When The Spell Is Broken
By Mitch Berg
The Obama Store closes:
This time last year, the Obama Store was teeming with customers. Ideally situated in the basement of Washington’s Union Station, the store was filled with consumers eager to buy anything with Obama’s likeness while others took pictures of the life-size cut-outs of the president and first lady. Now, the Obama Store is boarded up.
How quickly things change in a year.
This follows almost exactly a year after “Obama 1260”, Washington DC’s all-liberal talk station, switched formats – to conservative talk.
Gotta hand it to the late proprietors; they certainly saw a trend:
The Obama Store was capitalism at its most brilliant rawness; find a market and exploit it quickly. The store made possible one-stop shopping for all of your tacky Obama merchandise needs. T-shirts! Hats! Calendars! Hand-warmers! Keychains! It was like something out of Spaceballs (“Obama: The Flame Thrower! The kids love this one.”). The store carried every imaginable product with the words “Obama” and “Commemorative,” except, notably, the Obama Chia Pet.
Obama got 93 percent of the vote in DC. That may have been more than even in the Fifth District.
February 5th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
I’ve heard there’s still a great deal of demand for BO bobble head dolls.
February 5th, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Great. Now where is the staff going to go when the Chief needs a gift for a visiting head of state?
February 5th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
My favorite Obama themed product was something I saw at Spencers. I won’t go into graphic detail, but lets just say it had to do with “stimulus” and “package” and well… do I really need to explain it anymore than that? I’m only 23, I can still get a kick out of sophomoric humor, screw you all 😉
February 5th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
The reason the store closed was due to the owners didn’t realize until after they opened that:
Since Union Station is gov’t owned, they had to pay a “living wage” to their unskilled clerks (true story….my employer has a precence in the Pentagon, and we have to pay our lowest level employees twice what they earn out in the real world….due to gov’t wages mandated even on private employers in gov’t facilities).
The health inspecter stopped in and said the owner couldn’t keep his dog there, forcing doggy daycare expenses.
ACORN started a boycott because a shoplifter was injured while being apprehended.
DC gov’t attacked them because there weren’t enough people of color working in said facility.
ADA scammer came in and sued them because some of their electronic devices for sell could not be reached well from a wheelchair.
The electrical contractor who did some work had a non-union employee working one day, causing major problems with the local brotherhoods.
February 5th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
Ben Says:
February 5th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
“My favorite Obama themed product was something I saw at Spencers. I won’t go into graphic detail, but lets just say it had to do with “stimulus” and “package” and well… do I really need to explain it anymore than that? I’m only 23, I can still get a kick out of sophomoric humor, screw you all.”
It IS funny Ben, and that is not unique to you being 23.
February 5th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
sweet, I don’t ever have to grow up.
February 9th, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Ben, we’ll all chip-in in 17 years and CHANGE your “luck”.
😉
Think of it as the sequel to that one movie.
February 18th, 2010 at 6:43 am
[…] sales of Obama items (not to mention Obama-themed stores and Obama radio stations) crater: “There were no Obama-themed designs on the list – […]