Honestly, It’s Abe

Patrick Liam O’Hara was more than skeptical of the new-look money. He had just paid for a loaded chili dog from Ventura’s Top Hat Burger Palace when he was handed his first $5 bill redesigned by the U.S. Treasury. He almost dropped his lunch.

“It looks like Monopoly money!” he said, wide-eyed.

O’Hara’s reaction was a bit more animated than most who encountered the new $5 and $10 bills distributed by Ventura County banks and businesses this week. Others greeted the new currency with momentary surprise or indifference.

The new bills are similar to the $20 notes reissued in September 1998, a more graphic design that, well, looks a bit like play money. Gone are the familiar images of two Americans whose visages bought a nation its groceries, rented its movies, and paid for gas.

In their stead are bigger, bolder portraits, placed slightly off-center to deter counterfeiters. Other anti-copy tricks are a watermark that can only be viewed at a certain angle and a special security thread inside the bills.

Increases in computer-based counterfeiting led to the need for changes, authorities said, and Southern California is among the capitals of American counterfeiting. An estimated $75,000 a week is passed into the area’s economy.

The Treasury plans to print 640 million $5 notes and 492 million $10 bills, circulating them to commercial banks as the banks deposit money into the Federal Reserve System and take money from it.

Although there is no timetable for the new money to replace the old, 75% of the $100, $50 and $20 bills in circulation are the new design. The $100 bill was re-released in 1996, the $50 in 1997 and the $20 in 1998.

Erin Graham, 26, was a light-wheel mechanic for the U.S. Army in Kuwait when the first wave of new 20s arrived in 1998. When Graham returned stateside and withdrew the bills from an ATM, she thought she had been duped.

“I thought it was fake,” she said. “Everyone else was already used to it but us.”

Graham, a cashier at the Juice Shack on East Main Street, is now getting acquainted with two more new bills.

A Juice Shack customer gave Graham her first look at the new Abe. The redesigned $5 bill seemed so similar to the redesigned $20 that Graham said she started making change for the larger, more valuable bill.

Embarrassed, Graham realized her mistake, made correct change, and gave the bill a second glance, she said. If not for the hologram on its right side, a ghostly print of a familiar Abraham Lincoln portrait, she said she would have assumed the bill was counterfeit.

Jack Bell, 26, who cooks at Top Hat Burger Palace, took the new $10 bill home for safe keeping. Bell was not yet ready to share the wealth, he said, because he loved the new look and had seen so few of the notes.

“I was, like, ‘Wow, trip out!’ ” he said.

Clarey Rudd, the owner of Bank of Books bookstore on Oak and Main streets, said newspaper stories prepared him for the new currency. Still, he said, he was surprised by his first encounter.

A dealer in classic books, Rudd, 47, said he was sad to see the artistry of old money go. The new money is far too bland, he said, adding that cash has lost its style.

“The simplicity of them is not as striking,” he said. “It’s not a classic.”

In addition to its novelty, new money is also wreaking havoc on businesses in Ventura County that rely on machines to dispense change. From vending machines to Laundromats, the race to update bill scanners to read modified money is on.

Signs on the change machines at the Village Carousel video arcade at Ventura Harbor warn customers that the machines will not give change for the new fives and tens. They are told to see the cashier.

“When I read about it in the paper, I thought we’d have a couple months before they showed up,” said arcade manager Jean Mack. “And there they were.”

The Marina Village Wash and Dry, at the corner of Seaward Avenue and Harbor Boulevard, was ready for the new greenbacks. The Laundromat upgraded the chips of its money readers to allow the machines to accept the money, said attendant Avril McLaren. The Thompson Boulevard Wash and Dry was not so lucky. Its readers await upgraded chips.

Area banks have also been dealing with new bills, as customers are requesting them, inquiring about them or attempting to exchange them for traditional bills.

Brian Schlotfelt, a teller for the South Victoria Avenue branch of Santa Barbara Bank & Trust, said a customer gave him his first new $5 bill.

Schlotfelt said he had fielded several questions from bank patrons about when the bills would become more readily available, a question for which he had no answer.

“Most people are curious about it,” he said. “People are starting to get used to it, because it’s almost a matching set now.”

At the Ventura County Federal Credit Union in east Ventura, branch officer Heather Perez said customer response has been tepid at best. More customers, by far, request the Sacajawea gold dollar coins, she said, seeking them as collectibles.

“Once in a while, you’ll get a comment about how they look like funny money,” she said. “But that’s basically it.”