"Taking Care of the Cats" by James Kirkpatrick on a large baseball shirt

Today's shirt is a large baseball shirt featuring artwork from our old friend James Kirkpatrick, known in some circles as Thesis. This is a large baseball shirt- 44 inch chest, 25 inch height. Click on the pictures to check it out in more detail on the Etsy listing.

S/M baseball shirt: "Spycke" by Vallois Loic

Today's shirt is the last print from a run we did last year: Vallois Loic's "Spycke" on a small/medium mens' baseball shirt. 38 inch chest, 26 inch waist. Click on the pics for the Etsy listing.

Shirt of the Hot Minute: Belle on a medium baseball tee

"Belle" by Thom Phoenix is a design based on an old photo of a burlesque dancer from the 1950s (not Marilyn Monroe as many people seem to think). This is a medium baseball shirt- 38 inch chest, 25 inch height. Click on the pictures to go to the Etsy listing!

Shirt of the millisecond: S/M Undebs tee

Today's shirt is "Undebs" by JLar on a custom sewn t-shirt. Features sleeves re-purposed from a gently used polo shirt. Size is approximately equivalent to a unisex small/medium- 34 inch chest, 22 inch height. Click the pix for Etsy flix!

Shirt of the Moment: "Next Please" by Slawek Kasolka on a small baseball tee

Today's shirt is a classic ZB print created by Slawek Kasolka on a custom sewn small baseball tee (34 inch chest, 24 inch height). Click the images to go to the Etsy listing and get a better look-see!

GOOD VIBES by JLar on a custom baseball shirt

Shirt of the day is another new print- this one has been on pillows but appears for the first time on a shirt. JLar's "GOOD VIBES" has been hand screened on this medium baseball shirt with 40 inch chest and 25 inch height. Click images to go to the Etsy listing for this item!

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Shirt of the day: "Acid Rain" S/M ladies tank top

Shirt of the day for today is a pattern print we've called "Acid Rain" on a small/medium ladies' tank top. 34 inch chest, 25 inch height. Click the pics to go to the Etsy listing.

Shirt of the century: "Hawaii 2084" on a S/M tall baseball shirt

Here's an old'un but a good'un: "Hawaii 2084" by Eon Mckai and Thom Phoenix on a custom sewn baseball shirt. 36 inch chest, 29 inch height (extra tall). Once again, click on the shirts to go to the Etsy listing for a closer look!

Sleeves are re-purposed from a gently used polo shirt. Sewn by Sara Russell.

#shirtoftheday: "Starchild" by Peter Goode on a S/M baseball shirt

Today's shirt of the day is yet another brand new print you haven't seen before: our old friend Peter Goode's "Starchild" on a small/medium baseball tee. Click the pics to go to the Etsy listing!

And check out more of Peter's amazing art on his gallery!

Shirt o' the day: Blondes and Brunetes medium tall baseball shirt

Today's shirt o' the day is a medium tall baseball shirt featuring the "Blondes and Brunettes" print by Thom Phoenix. 38 inch chest, 27 inch height. Click the pics to go to the Etsy listing!

All orders ship within 24 hours, and if you order more than one item, shipping on the second and third items is much, much cheaper.

Shirt o' the day: "Society, Man" on a S/M bball

Here's a brand new print on a snazzy baseball shirt: Thom Phoenix's "Society, Man". Chest is 36 inches, height is 23 inches- approximately equivalent to a small or medium. Click the pics to go to the Etsy listing for a closer look!

Shirt of the day: 1944 by Robin Antiga on a small baseball shirt

Today's shirt of the day is an old design by our good friend Robin Antiga that we have re-animated as a huge discharge print. This used to be called "1948" but this version has no wings and somehow "1944" just seemed a little more appropriate. This is a custom sewn small baseball shirt- 34 inch chest, 23 inch height.

Click either of the pictures to go to this listing on Etsy and purchase!

A little makeover......

Well, you may have noticed a few changes happening around here. First and probably most noticeable of those changes is the funky new colour scheme of the site. While the grey was cool and subdued, it was getting to be a little drab and I think that a splash of colour adds a lot of life.

But much more than that, ZBQFanClub.com has a whole new interface that we think is much more fun and interesting. For starters, the site is basically one giant gallery of images now. You can currently browse through 30 galleries featuring many of the amazing artists we have worked with through the years, as well as some of the latest additions to the ZBQ family you may not be familiar with. But there are also galleries of shirts, models, pillows and more, and there will be many, many more galleries added for your edification in the weeks and months ahead.

Besides that, the "store" section has been completely removed, at least for now. As mentioned in a previous post, we discovered that it's much faster and easier to just post all of our products up on Etsy , for at least the time being. That's not to say that we won't bring the store back at some point, but for now Etsy is working out fine and the time we save can be put into other things. Such as making more of those crazy shirts you have come to know and love! 

So enjoy the eye candy, and don't worry about overindulging- this is not the kind of candy that can give you cavities. Though you may feel a little light-headed. 

Shirt of the day: Spireal Stares XL baseball shirt!

Welcome to a new feature on the site- the shirt of the day. We just finished a new batch of shirts last week, and just before we posted them all up online, we thought that it might be nice to instead just release one shirt every day. Kind of keep you in suspense a little more, and make things a little more interesting. So presenting today's shirt of the day: Spireal Stares on a blue baseball shirt.

