I took the D-shirt challenge, knowing it would be an emotional rollercoaster through weepy terrain.
There was some sun overhead though, and some smiles to cut through the cold reality that I had to do it alone. Dan McQuade was my son, and as anyone who is familiar with his work here at Defector and elsewhere would know, he loved collecting bootleg T-shirts. The plan was for Dan and me to chart his massive bootleg T-shirt collection before he died. Thanks ultimately to his wife, Jan, who is very smart, the 1,200 or so shirts he accumulated could already be found in one of our closets inside 30 giant, blue plastic bags of Herculean strength.
How they got there through my wife Denise’s NBA-playoff style defense against clutter is a wonder. I’m sure Jan convinced Dan in a nice way, because she’s a nice person, that either the extensive sneaker collection or his famous T-shirt extravaganza had to find new lodgings to make room for two-year-old Simon’s ever-growing toy truck fleet.
The D-shirt merchandise had already been turned into a public art show, which a couple hundred people showed up to enjoy. Before he died, Dan was setting up a few more exhibitions.
He was given the devastating prognosis and stuck his chin up in defiance and tenuous optimism. He and I and Simon planned to visit the sterile, white ghost town of a mall at Neshaminy. We were going to run along its faux-marble floors and laugh at the foodless court, two Zen dens, and speedy wedding establishment. He had talked to three different sites to display his shirt collection. He had travel plans with his wife and son. He had stories to write. Podcasts to appear on. He was working on a book.
He never made it to the mall. Denise, Jan, Simon and I decided to do it, all while thinking of him. Simon did what he does—made it into an adventure and loved it, especially the Native American statue which is still in the fountain even if the water isn’t running through his hands anymore. The place used to have a colorful totem pole outside.
The only thing time allowed for his dad was one last trip in January to Wildwood, New Jersey, his happy place, with Jan and Simon. There’s a photo of them on the beach in the cold with smiles that both warm and haunt. Now, he’s upstairs above the clouds looking down on his old man dissecting a bootleg T-shirt collection built up over decades of stops at stadiums, gas stations, alleys, nooks, crannies etc.
Where bootlegs walked, Dan tread.
My wife suggested a spreadsheet, but she was envisioning a neat tally she would engineer, knowing full well her husband would create a chaotic construction he comes by naturally. There is a humongous spreadsheet. It ain’t pretty. Available upon demand. It’s perhaps better I recap the shirt study.
The first semi-shocker of the probe was how few shirts have Wildwood themes. One of the things Dan was known for in his extensive writing career was the annual deep dive into the trends and cultural significance of the T-shirts that dot the Wildwood boardwalk shops.
That feature in Defector and earlier publications had an extremely loyal following. Yet, there are a mere 19 Wildwood shirts in the collection. Dan photographed the shirts instead and displayed them with the stories.
In the beachy shirt pile, there is one with “Watch the tram car, please,” another with Trump in a red hat in a tram car, and a crude one with a firetruck, advertising a firemen convention with the inscription “I hung my hose.” The others are tame, one of them sentimental and thrown in later from another closet. It’s not a bootleg. It’s Dan’s Wildwood shirt from when he was two. We gave it to Simon.
The top dog of the entire collection is an Eagle. From Philadelphia. Dan had amassed over 300 shirts related to the Eagles, including 45 of them with Super Bowl material. Eight of them showcase Calvin’s streaming service. Hobbes’s friend lets it flow on the Cowboys, including a special one for No. 81, the former Eagle Terrell Owens, who became a dreaded Cowboy. He was emotional and controversial but great on the field as an Eagle. He embarrassed himself with Dallas when he cried while saying “That’s my quarterback” about Tony Romo.
There are 56 shirts with a Penn Relays theme, including one touting the amazing visit to Franklin Field by Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest human, in 2010. There are 18 on the Phillies' World Series, including the front and back covers of the Philadelphia Daily News when they won the National League pennant in 1993.
The memorable shot of reliever Mitch “Wild Thing” Williams over the word “WILD!” on the front cover after he ensured the World Series ticket lost its fervor when he gave up the infamous walk-off homer to Joe Carter in the grand finale. It was a nice cover and makes for a great T-shirt. There’s also a shirt of the rock group KISS in full Kabuki makeup and Phillies uniforms, with the inscription “Dressed to kill.”
There are 31 on the Big 5, 27 featuring Dan’s last and favorite job, at Defector, including some from its popular podcast, Normal Gossip. There are some bonus items from his work, including a Defector bucket hat and an eerie, almost prescient baseball cap which reads Efector. The D is missing.
There are 16 endorsements of pizza, the basic fuel most of Dan’s life.
There are 22 “Dallas sucks” shirts. There is a different shirt where suction seemed to play a part. When I first saw the front of this shirt, I thought it was going to be the strangest of the lot.
“I want to be your vacuum cleaner,” it read.
Alas, it is not kinky. It is a song by some cold simians. The back of the shirt has the lyrics of a tune by the Arctic Monkeys.
