My Favorite Shirt - Nick Ferreira
"I know we’re not supposed to be attached to inanimate objects like clothing, but the amount of good memories and feelings I have when I think about this t-shirt feels important to me."
I met Nick Ferreira while working at SAIC’s Flaxman Library in 2013. In 2017, Nick launchedChallenger,a zine thatfinds some common ground between BMX, junk food, public art, the perfect soundtrack to a summer night on Lake Michigan, architecture, and travel. In other words,Challengeris about everything.
I asked Nick to write about his favorite shirt. Here’s what he had to say.
My favorite t-shirt is a Thrasher magazine graphic tee with artwork by Pushead. I bought this shirt in 2003, the year I started college at the University of Massachusetts. For the better half of high school, I was into hardcore–first youth crew and then mostly early American hardcore. I also rode BMX and skateboarded pretty religiously. Through BMX, I met my friend Dan and he got me into crossover style hardcore, stuff like Suicidal Tendencies, DRI, etc.. Even though I mostly rode BMX, I still really loved Thrasher and particularly the articles about weird places to skate, like spillway pipes, ditches, pools. Basically anything besides a ledge or a skatepark was really interesting to me. No other magazines really focused on that idea of exploration and sort of, for lack of a better word, outsider activity.
At the time BMX and skate fashion were pretty insufferable: low-rise, tight jeans, white belts, insanely bulky shoes, lots of “emo” graphics. It was all so strange, and I wanted to separate myself as far as possible from that style. I loved the look from ‘80s hardcore, specifically the Southern California variety: Vans Old Skools, basic jeans, blank t-shirts, perhaps a flannel or a button down. I was always graphics-focused growing up, but at this point I really started paying attention to graphics. I started going down rabbit holes, trying to learn as much as I could about the artists, designers, photographers, etc. who were in this visual world of hardcore/punk and BMX/skateboarding. People like C.R. Stecyk, Windy Osborn, Glen Friedman, and eventually, Pushead. I learned Pushead fronted his own band, Septic Death, ran a label, and created artwork for countless punk, hardcore, and metal bands. He even did the artwork for Dr. Octagon. Eventually I realized I could easily buy a Thrasher magazine t-shirt with a Pushead graphic on it. I didn’t have to scour eBay and to stand out from the crowd. Thrasher clothes weren’t the institution that they are in 2020. People still proudly wore Thrasher gear, but this style just wasn’t that popular at the time. It almost seemed too easy to stand out from other BMXers and skateboarders, and in hindsight, the idea of separating yourself with a mass produced good like a t-shirt is absurd. But I bought that t-shirt and picked up a couple of Thrasher’s “Skaterock” cassettes. I don’t know what happened to those cassettes, but I’ve carried this shirt around for the past 17 years. I wore it up until 2012, when a hole around the graphic made it unwearable for me. But I still kept it, and I’ve always told myself I’m going to frame it but just haven’t got around to it.
I know we’re not supposed to be attached to inanimate objects like clothing, but the amount of good memories and feelings I have when I think about this t-shirt feels important to me. It ties together so many of the things I’ve been interested in for the past two decades: friends, music, fashion, graphics and visuals, BMX, and skateboarding. Sometimes when I think about framing a t-shirt that has green armpit stains and is permanently stained yellow it makes me kind of cringe, but when I think about everything else the shirt represents to me, it makes perfect sense.
