In the weeks following September 11, 2001, Kevin Stacy was in a bit of a crisis. Hospitalized that summer with a form of arthritis called Reiter’s syndrome, he was then back at home, doing his best to recover and watching a lot of TV, when he was struck by the sudden proliferation of those I Love NY T-shirts. “History had changed the meaning of that design,” he says. “It went from being a kitschy tourist thing to a sentimental solidarity thing. I thought, ‘that’s interesting.’”
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So Stacy, a musician and manager of Danny’s Tavern in Bucktown, and his girlfriend, dancer Lara Tinari, set out to create an analogous garment for the second city. “We thought it would be cool to design a T-shirt for Chicago that had no meaning at all and see what people, society, and history would assign to it,” says Stacy. By Christmas 2001, Tinari had made a prototype for him as a gift, using iron-on letters and a circular shape cut from blue fabric in place of the oh-so-familiar red heart. The circle was chosen for its lack of any obvious connotations. It was simply, says Stacy, “the only color and shape that would work.” He wore the shirt around the bar that winter and a lot of people asked about it, so in May the duo placed an order for an initial production run of 144 white men’s and women’s tees. At the end of the month they dropped off samples for Lynn Davis, the buyer for the MCA Store, and days later she ordered 36, which sold quickly. Since then the shop’s done a steady business in the tees, selling as many as the shirt’s prime outlet, Danny’s.
I . CHICAGO T-shirts sell for $17 and $20 at Danny’s (1951 W. Dickens) and Reckless Records (1532 N. Milwaukee). At the MCA Store (220 E. Chicago) they’re $20 and $28.
