And Another Thing (16)

We’d classify this as Brian Jones’ third bright idea. The first was the San Diego resident’s decision to manufacture and sell leg lamps like those featured in the classic holiday movie “A Christmas Story.” The second was buying the Cleveland home where the movie was filmed to open the A Christmas Story House & Museum (“Handle With Care,” November 2006) as a way to sell even more leg lamps. Now, he has consolidated his company’s Garfield Heights and San Diego warehouses into one larger 5,700-square-foot North Olmsted facility that will handle all memorabilia for the Christmas Story House. “It makes more sense,” says Jones, who estimates his company sells between 9,000 and 10,000 lamps each year. “It’s cheaper to do business in Cleveland than in San Diego.” But maybe the biggest benefit is — hold on to your tracking numbers, now — faster shipping at lower costs. “We’ll be able to get orders to customers quicker,” Jones adds. “Most of the orders go to the Midwest and the East Coast.”

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Philip Metres likes the “democracy of buses.” The poet (“Gray Matters,” May 2008) says so in a credit line to his poem “Safety Instructions,” which will be excerpted in RTA’s “Moving Minds” project this summer. The annual merger of poetry and visual art pairs a poem with a graphic artist, who then designs a placard around it for display on city buses. “We were looking for superior craftsmanship,” says Judith Mansour-Thomas, executive director of The Lit, which selected the 13 local poets for the project. Look for the art on your next bus ride, starting this month.