A lot of our favorite places in Ann Arbor were hurting with the pandemic and no football traffic, so we partnered this fall with Underground Printing to do a t-shirt a week for the places we love. All proceeds went to the restaurant/bar/whatever. The plan was to take all the orders we could in a week, mass-produce them, send the institutions a big fat check, and let that be it.

So change of plans. Since it's the holiday season, and you probably know somebody who likes Ann Arbor, we're putting ALL OF THEM BACK UP in our store, and adding a code for free shipping—A2FREESHIP—if you get three of them or more.

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[After THE JUMP: a run through the shirts]

THE SHIRTS:

The first one was, appropriately, the first place I gravitated: Good Time Charlie's, aka Chuck's. We put the logo on the front and a pair of chucks on the back.

People loved the idea—it was immediately our most popular shirt of the year. But a week later, when we put out the Brown Jug shirt…

…to go with the venue that combined with Desmond Howard to give me incurable sports brain, I got bombarded with people who missed the Chuck's shirt, and asked if they could get that with their Jug shirts.

That response however was nothing next to what happened with The Blind Pig shirt.

A day after we took down the limited-time offer and moved on to The State and Michigan Theaters, the Biden campaign ran a national ad featuring the Pig, a million online searches by the patriotically curious led them to the photo of the time I let Christine Haglund shave my beard into a Franz Joseph in the Green Room, and we hastily put together a second, larger order. The extra traffic also did wonders for Ann Arbor Arts Organizations.

…which yes, that shirt is back up as well. Ditto the Mr. Spots shirt…

…which makes sense even with the dialecticals and charts I released with it. We also put the Literati Shirt back online,

…which we were probably going to do anyways because people really liked the shirt for some reason. The one I personally missed out on and was kicking myself for though was Dominick's.

It wasn't until I got the report of the massive sales for that one that I learned Dominick's had never sold shirts except for some tie-dyed in-store things, and we hit upon a big market. I'm rectifying that as soon as this posts.

The other thing I'm doing as soon as I'm inoculated to this f-ing disease is to go toast my good fortune with friends at Ashley's.

I did buy that shirt on the first go-round. Is it weird to wear a bar's shirt to a bar? If I'm clinking flight glasses with friends at Ashley's again am I going to care? Nope. Not gonna care. Besides I've had a Pretzel Bell shirt…

…for as long as the new one has been opened, and I've worn it there twice, and if anyone thought my shirt was dorky they certainly didn't mention it as I was geeking out about the history all over the place.

Support all the things you love in Ann Arbor, and get three or more (can also be a regular MGoShirt) to get free shipping with the code A2FREESHIP.