U.S. Open. Also, this month marked the first time we found paper money on the sidewalk when Mrs S. snagged a buck in the parking lot at the Malibu Diner in Hoboken. Is this further evidence of inflation? My Shopping with Sidewalker feature showed a month on month decline in prices, is this further evidence of deflation? And by the end of the month I had dogs living with cats, and cats living with dogs (see post below). These are indeed interesting times as we, as a nation, seek our ‘new normal’ in a testing economic environment.

For the sake of nice round numbers I will make my target for the end of October $25.In the next couple of days I will post about the investment decisions we have taken for the Sidewalker Fund. Let’s hope the fun we had in September continues on into October and the Halloween season.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $22.55

The Sidewalker’s were back on the road again Friday. We had arranged to have a sleepover with some good friends that had previously lived within the long shadows cast by Castle Sidewalker, but had managed to escape to the suburbs in Red Bank, New Jersey.

As we left Friday I sat tantalizingly 2 cents short of my $15 target for July. I was worried that Red Bank would prove to be barren changeless wasteland. How wrong I was! I strolled into town to have lunch with a friend that also had escaped to the burbs. I was a little early so I took the opportunity to check the place out. Red Bank is twice the size, by area, of my normal hunting grounds in Hoboken, but it has about one third of the population. Let me lay out a few facts for the sidewalking purists amongst you. The sidewalks of Red bank are not the largest and they are paved in red brick, which nicely disguises the copper coins, but creates a very short floor-life for coins of the silver variety. Another observation I made was that Red Bank must have more benches per capita than any other city in America, and we all know that where there are benches, there are coins!

I was looking to find 2 cents in Red Bank, and I managed to find 41 cents. With my target handily reached it was off to The Dublin House for a spot of lunch with my friend who happens to be a graphic designer. I mentioned to him that I had a blog, and I was in the market for a logo. When I told him I was Luke Sidewalker he spat his drink out and nearly fell off his chair! He said, “You’re Luke Sidewalker. I love that guy, I follow him on Twitter. I had no idea.” It made me laugh that he then proceeded to talk as if Luke was not present in the room; and there I was sitting right across the table from him!

One last Sidewalker tip for anyone visiting Red bank, there are two bridges out of town over the Navesink River; make sure you take the correct one or you could find yourself walking two miles in the wrong direction…

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $15.44

The Sidewalker Mailbag has been canceled this Friday due to the stunning swoop and following arrests made in the local area by the F.B.I. on Thursday. Read on…

By looking at my Cash Trail map in the side bar on the right, you don’t have to be Christopher Columbus to figure out that Castle Sidewalker is located somewhere in the dark recesses of Hudson County, New Jersey. For my readers from further afield, you may be familiar with this area as it is the “playground” of Tony Soprano, from the HBO series The Sopranos. Right now I wished we lived in the fictitious world of The Sopranos, as that would be more believable than the events that unfolded here early on Thursday morning. Once again the national spotlight shined brightly on Hudson County for all the wrong reasons. The Mayor of Hoboken, Peter Cammarano, was arrested for allegedly receiving payments from a property developer for preferential treatment at the local zoning board. The indictment does actually include the passing of brown envelopes stuffed with cash in the parking lot of a local diner, I kid you not! However I am not going to rush to judgement (that is not the way of the Sidewalker), I’ll just wait and let the legal system run it’s course. What I do find remarkable about the arrest is that the Mayor had only been in office for 23 days. Unfortunately most Mayors around these parts get arrested at some point during their 4 year term; but 23 days, come on, that has to be some kind of a record! Can anyone out there beat that?

It may turn out to be that I’m not the only one who has been picking up cash in Hoboken! I have come to the conclusion that Hoboken may be the only town in America that can compete with Chicago when it comes to political corruption. If you were to measure corruption per capita, Hoboken really knocks it out of the park; which is rather ironic as it is also known as the “birthplace of baseball“.

In other news, I have arrived at a solution for the now infamous Starbucks Gift Card. I shall reveal it’s fate on Monday, so be sure to check back in then.

Have a great weekend…

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $14.29 (plus pending Starbucks resolution)

If you remember a week or so ago I found a Starbucks gift card at a bus stop in Hoboken. The full story of finding it can be found here. After much publicizing of my find, and after a couple of opportunist attempts to claim the card by interlopers, the true owner has not come forward.

I can now reveal the amount outstanding on the card is $10. This sum of money would give an incredible boost to the Sidewalker Fund, but we are left with a couple of questions. Firstly how am I to monetize this find? Secondly, even if I can monetize it, is it within the spirit of my quest to add it to the total?

So let’s look at my options:

1. I can stand outside a Starbucks and offer to buy people coffee for cash. I recall this being done in movie not so long ago, but I can’t recollect which one.

2. Reader(s) of the blog could bid for the $10 value of the gift card, you may even get it at a discount!

3. I’m meeting a reporter this week who potentially wants to do an article about my adventures, we just happen to be meeting in a Starbucks. Perhaps I could use the card there, in order to break the ice at the interview.

