It's Our Dollar, Their Monopoly Money

Oh, to be middle-aged, middle-class, and schlepping around SoHo.

Oh wait a sec — I am. So why am I not beaming like everyone else coming out of shops where skirts with unfinished seams and coats too cool to actually close sell for more than a family vacation?

Because I am an American. Which means I am paid in dollars. Which means I am still part of the world where something that costs $100 feels like it costs $100, even though if I were a European awash in euros, that same item would be about half price.

And pretty much everyone else in SoHo is awash.

"It's perfect," a visiting banker from Portugal, Luis Reish, said when asked how he felt about the dollar. We were sitting in a store where his girlfriend had one shapely leg in a brown, stiletto-heeled boot, the other in a low-heeled, black leather boot. Not that you could actually see the boots — these were encased in leg warmers that just happened to be made entirely of fur.

The boyfriend preferred the stilettos (quel surprise). Me too. "Go for the brown," I said, trying to get into the spirit of $400 legwear.

"It's honey," she replied, pointing to the color.

Oh.

The boyfriend whipped out a credit card, the girlfriend in her micro-mini picked up the bag, and out they swung into the surprisingly warm day.

When Europeans enter a store, a salesclerk at Z Baby Company on Spring Street, Payton McClure, said, there's an easy way to spot them: "They don't usually ask how much things are. As opposed to the American tourists who head straight for the sales rack."

Ooh, there's a sales rack? Good to know.

The Europeans also tend to prefer brighter colors, like orange and fuchsia, probably because they are in such chipper, the world-is-a-giant-Kmart, moods. (But they also like black AC/DC T-shirts for their 6-month-olds, so go figure.)

A nearby fortune-teller named Fatima (natch) said she gets both American and foreign clients, and has noticed only one difference. The foreigners "look a little bit happier."

Like, for instance, Megan Grant. A visitor from Australia, Ms. Grant was waltzing out of Dean & DeLuca all smiles and shopping bags. "Everything we've been buying has been easier here," she said. "We got sunglasses, hair care products, lots of books." And at Dean & DeLuca, she said, "I bought some fancy honey."

What made it fancy?

"The price," she said, laughing. "It was $17."

Maybe it was made by Jerry Seinfeld himself.

Now, look, I'm not down on these tourists for grabbing up the goodies no one in their right currency would buy. I'm glad they're keeping our economy strong and our three-items-on-a-10-footrack stores in business. What's really galling me, I guess, is that I can still remember when it was me galavanting around their countries scooping up the laughably cheap scarves and slacks I'm still wearing today.

Now the shoe is now on the other foot, and alas for us Americans, it is not a stiletto-heeled boot the color of money.

Er … honey.

lskenazy@yahoo.com