In communist Cuba, some customers are more equal than others, as a 40-year-old math teacher who was out shopping recently in Havana with his son discovered. The pair passed a spanking new shop situated on the ground floor of a luxury hotel in the upmarket Miramar neighborhood. But "we had barely put a foot inside when they told me it (payment) was in dollars," Michael, the teacher, who declines to give his surname, tells AFP. The state-owned supermarket, which opened in January, is the first of several dollar-denominated stores set to open across the island, as part of a bid to boost the island's battered economy. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES