I’m doing a food challenge where I’m only eating food I can get locally with cryptocurrency in Los Angeles. The challenge lasts for eight days, and started on Saturday. I woke up abnormally early at 6:30a, so by the time my friend Rhona came by to grab me for lunch at noon, I was famished. I live in Studio City, and we headed to Sabor y Cultura, a coffeeshop that houses the Hollywood Bitcoin Meetups.

I was a little apprehensive- there is a lot of misinformation and expired listings online, so sometimes it’s hard to tell without checking ahead if a place takes bitcoin, and if the staff understands how to process the transactions. Luckily, with Sabor y Cultura, the staff had no problem pulling their tablet out for my transaction. There was also a little bitcoin sign on their counter.

I bought a Snickers mocha, a Diet Coke, and a Turkey Panini for .03999 (around $16). While the staff was nice, and the venue was roomy and chill, both me and Rhona weren’t feeling too well after our food. The panini seemed more like a Hot Pocket than an awesome sandwich. The salad was good though, and the coffee was sugary and caffeiney. I was famished though, and this was the closest place to my house that takes crypto. Given the price and everything, I’m not really looking forward to going back, but might anyways due to convenience.

We then headed over to Whimsic Alley, the Harry Potter store in mid-Wilshire. They were having a geek craft fair. We visited AunJuli, who sold me a bag of Tardis flavored Fandom Tea. I’d had some a year ago, and been craving it since then. I spent .0246 – the bags go for $10. Aunjuli wasn’t set up to take Bitcoin- I had messaged her on Facebook to ask randomly the night before. I had her download Coin Pocket, and gave her a quick 5min tutorial. She’d seen our Meltdown event posts, and was excited to learn more about cryptocurrency. She had a lot of fun with the transaction, and threw in a narwhal sticker sheet too!

Back at my apartment, my boyfriend Dave and our friend Eliot were busy making a ton of salsa from scratch. We jumped into a car to hit a free day party in at Woodley Park called Shade. I did eat some of the salsa, which was delicious. It was also really nice being outside after two weeks of 100+ degree heatwave. @jmgranola showed up, delivering 23 eggs for 30,000 dogecoin (~$8). He brings eggs to meetups to sell, and I’ve petted his chickens before. They make great eggs, and I love supporting local farming. We used our phones for the transaction – I have an Android phone that has a doge wallet on it. iOS still doesn’t have one.

One of the most fun parts about buying eggs from @jmgranola is that he’s super passionate about altcoins. I always learn about the latest trends, and which coins I should actually care about. While we both love dogecoin, there’s a ton of coins out there doing interesting things. We’ve been talking about Myriadcoin lately.

After Shade, I went over to Meltdown Comics back in Hollywood, to raid their stash of Japanese Candy to last a week. I picked up a lot of random stuff, some of which I never had before. Bittrex was being slow so I didn’t have enough to do the transaction in doge, so I just used bitcoin. I think they’re using Moolah for their transactions, and they do it on a tablet. I bought .0465 bitcoin worth of snacks and practically inhaled the strawberry koalas. They’re fantastic- if you haven’t had them, they’re one of my favorites. It’s like strawberry frosting covered in a thin shell of koala shaped cookie. Meltdown almost always has Japanese candy, which is usually easier than getting to a market downtown. I also picked up a $25 GogoCoin card for my dad’s birthday. They’re bitcoin gift cards. You can read more about them here: http://spelunk.in/2014/09/04/gogocoin-launch-at-meltdown/

Total spent on Saturday: 0.11109 btc and 30,000 doge

Here’s Day 2!! http://spelunk.in/2014/09/22/eating-crypto-for-a-week-in-la-day-2/

SO MUCH CANDY! YEEEESSSSSSSSS