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ChineseThe Metro Store Goes Green
Some of the swag at Metro’s online store is going green. Metro has added a new t-shirt, baby onesie, and lanyard with an eco-twist to their retail mix. The t-shirt, made of certified organic cotton, features the bold statement “I Ride For A Greener LA” printed in white on the sage colored fabric. It’s not as cool as a Prius, but for $19 it allows you to non-verbally communicate to the world just how much you care about Mother Earth. The Future Metro Rider Onesie (link takes you to a hilariously large image courtesy of Metro’s funky online store) is perfect for all you moms who want to show other moms just how much your rugrat cares about the environment. $15 will get you this lush certified organic cotton baby poop (100% biodegradable) receptacle. Last but not least is this slick black Metro Lanyard($6), made of 100% recycled soda and water bottles. Wear it around your neck, or whatever you’re supposed to do with lanyards, and know that your last bottle of Fiji water potentially went on to a better life.
The larger question brought about by this new product line-up is: does anyone actually buy stuff from the Metro Store?
I’ll confess. I have. Metro nerd that I am, I bought a few posters, a lapel pin, and a retractable badge holder or two for when I worked in the office (both badge holders promptly broke). I have to imagine though that I’m in the minority. Will Metro really sell enough t-shirts to recoup their investment (however small) in certified organic cotton? Do enough people buy their babies Metro apparel to ensure that there’s not boxes of organic onesies sitting in some warehouse until the end of time? These questions and more can be answered in our newest poll:
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
So far I haven’t but have always wanted to. Talking about MTA, I always thought it would be a good idea to have a CD-ROM format of all their maps and schedules. I would buy that. Just a thought.
Ps. I might add, when I went to the Chery Blossom Festival in Little Tokyo I did get a free Orange Metro Liner pin.
Does that count ?
Why do they waste time with a Metro store? I can’t imagine that it makes any money.
If they put out scale models of the light rail or subway trains they run I might buy one and put it on my desk haha. But other than that who cares.
That t-shirt SUCKS!
They need to get some of these:
http://tinyurl.com/4eqzke
The Militant has never bought from the Metro online store. INSTEAD, he may ot may not have shopped at the phyiscal, brick-and-mortar (Italian granite?) Metro Store on the 1st floor of the MTA Gateway Building behind Union Station. He’s bought an (M) logo t-shirt and a (M) logo water bottle, which unfortunately doesn’t fit into his bike’s bottle holder.
militant angeleno:
I didn’t even know there was a brick-and-mortar Metro store. I thought Big Blue Bus was the only agency doing that.
Their store is on the left side of the revolving doors, if I recall correctly. You can also pick up their full fold out system maps there too. The lady who helped me was really nice, I asked her if I could get a system map (like the ones on the trains) so I could put up on my wall… and she said they sold it for $10. But I saw an old one (pre Orange and Purple Line) behind her desk, and she said I could take that one for free haha.
Stephen: It would only be good for a year, since Eastside Gold Line opens next year. And Exposition the year after that. But then today’s maps might be free by that time.
Still it’s a perfect gift for any Angeleno friends transplanted out of town to make them feel less homesick.
I think Metro swag could sell if it was marketed to tourists instead of locals. Get these shirts and things over to Hollywood/Highland, set up a little stand in the Red Line Station there. I’d be much more likely to buy crap if I was a tourist, and I think the Metro stuff is worlds beyond most of the tourist shit found on the Boulevard.
I still have my 30 year old MBTA t-shirt from college and this really neat pin from Metrotrains for riding the inaugural Ventura County Line VIP train. Now, I think I’ll sue for false advertising seeing as their ain’t much “green” about diesel buses and trains. There isn’t really much green about subways and light rail that get their electricity from 300 miles away coal plants either. I could work out a ten year settlement with me as the head of the T-Shirt Wearers Union and we can get a special master to approve any changes in clothing. I will arrive to the hearings in $8,000 Italian sharkskin suits.
Is that image of the onesie supposed to be actual size or something?
After I wrote about the Metro store on my “Christmas Ideas” post, my wife got me the lapel pin that’s made out of an old subway token. I thought it was kind of cool…
I have three Metro Liners (before the year is out, I will have no more than one: one is going to the best little essay at tonight’s Roger Snoble Pity Party at Union Station—6 p.m., be there!—and one is sure to end up immolated for no more than a stupid video). I also have a some cut-out, fold-up buses and a Metro calculator that never returns the same sum twice.
I bought a few things from the physical employee’s store at the Taj Mahal. I’ve bought a box of RTS bus banks, which included the decals for the Metro paint schemes, but a few of them I had painted in other agencies’ colors. I also bought a Metro cookbook — employees entered a contest and the winning recipes were placed in the book — and a division logo hat.
[...] spectacular, perhaps an “Imagine” booth promoting the Long Range Plan and give-aways of their new eco-shirts. I did pass a number of booths promoting the bicycle culture and/or products, but not as many as I [...]