A couple weeks ago, it was a Saturday or a Sunday, I went for walk. As fate would have it, my feet led me to a gelato place that I had never visited – it was already a great day. As I pulled out some cash to pay for my two scoops in a cup (I don’t want to be bossy, but, in case you’re not sure, the right way to eat gelato is in a cup) I was gently informed that this was a cash free store – credit or debit cards only.

This was obviously not my first encounter with a no-cash store. In the mid-2010s, I was in Ottawa and someone suggested we have lunch at a healthy-ish restaurant whose name I can’t remember but was something like The Ethical Eggplant. Before we went in, I was told that the place did not take cash – presumably for ethical reasons, though I still can’t figure those out.

And then there were the plague years when we believed that our bills and coins could actually kill us and so we shunned the use of cash and paid for two-dollar purchases on our cards, and the masked staff who served us thanked us for making this important life-saving decision (those were the days, we were heroes just for using plastic).

But the history of cash free locations goes back a lot further. How much further? To answer that with any certainty would require me to do some research, and I don’t like to do that, but I can tell you with great confidence that it goes back at least to 2004.

How do I know this? How can I be so sure? It’s because it was in 2024 that Gordon’s Acoustic Living Room, the band that I am so proud to be a part of, had its first set of gigs. And, as those of you who have been on this magical musical mystery tour with us know (either by coming to one or more of our gigs or just reading about our exploits in these blurbs), we don’t take cash at our shows. In fact, we do the cashless thing one better – we don’t even take plastic – we don’t pollute the purity of our art with money in any form!

Does all this sound a bit self-righteous – perhaps. But when you’re a pioneer and on the right side of history, like we are, then I think you’re entitled to be a bit self-righteous.

So if you want to experience a wildly eclectic evening of music, performed by a large ensemble of musicians, playing a bewildering array of instruments (and no, for the 425th time, the instrument I play is not a ukulele or a banjo, it’s a mandolin) in many, many different genres, then you are welcome to join us on Sunday, October 4, at the justly famous, and aptly named for us, Free Times Café (on College just west of Spadina). The show will begin at 8 pm and it’ll be great.

There of course will be no cover, but you are encouraged to purchase food and libations and pay by way of cash or credit, or bitcoin, whatever the hell that is.

Hope to see you there.

Jonathan

P.S. In the interest of complete transparency, I do need to provide the alterative explanation as to why we do not accept cash or credit at our shows and that’s because the bewildering array of instruments discussed earlier includes the bagpipes, and asking people to pay to hear the pipes would be adding insult to injury.