I DROVE ACROSS the country in the summer of 1980 with my friend Paulo in a car that didn't need windshield wipers. We didn't need windshield wipers, I kept telling people, because we had an onion.

Actually, the real reason we didn't need windshield wipers was because the motor was broken and we'd spent all our money on other things that we really did need for the road (Bud and bud), and besides, I'd already had to pull the engine and replace the rear main bearing and put in a $75 junkyard transmission, and I didn't have any interest in crawling up behind the damn dashboard to pull the wiper mechanism, which is one of the ugliest jobs there is.

So on the advice of a friend, who happened to be hallucinating at the time, we bought an onion, for about 15¢.

The onion thing works fine, most of the time. You cut it in half and smear it all across the windshield, and when it rains, the water beads up and rolls right off, and you can see, sort of.

Anyway, the onion got dried up by the time we got to Iowa, and since it's the oil that makes the water bead up, a dried onion is a nonfunctional onion. So we pulled off the road and drove around until we found a farm stand. I told the guy we needed an onion – a nice big juicy one, for the windshield – and he didn't bat an eye. "This one here'll work great," he said.

In Iowa the old farmers know onions, and they know what to do when your windshield wipers don't work and you don't have any money to fix them.

So that's what this week's issue is about: what to do when you don't have any money and you still have things to do and places to go and you need some sort of 15¢ way to make it work. We've got information about low-cost movies, low-cost health care, low-cost transportation, deals on furniture, where to eat cheap, how to get quick cash when you're really broke, and a whole lot more.

The economy isn't good in San Francisco, but it isn't all bad either. Rents are down, both residential and commercial, and in a city where housing costs are probably the single most important factor in the quality of life, that's a very positive change.

Besides, in a recession there's always the potential for creative ways to fight the system. That's something to be happy about.