“I wanna be your vacuum cleaner. Breathin’ in your dust. I want to be your Ford Cortina. I will never rust.”
For motorheads out there, that is quite a claim for a Ford Cortina, which was an affordable, popular car on England roads from 1962-82, yet had the propensity to rust. It’s an OK tune. I listened to the song, and it’s not in the same league as vocals about inanimate objects like James Taylor’s “I’m a steamroller, baby,” or even Ernie’s “Rubber Ducky.”
Speaking of music, one of the shirts has the seemingly bizarre union of former Sixer Charles Barkley and Nirvana. The musical group was the guest on Saturday Night Live when Charles hosted the season premiere in 1993. Their dressing rooms were next to each other. Barkley saw haze in his gaze.
“Every time those guys from Nirvana opened their door, I got a contact high,” Charles said. “It was like one of those big mushroom clouds.”
It’s doubtful it hovered over another musical shirt in the batch, where three South Philly singers grace the front. It typified a time when singers wore pompadours and were called crooners. Legends Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon and Fabian wear big smiles.
There’s another trio on another shirt. One of them can sing for sure. He has an amazing, graceful voice. Another one was serenaded on his birthday by Marilyn Monroe. The other guy had a famous dream. The shirt is basically a math equation of distinguished orators. It has a sketch of MLK with a plus sign, then a sketch of JFK with an equal sign, and then Obama.
A Barkley appeared on another T-shirt front: Eagles running back Saquon Barkley flies Eagle flies backward over a shocked defender in a famous move.
Some other notables in the T-shirt emporium:
The Pope: They commemorate Francis’s visit to Philly in 2015. One reads “Notorious Joy” with a crown on the front, and “I love it when you call me Big Papa,” on the back; another reads “Hope and Peace” with an Eagles logo on it, and he’s in an Eagles jersey with the No. 15 on it in another.
Big Dom: Eagles coach Nick Sirianni’s bodyguard. He once got tossed at an Eagles game.
Little Allen: Two of Iverson’s six shirts possess the best art of the collection. In one, he looks grim with his hands together in prayer; in the other, he’s dribbling with his head down. He’s wearing a hat, fancy dress shoes, and no shirt with a terrific shadow beside him on the playground court. He’s a fresh-faced rookie in another one, and another shirt depicts the famous step over Tyronn Lue after AI hit a critical jumper in the upset overtime playoff win over the Lakers in 2001.
There’s a shirt with Wilt holding the sheet which read 100 after he scored that many points. This sheet reads “Trust the Process.” There are four alleged Process-server Embiid shirts.
There are two shirts reminding Philly Mayor Cherelle Parker that her chant “E-L-G-S-E-S” had a slight flaw she would never live down. Two other shirts claim they would name their first-born after Eagles announcer Merrill Reese.
Eagles quarterback Nick Foles is depicted heavenly as St. Nick on one shirt and devilish on another as “BDN,” whatever that means. Wink, wink, sideward head nod.
Foles isn’t the only Eagles quarterback on display. There are shirts and jerseys with starters and backups, and backups who became starters: Randall Cunningham, Jalen Hurts, Carson Wentz, Michael Vick, two Bobby Hoyings, Ty Detmer and even Kevin Kolb, wearing the original buzzy blue and gold Yellowjacket jersey of the 1933 Eagles.
There is Princess Di in an Eagles jacket. A number of times, Dan wrote about how she got that coat.
The shirts are dotted with cartoons, including Bart Simpson, Beavis and Butthead, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Mario, Betty Boop, Garfield, Underdog, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Tasmanian Devil, and the Flintstones.
Two pairs of socks with Bart’s mug and one with his mom Marge’s face on them were surprises. So are the Wawa socks.
There are personalities ranging from Buckwheat to Kate Upton to Escobar to Einstein.
The music is eclectic: Bruce, the Stones. Pearl Jam, the Dismemberment Plan and even Taylor Swift all make appearances.
Dan was open-minded about music, but not a Swiftie. He was more Vedder than Swift. The “Fearless, Taylor’s Version” album cover of re-recorded music is featured on a bag in the collection. Inside is a Taylor tumbler and a yellow hat that says, “It’s a love story.”
It’s a bundle a Swiftie would love. It is one of the extras found in the bags. An Eagles jacket from the England trip and a nice Mitchell & Ness Phillies jacket should not go to waste, since they seem to fit me.
It’s not the only plus about the experience. I thought it might be gut-wrenching going through all this stuff without my son. It turns out he was there all the time. I could feel him laughing and talk to him in asides.
The blindfold falls off my tears momentarily when well-intentioned people approach with hugs. Yet, they last only as long as the squeeze. I needed distractions, and I got a big one going through the piles of shirts.
Thanks, Dan. I got your baseball cards in another closet. I’m not savvy enough for your sneaker collection, although I do own a pair of fading, old black Converse and much newer Air Force Ones.
I’m gonna leave your pogs where they are, and wait for a resurrection or an aging nerd to surface.
