Shirt the Ninth: Gesundheit.

I got this dashiki from Freewheelin Frank's in the early 1990s. No other item of clothing I've ever owned has retained its colors like this, by which I mean better than this, because the photo doesn't do it justice.

The tag reads "GLOBAL IMPORTS Made In Thailand." Tres multiculti.

Shirt the Fifth: Ugly Tiger

Front

"Well, that's a lovely shirt and a lovely tiger. I don't know why you'd name it "Ugly" anyth--"

Back

 "O-o-o-h, no, god! Oh dear god in heaven! Hoban Washburne wouldn't even wear that!"

I'm the biggest Wash fan I know, but let's face it...the man's color palette was limited. Had he been a "winter," like me, he'd've been able to get away with this sort of thing.

Color scheme aside, that is one ugly tiger. Thanks, Aloha Shirtman!

Shirt The Third: Cocks Of Fire!

One more shirt and then I really must go get batteries for the camera.

This awesome shirt belonged to a friend of my ex-hub's. One day someone told him it "look[ed] N-wordy" and the silly racist ass refused to wear it again. Score one shirt for me!

Fun fact: When I wear this shirt, I AM THE PHOENIX KING. 

Shirt the second: Happi Hanten

I got this Happi coat

from the amazing wonderful Shibui Kimono in Memphis.

No, it isn't really a shirt, I just wanted an excuse to post it. I swear there will be actual T-shirts any day now.

Shirt The First: Spinal Tap Loud

I bought the blog background shirt in the late 1990s or early this century. I got it from the Aloha Shirtman, a white-haired old gent who lived in a house a few doors down from my apartment. Whenever he needed money or the spirit moved him, he'd tape a cardboard sign reading "BIG sale"to the pole at the end of the block and put his wares out on the lawn. He had a box piled full of identical 1971 Poppin' Fresh figurines (he was very specific about the 1971 part) and a bigger box of hardback copies of Scarlett.


He also had two pink bicycles and a few VCR tapes of old Westerns, but mainly he had shirts on a clothesline he strung between trees. He must have had a helluva collection, because the shirts in the sale were duplicates and/or not good enough to keep. He charged five dollars each for the shirts at first, but later they went up to six. This is a six-dollar shirt.

A few years later, in a creative writing graduate course, the hungover student across the seminar table looked at me, bleary-eyed, and groaned "Damn, Laurel, that shirt is loud. That shirt is Spinal Tap loud."

The photo doesn't do it justice--the colors really go to eleven. The tag reads "An Original Hawaiian Togs Made In Hawaii."