Money Matters
Posted by Michelle Moquin on May 27th, 2014
Good morning!
Considering San Francisco is one of the most expensive places to live, this is a fun little perk should you be the receiver of the generous $100 gifts a rich anonymous donor is hiding all over the city with clues to where the hidden cash lies. So put on your detective cap, study the clues, and start sleuthing! Good luck! Stay tuned…LA and NYC is next on the list.
What a way to begin a Monday. Here’s the write from the Huff Po:
An Anonymous Rich Person Is Hiding Money All Around San Francisco
If you live in San Francisco, be on the lookout for some mysterious white envelopes — they may contain $100 bills.
An anonymous person is dropping off sums of money around the city and thentweeting hints about the locations in a project called “Hidden Cash.”
The person behind Hidden Cash told The Huffington Post that the project will soon expand to other cities.
“I am OK with giving out at least $1000 a day for the foreseeable future. It will not affect my finances significantly,” he or she wrote in an email. “We are planning to add more cities, starting with LA next weekend, and NYC shortly afterwards.”
The donor said they “want to start a nationwide movement” around this anonymous charitable giving.
According to the Bold Italic, which also interviewed to the man or woman behind the project, the Hidden Cash benefactor is a real estate magnate who wants to give back to the community.
“I’ve made millions of dollars the last few years, more than I ever imagined, and yet many friends of mine, and people who work for me, cannot afford to buy a modest home in the Bay Area,” the person told the Bold Italic. “This has caused me quite a bit of reflection. I am determined to give away some of the money I make, and in addition to charity, to do it in fun, creative ways like this.”
After each money drop, a tweet goes out from @HiddenCash with hints about the location of the envelope. @HiddenCash also requests that the lucky recipients tweet photos of their discovery.
The person behind the campaign told HuffPost that she or he is maintaining anonymity for fear of “business associates who may take me less seriously.”
He or she also told the Bold Italic that part of the inspiration for the project was staggering wealth inequality in San Francisco. (The city has the largest wealth gap of any city in the country.)
It will probably take more than a few cash-stuffed envelopes to address the broader causes of the wealth gap that the person behind @HiddenCash is concerned about. Nevertheless, it’s a clever, generous idea and is definitely brightening the days of some lucky San Francisco residents.
*****
Readers: How fun! Don’t ya just love it?! Wouldn’t it be nice if this inspired others to do the same thing or something fun and similar?
What would you do if you had lots of money to give away? How creative and clever would you be? Blog me.
Lastly, greed over a great story is surfacing from my “loyal”(?) readers. With all this back and forth about who owns what, that appears on my blog, let me reiterate that all material posted on my blog becomes the sole property of my blog. If you want to reserve any proprietary rights don’t post it to my blog. I will prominently display this caveat on my blog from now on to remind those who may have forgotten this notice.
Gratefully your blog host,
michelle
Aka BABE: We all know what this means by now :)
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May 27th, 2014 at 2:56 pm
Seems2Me this kind of anonymous “gorilla” philanthropy in SF isn’t new.
I remember in the 1980′s a certain someone being chauffeured around SF who liked to the lower the back window of the ride and toss a large amount of bills out the window.
I recall that it was entertaining for them to see people scramble for the money, but I don’t remember why.
May 27th, 2014 at 5:07 pm
They are very creative, indeed.
So, the quote from the donor is : “I’ve made millions of dollars the last few years, more than I ever imagined, and yet many friends of mine, and people who work for me, cannot afford to buy a modest home in the Bay Area,” the person told the Bold Italic. “This has caused me quite a bit of reflection. I am determined to give away some of the money I make, and in addition to charity, to do it in fun, creative ways like this.”
Now, with this, this person could have increased pay for his employees, or assisted friends, and may very well have…yes, it is indeed a creative way to give to someone whom the donor will never meet, rather than those people whom he knows well and mentioned in his quote. But, again, they may very well have…just slipped their mind to mention that. I guess they wouldn’t want to toot their horn, but then they are discussing this on Huff Po…nevermind, I’m just thinking outloud.
May 27th, 2014 at 6:18 pm
Yes…
Christopher from yesterday, that’s as basic as it gets and yep that’s why strangeholds by old school rethugs continues…these fools don’t even have a notion about Amerikan holidays and they get to VOTE?! Hmmm…That’s what we should do, rather than be exclusionary based on anything regarding your person/socio-econmoic standing, you should have to know at least know the ‘basics’ maybe a top 25 questions and throw in a few random deep q’s too, you pass, then you can vote otherwise try again next election, go research, read, learn…and come back…
& Doug… I thought exactly the same thing, why would you need to ‘create’ whimsy and entertainment for yourself when you could reach out and help some peeps you actually care about, I would get creative about how I would do that bc you know everyone you ever met will be asking to be included in your personal ‘lottery’ but this, it seems a bit pretentious and someone looking to gloat without openly gloating PS wealthy dudette/dude, a hundy will make me smile and of course, I would appreciate it, but I’d have to post a pic to twitter for you? wha?? why? oh that’s right, so you could have some gloaty moment. (Need ego strokes much?)
Luv, Zen Lill
May 27th, 2014 at 6:19 pm
sorry for lack of commas/proper punctuation in above sentences…
May 27th, 2014 at 7:26 pm
I’ll bet it is an advertisement scheme to increase Twitter enrollment. They are moving to SF and they probably want to insure that people who are not using it will get on Twitter to get the clues.
