A penny saved..., and more

A penny saved...

The streets of Pittsburgh may not be paved with gold, but one small business there is paved with zinc and copper. Mel Angst, owner of tattoo gallery and coffee shop Artisan, has paved the floor of her establishment with 250,000 pennies, each with Abraham Lincoln’s face looking up. If that sounds like a costly way to tile your floor, then do the math. The cost of materials only added up to $2,500, or around $3 per square foot. “Amazingly enough, it’s a lot cheaper to glue money to your floor than actually buy tile,” said Angst.

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When super-storm Sandy forced New York City to cancel its marathon last weekend, many disappointed participants made the best of their long-planned sojourns to New York by helping the victims. On race day, more than 1,000 runners traveled to badly hit Staten Island to aid with clean-up efforts. Marathoners distributed water bottles and other supplies originally intended for the race to people in the devastated New York borough, and helped locals clear blocked roadways. “I was almost in tears because I’ve been training for two years,” said one runner. “But what is two years of my life to somebody’s whole life?”

Ottumwa's claim to fame

The movies have Hollywood, country music has Nashville, and the video-game world has Ottumwa, Iowa. The small town on the Des Moines River is home to a video arcade, Twin Galaxies, known to video-game fans everywhere as the keeper of gaming world records. In the 1980s, owner Walter Day began tallying international high scores on arcade games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, and he still maintains the record book 30 years later. Now Ottumwa, home to a flourishing game-design industry, plans a museum commemorating the town’s gaming history.