Ninja Penny
Pennies are not as much use as they were when our grandparents were children. And I’m not the most frugal human. So when I’m in the city I play a game that costs me a penny a shot.
The goal of the game is to walk through the middle of the city and hurl or roll pennies one at a time so that as many people as possible notice the coin skittering and clanging around the sidewalk or curb but no one knows where the penny came from.
Ninja penny isn’t easy to pull off, which is probably why the game still holds my interest. Try it a couple times and you’ll find that you are usually under more observation than you think you are.
Look for people just coming out of buildings or just getting out of cars. The farther they are from you the better your chance of going undetected. But to get distance with a rolling penny you either need to have a downhill roll, perfect technique, or use a lot of arm motion, and arm motion is the obvious giveaway you want to avoid unless you can disguise it.
The more people there are in the area the tougher it gets, unless there’s so much going on that you can blend. Street people raise the difficulty level, they’re kind of on the lookout for weird motion and if that weird motion involves money, well, that gets their attention.
Suburbs aren’t fun, too boring, more space than people. Big parking lots can be OK, I play sometimes going into or out of a giant store like Fred Meyer with rows and rows of cars. Small downtowns like Renton can be challenging, there’s a lot less going on so it can be tough to roll a penny without being noticed, but again, there’s less people to begin with, so I don’t care so much. Big city downtowns are best, especially in cities like Seattle or San Francisco that have hills.
I know I’ve told a couple other people about the game over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever played alongside someone else. I’ve never bothered with a method of keeping score, since I’m just playing for myself. I’m easily amused, not obsessively compulsive.
Overall, I have much more success going unobserved than making perfect rolls that attract multiple attention-glances. Your skills may vary.