Using simple PHP alternating color code buy rows ALLWAYS GREEN

I am using a super simple PHP alternating row color code by my rows
are always coming out green. The code is really simple. the value
for i is set to zero then each time a row is written the value
$bgcolorvar is reset to either yellow or blue. The back ground color
for that line is then set to the variable bgcolorvar. The problem is
each line displays green. To verify I coded this right I even put in
the command to echo the value of bgcolorvar in the first cell of each
line. And sure enough it flips between writing blue or yellow in each
cell. To confirm that I didnt goof up something else I manually set
bgcolor="blue" on the line where I have it set to
bgcolor="$bgcolorvar" and sure enough it turned blue.

The only way I can get it to change colors is to give the variable a
new name of a differnt length. Sometimes when I do that ALL the rows
turn to magenta. The real kicker is I tried 3 or 4 differnt scripts
for alterntating line color and everyone did the same thing.

I am running this on apache 1.39 (I think, well it is the 1.XX version
of apache) with the latest non-beta release of php.

Any idea what I am doing wrong?




<table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">

<tr bgcolor="#003366" class="tableheader">
<td ><div align="center" class="style1">Name</div></td>
</tr>

<?php $i = 0; ?>

<?php do { ?>
<?php $bgcolorvar = ($i++ & 1) ? 'yellow' : 'blue'; ?>


<tr bgcolor="$bgcolorvar">

<td ><div align="center"><?php echo $bgcolorvar ?><?php echo
$row_rsPayments['item_name']; ?>&nbsp;</div></td>
<td>

<?php } while ($row_rsPayments = mysql_fetch_assoc($rsPayments)); ?>
</table>