The website’s slogan is “transit merch so authentic, it’s delayed indefinitely.”
www.notinservice.ca features parody TTC merchandise that many riders can relate to.
The mugs and t-shirts describing situations and scenarios many riders could relate to were never for sale, but merely meant to draw attention to concerns about public transit.
But that could change after positive feedback from the public according to one of the people behind the website.
“Even a few TTC employees have reached out to tell us how much they enjoy the designs.”
“We didn’t originally intend to sell anything, but the response has been so overwhelming that we’re working to get a shop up right now,” said Marty, one of the website’s co-founders who didn’t want to provide his last name.
“We’ve had hundreds of emails and messages begging us to make them for real, so we’re giving it a shot.”
The site was registered on December 15, the same day a massive snow storm led to traffic backups and public transit delays on surface routes. The storm had “a little to do with it,” said Marty.
But he said they really started the site because they felt the idea of TTC merchandise was absurd to begin with.
“In all our years of living in Toronto, we’ve never really known anyone who was super-enthusiastic about the TTC, especially around the winter. So we made parodies of their products that we felt people would actually want to wear,” he said.
But not everyone is laughing. Anne Marie Aikins, spokesperson for Metrolinx, rightly pointed out that not all situations related to public transit should be fodder for parody.
The product referencing incidents at track level was removed from the website.
A spokesperson for the TTC declined to comment.
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