It all started with the "Clean Rooms Are Boring" t-shirt that I had when I was six or seven years old. My mom thought that was hilarious. She thought her shirt that said "A Woman Without a Man is Like a Fish Without a Bicycle" was quite funny too. Needless to say, we got a lot of strange looks from people when we were out in public.
Then there was the "Mumford Phys. Ed." tee. I saw Beverly Hills Cop when I was ten, and Eddie Murphy was on my short list of favorite people in the world. When I got my very own "Mumford Phys. Ed." tee, I felt super cool. I could run around swearing, and listening to the "Axel F" song, while sticking bananas in people's tailpipes all day long.
So, at a young age I was already aware of the awesomeness of the t-shirt. Toward the end of grade school and the beginning of junior high school, I began to get more and more involved in skateboarding, punk rock, and hip-hop. It was the late '80s, and all three of these subcultures relied heavily on the t-shirt for marketing purposes. It was at this point that I became somewhat of a discerning collector. I had shirts from my favorite skateboard companies and my favorite bands. I even started trying to make my own with fabric paint and markers. I got pulled aside and lectured by teachers for wearing "Dead Kennedys" and "Minor Threat" shirts. Not sure what they found offensive about Minor Threat, but growing up in Pennsyltucky, it wasn't hard to upset people.
As I got older, the collection grew, and so did my interest. If it wasn't for an unsupportive high school art teacher, I might have ended up in the t-shirt industry sooner. It wasn't until I was 26 or 27, that I fell ass-backwards into an apprenticeship at a screen printing shop. My friend Todd started doing some design work for a guy named Sambo who had a small printshop that mainly serviced the skate and surf industries. He told me that Sam needed help doing some of the dirty work around the shop. At the time I had been working as a bike messenger for several years, and failing at attempts to go back to college repeatedly. It sounded like a dream job. It wasn't. It did pay the bills for awhile though, and I got to finally learn hands-on about something that I had been obsessed with for years. I was printing shirts and stickers and skateboards, and I felt proud to be doing something constructive.
Fast-forward a few years to me following my girlfriend Erin across the country to live in Los Angeles. I ended up landing a job in a t-shirt shop, helping out with their screen printing and production. At least that's what I thought. The owners were never present, and they had a history of hiring underqualified goons to run their business for them. With little management, my co-worker Paul and I were left to fend for ourselves, and I started to learn how to run a business. We started joking about starting our own business and getting the hell out of there. After a few months, the joking turned into serious consideration. We were working six days a week, so we started spending Sundays researching the possibilities of actually going for it, and trying to come up with some sort of plan (this is where the Sunday Print Co. name came from; contrary to popular belief, we're not bible thumpers). We started scrounging up money from savings and family members, registered our business name, bought a computer and some humble equipment, and in January 2007, we began running jobs independently. I was printing t-shirts for a living, and I was my own boss.
Five years later, we're still at it. It's been rewarding. It's been a giant pain in the ass. It's been a lot of things, but the one thing that remains constant is that I still think about t-shirts every day. I've finally arrived at the point in life where I'm proud of what I'm doing, and I'm ok with the reality that it's probably what I'm going to be doing until I either retire or drop dead. Might as well nerd out on it.