Any thoughts on how I deal with this would be most welcome. Or are you a purist, and think I should not include the proceeds of this find in the Sidewalker Fund at all? Let me know what you are thinking…

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $14.29 (plus pending Starbucks resolution)

Today’s post is late because I have been embroiled in what can only be described as a bizarre sequence of events. It all started with me looking down, no surprise there! I was at a bus stop in Hoboken N.J., and down in the gutter glinting at me in the late afternoon sun was what appeared to be a credit card. I bent down with the intention to secure the card, and if possible repatriate it with the rightful owner, before it could be put to a more nefarious use by an individual less scrupulous than myself.

However on further inspection I saw that it was not a credit card at all, but in fact a gift card to be used in a Starbucks Coffee outlet. I would have given it no further thought, had it not been in pristine condition. Curiosity got the better of me and there are several Starbucks in town close by (isn’t that the case in every town in America?), so I resolved to find out if there was any balance on the card.

Well you can imagine my shock when the cashier checked it and told me there was an active balance. My shock soon turned to panic when she asked me what I would like; I do not drink coffee, I don’t even speak coffee and I’m totally out of my comfort zone in the company of Barista’s (I guess I can rule out Starbucks as a future sponsor of my endeavor!). This leaves me with one and potentially two problems…

1)If you have lost a Starbucks coffee gift card at a bus stop in Hoboken, leave me a note in the comments section below or send me a tweet, stating at which bus stop you lost it at, and also the balance on the card before high noon E.D.T. on 16th June 2009. If your information rings true, I will return it to you.

2)In the event a legitimate claim is not made by the cut off time, how will I monetize this “plastic” find to add to the Sidewalker Fund?

When I started this adventure I never thought finding street cash would get this complicated. I think I need a coffee…

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $13.11 (plus pending Starbucks resolution)

Of late I have not been blogging on individual coin finds, unless they have been out of the ordinary. This holiday weekend Mrs. Sidewalker had such a find. Not only was it a big haul (45 cents no less) but the location and size of the find leads me to believe that it may be our first celebrity coin find!

Hoboken, N.J. is the location of Carlo’s Bake Shop, the HQ of TLC’s very own Cake Boss. Behind the shop is a back alley for deliveries and it is here that Mrs. Sidewalker found the four dimes and a nickel. The exact location can be seen on my Cash Trail Map in the sidebar to the right. I hope the Cake Boss does not read this blog, otherwise I may be getting an offer I can’t refuse in the not too distant future! As long as it involves pastries (which are absolutely fantastic from there) and nothing to do with sleeping with the fishes in the Hudson River I won’t mind too much!

So we are left with more questions than answers. Was this indeed our first case of celebrity coinage? What was Mrs. Sidewalker doing loitering by the delivery entrance of a “Bakery to the Stars” on a Sunday? There is much head scratching to be done at Castle Sidewalker today.

I’ll leave you with a Sidewalker factoid of the day. The Cake Boss made the Sidewalker wedding cake! I can hear you thinking that is not very frugal having your wedding cake made by a celebrity chef. On the contrary, when you have it made many years before the chef achieves celebrity status it can be a great talking point at social gatherings! Seems a shame we ate it now…

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $12.77

I’d like to thank you all for the messages of encouragement I have received on Twitter since I joined the network. I have also received a lot of messages from people saying how much money they are finding. I find it fascinating just how much cash is laying around out there as we sit watching GM, Chrysler and the State of California going bankrupt. Not for one minute am I suggesting their ills could be cured by making their employees go on a sidewalk cash hunt, plus that is the kind of competition I don’t need! It is intriguing though knowing all this free cash exists, but is it too widespread and too small of a denomination to help anyone in these hard times?

When I have more time I will try to do some Sidewalker math and calculate how much cash I believe is on the sidewalk at any given moment in America, unless there is a reader out there who would like to do my dirty work for me and suggest a total with accompanying methodology?

In other news, things are rolling along quite nicely at Castle Sidewalker and between the four of us we have amassed $1.12 so far this month, far exceeding my hoped-for 2 cents per day average for June ‘09; and we still have 15 days to go. Our latest finds can be seen on my Cash Trail map in the side bar to the right. It looks like Hoboken, N.J. is the town that just keeps on giving!

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $11.27

Here is something to ponder. I think we all agree that money does not grow on trees. However in analyzing my found coin data I see a lot of my finds taking place at the base of trees. This can mean one of two things, either money does indeed grow on trees or the dog population of America is passing legal tender.

While I’m on the subject of ferreting around at the base of trees looking for coins I’d like to make one thing clear. As with all adventurous pursuits that have an element of risk, collecting street booty is not without its problems. When a company such as Odyssey Marine Exploration finds sunken treasure they have very sophisticated machinery to retrieve the treasure from a hostile human environment. This is exactly how we treat our hazardous finds at Castle Sidewalker. For example the repatriation of a coin at the base of a tree needs a technique that we like to call “hands off salvage”. This technique involves a pickle grabber and a Ziploc bag, I think you can visualize the rest of the procedure…

Also I would like to thank Team Charity for the invite to their fund raising event on Friday, unfortunately I will not be able to attend. Details of the event to be held in The Shannon Lounge, Hoboken can be found here.

-Luke Sidewalker
-Current balance $10.95