CTA Tattler

6 BUCKS! For cheap wire-binding and some looseleaf paper?! WOW-E-WOW-WOW

... because, after all, her time is worth nothing. Geez.

I've seen people selling the old A-B signs at street fairs, though I didn't ask whether they were real or just well-done reconstructions.

Any word on the emergency that made the red line run aboveground this morning?

Stop griping about $6. I'm sure you blow more than that on things that have no real benefit and don't last half as long (coffee, beer, etc.)

I personally think it's a great idea. I have a bunch of these cards lying around. A great way to get rid of them.

That's so cool!

Just go to etsy and search for "cta." You'll find tons of CTA products.

You could probably get something similar made at your neighborhood copy and print shop for less than $6, but you'd have to bring in your own fare cards.

I think she's under-priced them. Not that I would pay $6 for one, but because overall demand is such that she has problems keeping them in stock. (And after this publicity, demand is likely to be through the roof!)

Perhaps some day when everyone who wants to have one as a novelty item already has one, supply and demand will dictate a lower price. But until then, she ought to be charging more.

Price gouging, you say? Well, we're talking about a novelty notepad, not a life-essential product here. It may be ethically wrong to tripple the price of plywood sheets the day before a hurricane, but there's nothing unethical about raising the price of a novelty notebook to whatever the market will bare.

My guess would be they'd still sell faster than they can be made (for now) at $10. But if someone were to start mass-producing replicas instead of relying on the supply of used authentic cards, the price would drop to more like $2.50. So someone handmaking them now ought to take advantage of the market while it's there because eventually it won't be worth the effort to hand-make them.

Re the red line this morning, at the time I was on the train (between 8:30 and 9) it was running underground, but stopped for at least 10 minutes because of "debris on the tracks." We got that from the train operator, and also something about the power having been cut. There were also several rather long announcements made from the station (North & Clybourn, I think) but they were unintelligible to me--though the tone sounded fairly excited. First thing I wondered was what kind of debris could this be and was it really more serious than that. So if anyone has the scoop, I'd love to hear it.

...but in reference to the notebooks, the buttons and magnets she's made, hope the CTA doesn't get anal about someone taking their printed material and chopping them up for their own profit. Hate to see a cool idea quashed under the wheels of bureaucracy

The CTA's followup to my alert this morning was

Mar 19 10:07AM
Fr: CTA_HQ
Normal service has resumed on the Red Line subway after a small fire on the tracks. There was a 15 minute delay.

(Remember, if you belong to the group but have messages turned off, you can read the message history at http://www.upoc.com/group.jsp?group=ctaalerts .)

I sent out the alert after we'd been parked at Belmont for about 15 minutes; our operator was optimistic for a while but finally told us that we'd be routed over the elevated tracks. (I was glad to hear him avoid the jargon "over the top," which of course means nothing to most riders.) Once we were parked at Fullerton, he also told us that the train following ours would likely go through the tunnel.

Over the course of the 15 minutes, between what the operator was telling us and the walkie-talkies of the platform attendants, the problem moved from Fullerton to North & Clybourn to Clark & Division, but the first I'd heard of the fire was the CTA's followup alert. (Maybe it was flaming "debris on the tracks"?)

Dude: if they have any sense at all, they'll appreciate the publicity. It's not like the CTA loses anything by people recycling discarded objects with their name on them. They look better as something useful than on the ground. Everybody wins.

They have the same notebooks at the Posters Plus store at the corner of Adams & Jackson for $2.75. Pretty nifty.

The ones at Poster Plus are made by me too. :)

And you can get them at Paper Boy too.

Oh, and in response to the person who thinks $6 for two books is too much...

These books aren't made in a factory somewhere with big machines that can make 100 books a minute. I make them by hand.

First I cut down the paper by hand and then punch holes in the paper and put them together. It's more time consuming than you might think. And I think I deserve to make more than Chinese wages. (But don't kid yourself. I'm not making a fortune here.)

And that's not to mention the fact that I have to find all the cards. I have people who are looking for them for me, but I still have a hard time finding enough to keep up with demand.

So maybe they're not worth $3 each for you, but they are for a lot of people.