     You asked us for bigger shirts, and we listened- this is the biggest custom sewn shirt we have done yet. 44 inch chest and 28 inch height, or approximately equivalent to a men's XL. Click the image to go to our Etsy store and get a closer look! And keep checking back- we've got over 30 new shirts to post, so there will be something new going up every day in August, and hopefully by the time we get to the end of this batch there will be even more new shirts waiting in the wings. Love is the drug!

Etsy-riffic!

Building a web site is very time consuming. Maintaining said web site takes up even more time and energy. And if you are talking about an online store, it can be nearly a full time job. Preparing all of the graphics and product information, entering all of that information into a database and uploading files, not to mention testing it all to make sure it's working properly- that all takes a lot of dedication. And while I do truly enjoy working on this site, it's not what I want to spend all of my time doing. I am a "hands-on" type and would rather put more time into making things.

Enter Etsy. If you are not familiar with Etsy, I'm not sure where you've been hiding, but it is home to thousands of items made by people from all over the world. The volume of stuff- and good stuff too, not crap- is quite impressive. One can easily enter Etsy world and not come out for a very long time- it's pretty dang cool. I had put a few items on Etsy several years ago and was a little discouraged when they didn't get much notice. But I always thought it might be a good idea to try putting more up there and maybe put some time and effort into trying to get more people to check it out. So I logged in for the first time in probably 3 years and decided to post a few shirts.

Since I had last logged on, Etsy vastly improved their user interface. Right away, I was very impressed by how quickly I was able to get products up online. In about a minute I was able to get my first listing up, and the others went even faster as I was able to use a custom template. In no time at all I had posted 20 products, and it didn't take me long to realize how much easier and quicker this was by doing it through my own custom built online store.

Once I realized how affordable the listing fees were, it took me about a nanosecond to jump to my next conclusion: I would, as an experiment, put my entire inventory on Etsy, and take down my online store. And well, that's what I've done. It is an experiment, but it is one that seems to be working out well. By being a part of the Etsy community I'm able to catch the attention of people who likely would never have heard of ZBQ otherwise. And the time I save I can put into doing things I like to do and make the online presence of ZB a little more palpable.

So please, take some time to check out our Etsy store and let us know what you think. And check back often- we'll be adding a bunch of new stuff on an ongoing basis, starting very soon.

Don't call it a comeback.

Well, it's been a minute, hasn't it? Judging from the look of zeroboutique.com this last year, I wouldn't blame many of you for thinking that maybe I had died, gone to jail, or left the country. Broken images, blog posts so old they already had kids in college, wonky CSS and a Flash gallery that seemed to work approximately half the time (on a good day). Oh, and it was an online shirt store with one important distinction: for the last year or so, there was no way to purchase the shirts. Straight outta 1998, Holmes.

So what happened, man? Did I lose my marbles and just give up? Find that raising meerkats in Arizona was much more rewarding and profitable? Get married to my high school sweetheart who convinced me to give up on all this screen printing nonsense and go sell insurance for her father? Hell no. In fact, I didn't stop once. So why so quiet on the online front then, you may wonder? Well, it's kind of complicated.

Essentially, these last 2 & 1/2 years or so have been dedicated to a lot of research and development into new techniques, acquiring new equipment and inks in order to implement many of these techniques, and then of course putting those techniques and equipment to use. And it's been a ssssllllooowwww process. You saw the beginnings of that process on the old site.  Those shirts were the first ugly evolutionary leap out of the water for us, out of just being another screen printing shop printing our weird designs on generic t-shirts into being an actual clothing company that manufactures original pieces. That process is still very new and awkward and ongoing, but it's only been recently that the stuff has achieved the unique level where I felt it needed a new home. Zeroboutique.com was essentially dead to me- it had a really good 10 year run, but the site was in a way kind of a reminder of past glories. I had started to lose interest in just being another t-shirt company around 2007, and sales had consequently slowed over the years until they finally stopped completely. So I was tired of looking back. I decided the line had a new feel, so it needed a new logo and a new web site. Once I found out zbqfanclub.com was available, it was a no-brainer: ZBQ Fan Club was our first Facebook group and was pretty popular before Facebook forced us to create a new one due to some structural changes (for our current Facebook page go here). And so I sat down to create the new site, thinking I'd have it wrapped up in a month. As so often happens with these types of things, it took a lot longer to finish than anticipated. But finish it I did. And here it is.

And what's next? Well, more shirts of course. New prints, new artists, and a lot of new stuff (and some old stuff too) from artists we've been working with for years. But also prints, stickers, bags, things you can wear that aren't shirts at all, original art, "t-shirt canvasses", and much more that I haven't even thought of yet. I always said I'd keep doing this as long as I still enjoyed it. Well, it's been nearly 20 years now, and I feel like I'm just getting warmed up here. The best is most definitely yet to come. 

It's Bongo Boy!

I like hip hop, I haven't really kept up with things over the last few years but lately have been vibing on a lot of new stuff that's very exciting. Some of that exciting stuff has been discovered through a blog called It's Bongo Boy, started by a "kid from Jersey" named Matt Cohen who obviously has a ton of enthusiasm and love for music and uses that energy to expose a lot of deserving new voices out there. Props.