The juice truck was parked on a busy Manhattan street with this eye-catching display of vegetables. So, of course, what’s a girl to do, but take a photograph?

“That’ll be two dollars!” yelled the enterprising entrepreneur from inside the truck, and he was serious.

“I’m not paying two dollars to take a photo of your carrot penis,” I shot back, and walked on.

There’s a price for everything, today, and that includes taking a photograph of a purposely provocative product display. Now, I know there are some who think that if I didn’t buy a juice, I should pay for the photo.  Obviously, I’m not one of them.

Of course, the display was adolescent boy stuff (although put together by a grown man). It was also vaguely offensive. It was, after all, on a public thoroughfare. It was meant to represent a penis and it did.

Also offensive was the idea that I should pay to take a photo of it.

I have to wonder if this price for everything is the American way? or if it’s a perversion of capitalism as practiced by immigrant entrepreneurs?

Or disenfranchised people? Because I remember being similarly put off when I visited a Taos pueblo and was told that if I wanted to snap photographs, they would be $5 each. (Why not instead charge admission to the pueblo?)

We live in a world in which everyone wants a buck.

Even for a snapshot of a carrot-penis.

Seriously.