Man's shirts celebrate many bars that have graced Athens' downtown
MATT GALLAGHER
Messenger staff writer
July 22, 2008
Although some Athens bars may have long gone on to that great real estate gig in the sky, the Dead Bars Society lives on in fashion.
Swanky's, the Frontier Room, Fanny's, the Graduate, Bojangles. They are all bars that have closed down, but they remain more than memories. They are T-shirts printed from the original artwork, some stretching back into the '70s.
These T-shirts are the brain children of Jerry Ski, who owns Ski's Teases and Collectibles on Court Street. Ski got into the T-shirt business in the early '70s, using a small space made available to him through Haffa's Records. Ski soon focused mainly on bars, as he realized bar T-shirts were hot items both to the customers as well as the venues.
"The beauty of a bar T-shirt is the more people wear it, the more it gets seen," Ski said. "It's an ad that has a lot more mileage than anything you can get on a radio, TV or newspaper ad. The more people wore a shirt, the more each bar got out of it."
The trick is to make them cheap, Ski said. The original Ski's shirts sold for $5 a piece, but since each shirt only cost $2.50 in overhead, he was still turning a respectable profit.
The T-shirts tell the stories of the bars themselves. Often their designs occurred to Ski as he was seated on a bar stool, thinking up an idea that spoke to the atmosphere.
"I am an idea man," Ski said. "I come up with the slant. I 'bumper' speak."
For instance, take Swanky's, a bar that was in the current location of the downtown CVS from 1972 to 1982, earning the T-shirt slogan "a decade of decadence."
"Just about anything went," Ski remembered. "There were no rules. It was a pretty wild place."
Swanky's owner, Ivan Fask, threw after-hour parties that had their own reputation, Ski said. Fask now runs a center for drug addicts and alcoholics, Ski added.
"He now saves peoples lives who have problems with alcohol and drugs," Ski said.
For many of the bars, all that's left is the T-shirt. The Long Branch existed between Chipotle's and the former Woolworth building, and was the designated space of the Ohio University Marching 110. A favorite recreational pastime was watching Star Trek re-runs, the bar goers quoting from the script word for word, sometimes acting out a scene on the bar.
"It was just like the 'Rocky Horror Picture Show,'" Ski remembered.
The Frontier Room, which became the Front Room after alcohol was banned from Ohio University property, was a popular place to view the talents of the OU film school, their latest endeavors shown on the wall with a projector. The Frontier Room was also one of the first bars in Athens to feature a patio.
"You could sit outside and enjoy a beer," Ski said. "A lot of people sat outside and enjoyed more than that. Just about anybody who was anybody hung out there. It was a big art happening."
The T-shirts became popular items, "taking off like a hot rocket," Ski said. "I just happened to be in the right place at the right time."
With his shop housed in the former location of the Dugout bar, Ski still primarily makes his living on T-shirts, selling self-made novelty shirts on anything Athens, from Bong Hill to Moms Weekend to Palmer Fest.
Ski's Dead Bars Society shirts are very popular. The names of the dead bars run down the front and back of the shirt. There's a Dead Bars Society Part 1 and a Dead Bars Society Part 2 because the list stretches more than the cotton. Since the last shirt was designed, more bars have closed down and a Dead Bars Society Part 3 looms somewhere over the horizon.
Ski has a handful of the original T-shirts, some of which he loaned the Athens County Historical Society and Museum for their exhibit during Ohio Brew Week last week. But he's kept all the art work, so the shirts are easily reincarnated and ready for new cotton and a new generation.
"I save anything - newspaper clips, T-shirts - anything that catches my eye," Ski said. "I'll keep it forever unless somebody steals it or it burns in a fire."