Our next task? Improve our selection of clothing. Sure, our “Sinner” shirts and “VanJail” sweats are fun, but our t-shirt designs are mostly… lame. We tried to come up with some ideas on our own, but it was somewhat less than successful.

So, help us! From now until July30, 2010 we want you to submit your ideas to our tshirt design contest. (We’ve even put together some great prizes to help motivate you.)

Here’s the details:

We’re looking for at least one winning design, but will accept more winners if the rumours of your collective awesomeness are to be believed.

Our ideal design will promote our little museum in an artistic, clever and creative way–it could be directly police (or police history) related, it could be about forensic science or even about our creepy building that used to be the city morgue. Let your imagination run with it.

Once you’ve submitted your design, promote it! Popular vote will play a HUGE role in deciding which idea wins. After the popular vote determines the finalists, our jury will pick the design(s) we’re actually going to produce for the shop. The final decision will be based on which design(s) will be easiest to print, which is the most creative and which best reflects the character of the museum.

What’s in it for you? Fame and glory, of course. Plus, the designers of most popular t-shirts will get to pick a prize from the prize pool, starting with the most popular designs and going until we run out of prizes. Everyone who submitted a winning (printed) design will get some shirts with their own design on them.

A big thank-you to everyone at Strutta for making their awesome contest platform available to us! Also, thanks to the Vancouver Attractions Group, Blue Olive Photography, Miss604.com, Axiom Salon & Spa, The Listel Hotel, the Vancouver Trolley Company and MightyUgly.com for fantastic prizes and great support.

We can’t tell you how excited we are for this contest…

Me and a Tommy. (Image by John Biehler. Some rights reserved.)

This morning, we received an email from a big movie studio, asking if we’d be interested in seeing a sneak preview of an upcoming major summer film. (Update: the movie you might get to see is “Public Emenies” starring Johnny Depp!) As you might imagine, this caught us a little off-guard, since we’ve never received any sneak preview tickets at the Police Museum before. After the shock wore off, we decided to press our luck and see how many tickets we could get. In the end, they gave us 20 (!) pairs of tickets for the screening. (Screening is in the evening of Thursday, June 25th)

We can’t tell you what film this is for yet, but we’re pretty sure you’d enjoy checking this one out before the masses. So, we’ve decided to run a contest or two in the next week to give you a chance to come join us. The first contest, we’re calling… “Me and a Tommy”.

Doesn't everyone need an Anti-Bandit Gun?

As you may know, we’re pretty proud of the eight Thompson Submachine Guns we have in our museum collection. Invented by John T. Thompson in 1919, the Thompson became infamous during the Prohibition era. It was a common sight of the time, being used by both law enforcement officers and criminals. (Vancouver Police bought 42 of them, at $50 a piece!) The Thompson was also known informally as the “Tommy Gun”, the “Trench Broom”, the “Trench Sweeper”, the “Chicago Piano”, the “Chicago Typewriter”, and the “Chopper”. (Thanks for the succinct write-up, Wikipedia!)

To win this contest, you need to take a photograph of yourself with a Tommy; could be a person, an object, a poster, arts-and-crafts, whatever… be creative, as long as it’s clearly a “Tommy’. Once you’ve got the picture, comment on this blog entry with your name and a link to your picture, or post a Twitpic on Twitter with the hashtag “#vpmtommy”. (No photoshops, or digital edits, please!)

To summarize the contest:

1) Take a picture of you and a Tommy
2) Get it online
3) ???
4) PROFIT!!!

All entries must be up before 5pm on Sunday, June 21.

Afterward, our elite panel of judge(s) will pick the most creative, unique or awesome entries and award the selected contributors each a pair of tickets to the screening. We may award as few as one or as many as five sets of tickets for this contest, depending on how much awesomeness we receive. You can submit multiple photos, but you can only win once.

Good luck to you all!

ps. The first person to post a real picture of themselves with Tommy Chong, (no photoshopping!!!) wins automatically!