Click here to watch an interview that was broadcast on July 1, 2009 on 10 pm news on
WDSU in
New Orleans. In the interview, I got to talk about the
Brad Pitt for Mayor effort and I got to name drop
Dr. Thomas Bayer,
Chris Rose,
Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Al Franken, and, of course,
Brad Pitt. It's a fun interview, and it captures the spirit of our little movement.
Click here to get the hottest t-shirt in America -- "Brad Pitt for Mayor."
Gabriel and I were just watching the June 30 edition of the TV show
Extra, which is hosted by former
Saved by the Bell star
Mario Lopez. Between segments about
Michael Jackson, there was a story about
Brad Pitt possibly running for
Mayor of New Orleans. During the Brad Pitt segment, Extra showed
several photos of Storyville models
Meghan Montgomery and
Jonathan House sporting the official
Brad Pitt for Mayor tee shirt. The tee shirt looked awesome on TV and so did the models (
click here to see the photos that were on TV).
I guess you can now call me a Mario Lopez fan, and I won't even deny it. Thanks,
Extra!
This fall, Storyville Austin is getting a reboot.
We're proud of what we've accomplished in Storyville Austin's twenty-month history. Heck, we just got accepted to be a vendor at the 2009 Austin City Limits Music Festival, so we must be doing something right. But, despite our accomplishments, we're not satisfied. We want our little shop on the Drag to be so much more. Therefore, we're reworking the shop so that its third year of business will be its most exciting and most successful to date.
So here's the plan. The "new" Storyville Austin will feature a lot of Storyville Originals -- designs created by the
Harvey sibings and their friends. These designs will touch upon many Austin and Texas-specific themes and will be
exclusive to
Storyville. We're working on these designs right now and we plan to unveil them in the coming months and debut many of them at the
Old Pecan Street Festival in September and at
ACL in October.
Also, since we're now printing all of our own apparel, we plan to rapidly grow the commercial screen printing segment of our business. We enjoy printing tee shirts, and, turns out, we're pretty good at it.
While our mission hasn't changed, the means by which we execute the mission are changing. The irony of the situation is that the more Storyville Originals that we sell and screen printing jobs that we get, the more we can grow the marketplace for the local artists and designers that we feature in our shops.
Case in point --
Storyville Baton Rouge. In December 2008, we decided to place a much greater emphasis on Storyville Originals in the
Chimes Street shop. As a result of this shift, we've seen the sales of both our own designs and non-Storyville designed local apparel significantly increase over the past six months. It seems as though designs like
Beign-Yay and
Awkward Turtle draw people into our shops, and when customers are there, they also pick up a
Crazy Baby-eatin Chicken tee and a
Fleur-de-lis Washout tee.
On the screen printing front, we offer a special printing discount to local artists and designers. This discounted service allows designers to get their products to market so that the products can be sold. And, lucky for them, we just happen to know of a good place to sell their stuff.
In other words, what's good for Storyville is good for local designers.
Even with the "reboot", some things in the shop won't change at all. We're going to continue to make custom tee shirts. When we say custom tees, we're referring to genuine one-of-a-kind, made-by-hand customized items (not generic vinyl transfers ironed onto a blank t-shirt -- that doesn't count as a true customization in the Storyville universe). This is a unique service that only Storyville provides, and people get a real kick out of seeing that shirt that they've always wanted to make become a reality. And that's who were here for -- the people.
So keep an eye on Storyville Austin. The "reboot" should be completed by late fall, just in time for the holiday shopping season. If you already think Storyville Austin rocks, you're really going to be blown away by what's coming this fall.
Just in case you missed it,
Times Picayune columnist Chris Rose wrote a terrific and hilarious article about the
Brad Pitt for Mayor movement on Sunday.
Click here to read what Chris Rose had to say about Brad Pitt possibly becoming the next mayor of the City of
New Orleans.
Rebekah Harvey celebrates her 21st birthday today, which means she can finally legally consume alcohol. The strange thing is that in the photo above she appears to be holding a beer bottle, and, to the best of my knowlege, this photo wasn't taken in the past few hours. We'll have to get to the bottom of this. In the meanwhile, happy birthday to Bekah Bear!
On the same day that Storyville's Brad Pitt for Mayor tee shirt was officially released, we were able to make our first donation to Brad Pitt's Make It Right foundation as result of strong pre-order sales.
Let's hope that this tee shirt keeps selling and we'll be able to donate more money to Make It Right, and support its efforts to rebuild New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward. Let's also hope that Brad Pitt realizes that the City of New Orleans would elect him if he does indeed decide to run for Mayor.
