Cross-posted to the Spacing Wire

Liz Clayton has a story this week in Eye about the new store TTC Transit Stuff . Read the full article, but first a quote:

…so it was with high hopes that we greeted the quiet opening last month of a little store in the TTC’s portion of Union Station. TTC Transit Stuff, as it is named with nearly postmodern utilitarianism, is the first formal TTC merchandising effort in many years. (An official gift shop once existed at Davisville head office, but the space was taken over by the headquarters of operations for the Metropass.) For those fans who tirelessly collect lapel pins, thrifted TTC neckties and ready-to-assemble cardboard streetcars, the news of the store brought fetishistic excitement. From a transit-advocacy standpoint, it seemed like a positive sign that the TTC had caught on to the stylish and geeky civic cachet of its brand and was extending its marketing efforts more broadly to a community that has been expressing a mostly unrequited transit love.

Yet the new store, which will formally open with a Mike Fileyï½­hosted celebration and refreshments at 10am on Sept. 28, is less a realization of the marketing potential of urban iconography than it is a sort of CNE-grade t-shirt store. The merchandise, produced by Woodbridge-based licensee Legacy Sportswear, is of a strictly corporate-giveaway ilk — the items that are not clothing are limited to the odd gift pen; there’s nary even a token holder in sight. Oh, and it’s also in the fare-paid area — so you might want to save your visit for a time when you’re already using the system.