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One Red Paper Clip
Take two vegetarians from Vancouver, a ceramic artist from Seattle, a shock-rock legend, a TV star turned Hollywood producer, a town with an impish sense of humor, a whimsical quest dreamed up by a 25-year-old free spirit, mix them together and what do you get? One of the most improbable swaps imaginable: a paper clip for a house. It all began the summer of 2005. Kyle MacDonald was a restless young Canadian who asked himself a simple question: How far could he get if he played Bigger and Better, a kids' scavenger hunt game, on the Internet? The way it worked was players took a mundane item -- say, a pencil -- then scattered out into the neighborhood, knocked on doors, traded up, then reconvened and voted on who had made the biggest and/or best swap. "I decided instead of knocking on a neighbor's door, it would be fun to knock on the Internet's door and see what people had to offer," Kyle explains simply. It was pointless, yes. It was goofy, certainly. But it was fun.So Kyle sat down in his parents' house in Vancouver, British Columbia, took a photo of a little red paper clip that was sitting on the desk and put this notice in the barter section of the local craigslist, the classified-ads website: "I want to trade this paper clip with you for something bigger or better, maybe a pen, a spoon, or perhaps a boot. If you promise to make the trade, I will come and visit you."
Not far away, Rhawnie Vallins heard her roommate and fellow vegetarian, Corinna Haight, read Kyle's posting. "We were, like, is this guy serious?" Rhawnie phoned Kyle and found out that indeed he was. The silliness of it was so appealing they agreed to swap a wooden novelty pen shaped like a fish for the paper clip.
The next morning, a laid-back guy with curly hair met Corinna and Rhawnie in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. They made the swap, took some photos and promised to keep in touch. The game, as Sherlock Holmes would say, was afoot.
Because Kyle had a) promised to make every trade face-to-face but b) had no money, he was limited to places he could visit cheaply or for free or that were easy to get to from his apartment in Montreal.
His next trade was in Seattle because he and his family were on their way to a Mariners game. They stopped to see Annie Robbins, a ceramics artist. Kyle checked out her array of items -- a banana, a container of fish food and a little ceramic knob made by an eight-year-old boy. The knob had an odd face -- a bug-eyed stare and a squiggly smile. "It looked like E.T. after he had taken a lot of drugs," Kyle says. He went straight for it.
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