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rfmcdonald
Citylab's Kriston Capps writes about the uniquely stylish bus passes of the city of Milwaukee.
Kindra Murphy started her career as collector of Milwaukee transit design four years ago. More recently, she's run into a catch.
She initially discovered a cache of Milwaukee weekly bus passes at a flea market just south of Minneapolis. Murphy, a graphic designer and associate professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, bought up a few hundred of the vintage weekly transit cards.
"They had a designer thinking about what was going to make 52 of these go together," Murphy says. "They followed some stylistic tendencies from decade to decade. Think of bus passes now. They're so neutral, they're so boring, there's nothing exciting about them."
The Wisconsin women running the flea wouldn't part with the entire collection, which they acquired from an estate sale, Murphy says. Worse still, the prices kept rising. When she went back to the same junk market two years ago to acquire some more, they'd doubled in price, from four for a buck to two for one dollar. Right now, on eBay, vintage Milwaukee transit passes are listed for $4.99 a pop.
"Most of them were these beautiful typographic design experiences," Murphy says. "Maybe 'design experience' is too strong a word."
Much more at the link.
