Your collection includes things onced owned by Joe Strummer and Johnny Thunders. How did you end up with these items?
After Fucked Up And Photocopied, people began bequeathing their collections to me because they felt safe knowing I’m not into buying and selling stuff. When people hand me a collection, they all come with stories. To me, this stuff is supposed to be shown for inspiration or used as a spirit guiding force to something new. So, from the outside looking in, I suppose it looks like I’m some heavy collector but all of the shirts in my book were acquired by normal scenester ways. This book represents the T-shirt side of things that have been coming at me for all these years.

What was the catalyst for wanting to make this book?
People would come to my studio and expect to see piles of flyers and records and then when they saw the piles of shirts they tripped out on it because they didn’t figure me to have so many. I know there’s no way in hell I could do a punk rock T-shirt book that would be the be-all and end-all book. There are just too many. I’d rather try to show when the collection takes on its own spirit. I know I’m going to take crap from the punk historians but I don’t care. This is a better glimpse at a punker’s archives than some punk shirt archive book that looks like it’s all been handled with white gloves. One time, I had this 20-year-old kid over to my studio and I showed him this Suicidal Tendencies shirt that practically made him cry. I ended up giving it to him and he wore it down until it was nothing. This is who this book is for, my friends and the real people.

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