Black Friday Deals from the L.A. Coroner's Gift Shop? Aiming to Revive Sales of "Morgue Merchandise"

[The Straight Story]

Black Friday Deals from the L.A. Coroner's Gift Shop? Aiming to Revive Sales of "Morgue Merchandise"

LOS ANGELES (CBS/AP) The morgue has got to be the last place you'd think to go shopping - so perhaps it's not surprising that sales at the Los Angeles County Coroner's gift shop are next to dead.

Then again, officials are encouraging the coroner to develop a marketing strategy. They appear to be dead serious.

Tucked as unobtrusively as possible in a closed-door room off the coroner's lobby, the store is jam-packed with mortality-mocking merchandise: Water bottles marked "bodily fluids," boxer shorts dubbed "undertakers," toe tags, crime-scene tape and beach towels bearing the county coroner's trademarked symbol of a body outline.

Trouble is, few people know about the tongue-in-cheek store and its related website, "Skeletons in a Closet." The shop's biggest customers? No shock here - homicide detectives.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20023657-504083.html

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. I've never shopped there, but I think they have a cool idea!

[The Straight Story]

2. Guess you could say they were 'Dead on' (nt)

[lbrtbell]

3. As someone who saw a deceased loved one in a body bag

I think this is in very bad taste. And I'm a person with a very disgusting sense of humor.

[The Straight Story]

4. I can get that, but I can also see the other side as well here

having been a cop and seeing really crappy things you sometimes deal with it in ways other people would think were a little jacked.

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Each of us handles our grief in our own way...

I have to respect your feelings about this, but many of us who have also seen loved ones pass this way have no problem with it.

(Myself, I'm carrying enough other baggage from deaths I've been through that this stuff is almost a relief.)

[kestrel91316]

7. Gallows humor tends to be an inside joke, not intended for the general

public. My clients, for instance, might be mortified by some of the things we find humorous in veterinary practice.

[TreasonousBastard]

5. Coroner's lunchbags! Gotta get me one...

Lotsa cool stuff here...

http://www.lacoroner.com/Beach-Towels-Mugs-and-more-C12.aspx