Hurry and sign up. Twitter’s added bonus is the good will. It will be hard to be against Twitter employees driving up the price of property, rents, etc in the Bay Area when you use the service.
All in All, worth a few thousand dollars to the desperate for any little financial help they can get. As it was once rumored said by another insensitive super rich group, “Let them eat cake.”
May 28th, 2014 at 8:11 am
Fuck you if you can’t be happy for the joy those people get when the find a few free dollars.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:13 am
I guess it depends on where you live in SF as to how you maybe reacting to this gifting.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:16 am
I agree with you Aldofo#6. Here are some lucky winners. http://www.carbonated.tv/viral/hidden-cash-an-anonymous-rich-person-is-hiding-money-all-around-san-francisco-for-anyone-to-find-through-a-scavenger-hunt-on-twitter
May 28th, 2014 at 8:18 am
Sure you are right Paul. People who live in the Marina are usually preppy douchebags, overgrown sorority girls / frat boys.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:18 am
Nob Hill is full of yuppies.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:21 am
The Mission used to be full of Mexicans now it is full of rich white investors putting up their yuppy establishments driving up the cost of living there.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:26 am
Hayes Valley get the Mission overflow. It is full of europeans and yuppies.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:32 am
Not everywhere has changed. Bernal Heights is still full of lesbians, old blue collar workers, bigots, and yuppies attempting to gentrify the neighborhood.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:34 am
Seacliff is just for very rich people with families.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:35 am
Hi Michelle: Although I am a believer in a citizen’s right to bear arms, in no way have I any support for the NRA. If you believe in Amy Klobuchar’s legislation to protect women then please click on the link and sign this petition.
SANTA BARBARA AND THE WAR ON WOMEN
“Stop selling out women to the NRA. Support the Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act.”
Mix the NRA’s pro-gun-at-any-cost advocacy, the Republican War on Women, and a broken mental health care system and what we just saw in Santa Barbara is the shocking but not unsurprising result.
In the wake of last week’s misogyny-fueled mass shooting, legislation is gathering momentum that would strengthen our nation’s domestic violence laws and help save women’s lives. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mazie Hirono have introduced the Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act to make it harder for people with a history of domestic violence and stalking to buy a gun.
What happened in Santa Barbara was not an isolated incident. In fact, the majority of mass shootings in this country are domestic violence incidents that target women.1 Think of them as the War on Women, weaponized. And if the NRA gets its way and defeats this bill, we can be sure of more anti-woman rampages to come.
There are a lot of common sense reforms we need — like universal background checks, a ban on semi-automatic assault weapons, and limits on high capacity ammunition magazines.2 But nothing will change for everyday Americans unless we break the NRA’s chokehold on Congress. Klobuchar’s legislationprotect women won’t even get an up-or-down vote in the Senate, let alone pass, if politicians who are in the pocket of the NRA filibuster the bill.
The fact is, women are the target of far too many shootings in America. Driven by misogyny and enabled by lax or non-existent gun laws, gunmen channel their rage into shooting women. The presence of a gun in domestic violence situation makes it five times more likely that a women will be killed.
The Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act works in two key ways:
It would add criminals convicted of stalking crimes to the group of people prohibited from buying guns, which already includes felons and the severely mentally ill.
It would prohibit people who abuse their dating partners from buying guns – rather than just those who abuse their spouses.
The bill only represents a small step towards the reform we need to see. Right now it’s easier for domestic abusers and the mentally ill to obtain semi-automatic weapons than to access treatment. At a minimum we should be able to pass mandatory background checks, but the NRA has blocked this commonsense reform at every turn. What is possible in this moment — when a mass shooting has highlighted the deadly War on Women in our culture — is to pass a bill that would make it more difficult for domestic violence perpetrators and stalkers to obtain the weapons that make it much more likely that the targets of their abuse will be murdered.
Senators who put the NRA’s agenda above the will and needs of their constituents are, to use the words of Richard Martinez, the father of one of last week’s victims, “craven and irresponsible.”
http://act.credoaction.com/go/4429?t=5&akid=10790
Heidi Hess, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets
May 28th, 2014 at 8:37 am
Hey I say keep the loot coming. We can use some excitement that has a reward at the end of it.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:39 am
I can’t wait for the white opportunists to come to Chinatown. They went to Japantown and fucked it up.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:39 am
North Beach is for Bankers.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:50 am
I’ve lived in Noe Valley for 23 years. It has become a yuppie nightmare.
May 28th, 2014 at 8:53 am
The Western Addition used to be full of niggers, but now thank God decent white people have moved in and turned most of it into a great place to be.
There are a lot of nice places to dine, socialize and hang out.
May 28th, 2014 at 9:06 am
Fuck you James, the racists always find a way to spread hate.
May 28th, 2014 at 9:14 am
Potrero is still a family area. And you are dead on Sonja. The bigots never sleep.
May 28th, 2014 at 9:40 am
[…] Adopfo: I agree with you. Let me expound a bit. I found the comments from yesterday’s write interesting. I guess I’m not taking this gifting thing too seriously – I’m seeing only the positive. Yes, he/she could give his/her workers raises. Perhaps he/she has. We don’t know who this person is or what other donations he/she makes besides hiding envelopes of money in different cities, and leaving clues for others enjoyment. […]
May 28th, 2014 at 12:19 pm
I am not a bigot but it is so true that the Gays are still in control of the Castro.
May 28th, 2014 at 3:11 pm
Christopher* you have it right. If only more people would listen.