The pinups at Fat Smitty’s Café, and more

The pinups at Fat Smitty’s Café

For more than 25 years, customers at Fat Smitty’s Café in Discovery Bay, Wash., have been plastering the walls with dollar bills. When Carl “Fat Smitty” Schmidt enlisted local Boy Scouts to take the cash down last week, he discovered that his patrons had left more than $10,000 over the years. Schmidt donated the money to a Boy Scout charity and a children’s hospital, and says his walls are now open to new donations. “Hopefully, because people know the money is going for charity, it will go up even faster in the future,” he said.

Not so chagrined at Chagrin Hardware

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Residents of the small town of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, struck a symbolic blow against big-box retailers last week by staging a “cash mob” at a neighborhood hardware store. Locals flooded Chagrin Hardware for a day, buying up everything from lightbulbs to fireplace grates. A chain email had encouraged Chagrin Falls residents to support the store, which opened in 1857, by spending $20 during the event—but many spent lots more than that. Steve Shutts, whose family has run the store since 1940, said the event was testament to the town’s community spirit. “What a place to live,” he said.

A homecoming parade for Iraq war veterans

More than 100,000 people lined the streets of St. Louis last week to honor veterans of the Iraq war, after a pair of local residents staged a homecoming parade. Craig Schneider and Tom Applebaum, neither of whom served in the military, felt Iraq veterans from St. Louis and elsewhere deserved a welcome home, so they raised $35,000 in donations through Facebook, and sought permission from city and military officials to stage the parade—the nation’s first since combat troops left Iraq in December. “It was an idea nobody said no to,” said Schneider. “America was ready for this.”