Radar recently investigated the media circus plaguing Manhattan liquor emporium East Village Wines, which has been accepting euros for years. Our crack staff of interns, of all people, were jubilant to hear about the opportunity to shed some unused euros; after all, who doesn't have stray foreign currency lying around? (Poor people.) Moreover, who doesn't want to drop the otherwise useless currency on liquor? But the East Village is far from Radar HQ. Instead we took a tour of the decidedly more corporate retail locales in Midtown to see if anyone was trading on foreign bills.

The Hallmark store on Second Avenue has deep discounts on all of its stale Valentine's novelties, you'll be glad to know, and to us expired chocolate is still passable chocolate. We selected a giant heart-shaped box of truffles and sauntered over to the register. "Fourty-four dollars," the shop-keep said. We pulled out our watercolor currency and pushed it across the counter. The Hallmark woman looked over our shoulder, and we understood it to mean the company is not as progressive as their greeting cards.

We then picked up our usual weekend supplies—condoms, a birth control test, a sympathy card—at the Duane Reade across the street, and steadying up at the checkout counter, it looked as though we were good to go. But before the cashier could calculate the exchange rate, a manager of some variety told us where to find a currency exchange.

At Grand Central Station, the hub of this great melting pot, we went to Hudson News to pick up a copy of Radar (as interns, these things, alas, do not come free), but were again swiftly denied. In fact, we were subsequently defeated at McDonalds and Staples, too. Like the patient lushes we are, then, we'll be saving our euros till next we head downtown and to the euro-friendly vitners at East Village Wines.