– Short Post –

Being an veteran “T-Shirt Guy” I have this thing about t-shirts.. I know how much they cost. So I have a real problem paying $68 for a t-shirt no matter where the cotton comes from. That’s why I was excited to stumble onto tenbills.com.

At first glance I saw that the shirts were set up in a series of 12 shirts, designed around a theme.. cool idea I thought .. then I quickly bought 2 shirts (The Contraption by Sean Dietrich and Air Brooklyn by Manuel R. Galvez) and continued to explore the site. I discovered that they were not just selling cool tee’s on the cheap.. they believed in the culture that revolves around the T-Shirt.

Ten Bills is not just a team of t-shirt lovers. We’re music lovers and we’re art lovers. We love to love! We love those who express themselves and their creativity and will continue to help artists reach wider audiences. We believe that self-expression is the only form of expression. We feel that our emotions should govern our actions – not society. But it’s emotions that we need more of in society.

And it is the way Ten Bills embraces this culture that I believe will set them apart from other “indie t-shirt shops”.. they seem to not be building just another “E-Store” site for shirts … they are starting a community… So go and set up your profile, “take the cake”, spread the word, introduce yourself to the message board, and join the community.

– Long Post –

I wrote a little bit about how serious I am about t-shirts in a previous post but I’m gonna go a little deeper this time…. I OWE JUST ABOUT EVERYTHING I HAVE TO T-SHIRTS… let me explain.

See I used to work as a day-time bartender at a local bar about 10 years ago and it was there that my life changed forever (or at least for the last 8 years so far). I remember the day like it was yesterday…. It was a sunny spring day in Sacramento as I strolled into work at 10:15 am, only 15 minutes late and feeling pretty good, I had a bit of a problem getting to the bar on time (and wearing my hat backwards.. but that’s another story) so I was a kinda worried when I saw the folded piece of paper taped to the cash register with my name on it…. could it be that final step .. the written warning that has been threatening me for weeks now.. nope… it was a memo that said the bar was joining a community softball league.. relieved I finished reading. It was the last line that read, ” and if anyone knows anyone that can design a logo for t-shirts let me know because I know a guy that can print them”. That night when I got off of work I rushed home.. OK I had a couple of beers and then drove very safely home.. I fired up the computer, a smoking 133mhz Pentium with 16megs of ram and a fresh Compuserve internet connection, and opened up a rarely used program called.. Publisher by Microsoft. I preceded to design my first logo.. and yes I used brush-script.

Anyways long story short.. the screen printer was blown away and asked my to design a t-shirt for a local radio station’s annual concert so I did it and they were blown away. I quit bar tending the next week and became a designer.

Two years later I was working for a one of the biggest screen printing shops in Sacramento, designing shirts and stuff for clients like Apple and Aerojet and two years after that I became an art director at one of the fastest growing advertising agencies in Northern California designing stuff for clients like the Sacramento Kings and Toyota. Four years after that I became my own boss and have been running a small design studio ever since… And I own it all to the T-SHIRT.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at 2:02 am and is filed under art, culture, design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.