That's awesome Doug...I never tire of reading your story and each time you add a little extra.....Love the Beaver captioning....Thanks......the Beaver shirts suck...
I remember that episode, scores right up there with Lumpy's Jalopy rearend torn out by a chain with the initials "W.C." engraved in it. Memorable.
My "Roth" shirt from the 60's was worn to tatters with no color left on it. But i cut out the 55 and still have it.
Those leave it to beaver examples are some of the best I've seen!!! I need something like that for the grille shell insert on my '32!!
As a BURBANK CHOPPER club member, I think I can credit Monster Shirts as one of the initial reasons that we ever even met and started our car club. We were all immersed in Fink art and its connection with hot rods. Collecting, participating and witnessing anything of its like that we could get our hands on. We're lucky enough to have collected a few original Mouse, Roth and other airbrushed Monster sweat shirts from back in the day. I even have packed away a Monster sweat shirt my mom's boyfriend painted for her when she was 15 years old. In 2005 we were invited to Mooneyes Japan show, we hooked up with a Japanese Monster Shirt Painter over there that truely blew us away. His name is Sketch... Sketch and Aaron
While in Japan, Sketch did these for us... Weez "the Artiste" "FISH" "Big D" "Sandman" Aaron "BAD NEWS" "Your's Truly"
Evel, Brett was telling me about those Barris Monster Shirt booth photos you guys dug up. I can't even believe how cool those pictures are, so glad to see them. Amazing times those must have been...
Here's a few of my favorite images from the book Kustom Kulture printed by the Laguna Art Museum. Big Daddy doing it in style. The two shirt are by Von Dutch circa 1958. Dutch, also doing it in style!
Man, that von Dutch sweatshirt is up there in my top 10 of the coolest things ever! I don't suppose any of you guys know if that style of sweatshirt is still available anywhere? Paul
Someone may be copying or reproducing it, but I believe the original was Hercules brand, sold by Sears.
Hey Doug, that picture is the cover of a compilation LP of surf and drag tunes called "Wax 'em Down" I bought about 15 years ago, and that was the first time I thought "I want me one of them shirts". It's on a label called "Revell" and uses the old model kit logo. They must've used that magazine cover and just cropped off the sports illustrated bit to make it square. Killer album too. Paul
Lucky, take a look at the shirt in the bottom right corner of the famed monacled Roth shot. The original Mr. Cool hangs in my living room. D.
Here is a link to a thread I started of the scanned pages from an old a Roth catalog I had as a punk kid. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=336462
Evel, thanks for starting this amazing thread. The Barris images you posted are simply amazing. Verne, thanks for putting up our sweatshirts by Sketch. Franco, I dig your color version of the "Beav" shirts! Keep it up Brad! When the Burbank Choppers were in Japan for the Mooneyes show, in 2005, it was the closest thing I have experienced to the old "indoor car show era." I walked into a giant arena and one of the first things I noticed was Sketch's booth. It was set up kinda like the old Barris pics with monster shirts all over it. This photo of Von Dutch is actually from 1955 or earlier. It appeared in Car Craft in 1955, but could have been shot as early as 1954. It is most likely the catalyst for this kind of art. One of the coolest images ever, it gave a new "edge" to the hot rod and Kustom world. Another thing to note is that Von Dutch was older than most of the other monster painters. He is at least a year older than Jeffries and is the reason Jeffries started doing Monsters and pin striping. Roth, Jeffries and Ed "Newt" Newton" brought it to the public forefront and capitalized on it. This was in the late 50s and early part of the 60s. What a cool time period for Art and Hot Rods! -Aaron
Here is a sweatshirt done by Mouse for my buddy Jean Durocher in the early sixties. Jean had a K-Series Harley show bike called the Cajun Queen which he showed all over the country with his 62 F100. You can learn more about Jean and the Cajun Queen here: http://www.damnedtobefree.com/blog/
If im not mistaken I remember seeing Ayala brothers having monster or custom T-shirts for their club Auto Butchers in the early 50`s ......maybe even earlier then 55 or 54 but I might be wrong.I think those early Auto Butcher monster T-shrts are often forgotten.
The only other "monster shirt" I had, sadly disappeared many years ago. It was made by Rick Ralston, who started "Crazy Shirts" in Hawaii and made a fortune. He's into collecting real rare antique toys and still lives in Hawaii. Ralston was either a teenager or young man and had an easel on the sidewalk in front of the "International Marketplace" on Oahu in Waikiki Beach. Our family was there in 1962 and just had dinner at Martin Denny's restaurant. You may remember Martin Denny's "Quiet Village": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJK2LwD_nEY anyways, we walked by this guy who was air-brushing shirts on the sidewalk. The prettiest dragster at that time was the Adams-McEwen "shark car" with the blown Olds, prettiest blue ever....and I had some sort of hot rod type magazine rolled up in my pocket with a photo of that dragster in it. So, with dad's permission, we had this guy airbrush it "monster style" on a V-neck pull-over kind of sweatshirt. It, too, had my name on the front and both my name and the "monsterized" dragster both were airbrushed on a fluorescent orange background. I didn't wear it much. I loved the artwork, but the v-neck thing looked kind of "fruity", even at 11, I wanted nothing to do with "fruity". So...unfortunately that's probably why it wasn't saved like my Roth sweatshirt was.... Imagine this car with the tires smokin' heading towards you with a monster driving......too bad...lost to the ages...
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