Be a New Orleanian. Wherever you are. That now ubiquitous t-shirt and button tagline was born, ironically enough, in an Atlanta Starbuck’s shortly after Katrina as Dirty Coast owner and graphic designer Blake Haney contemplated his future and that of his native New Orleans.
Half a year before Katrina struck, Haney had already begun to put the wheels in motion to launch an online print business, Dirty Coast, specializing in New Orleans-oriented stickers and t-shirts. The company’s name, Dirty Coast, is a play on East Coast/West Coast regionalism, with a ‘nod to the ‘Dirty South’ thrown in,” says Haney.
But when Katrina struck, “things got interesting,” because suddenly Haney’s long-time passions — civic activism and nurturing New Orleans’ local economy — were in vogue.
As soon as the “Be a New Orleanian. Wherever you are’ idea struck, Haney knew it was worth sending out to the masses. Once back in New Orleans in December of 2005, Haney printed 30,000 stickers and distributed them around bars and coffeeshops throughout the city.
“Those things disappeared as soon as I put them out. When I saw that people were grabbing handfuls of them to send to friends who were still displaced, I knew this would make a great t-shirt.”
Encouraged by the public’s response, Haney and friend Patrick Brower, whose pet-sitting business was a Katrina casualty, formed a partnership on the back of a cocktail napkin one evening and soon began cranking out designs. Haney paid freelance designers $250 for each design he put into production. He also developed a “killer relationship” with local printer La Chiva on Tchoupitoulas who prints all the shirts.
Haney started with a Cafe Press website to sell his wares, but response was solid enough that he built and launched his own website in-house in late April, timed to coincide with Jazz Fest.
He markets through ad spaces on other websites, e-letter blasts, along with traditional print media outlets. T-shirts are available at a number of local businesses including Oliveaux, The Maple Street Bookshop, Style Lab for Men, and Feet First.
Brower handles the day-to-day operation while Haney continues to manage his design studio, Whence. “Whence is still my day job and pays the bills. But we’ve been able to let Dirty Coast grow organically. Since our formal roll-out just before Mardi Gras last year, Dirty Coast is paying for itself. Not bad for 7 months and a $20,000 investment,” says Haney.
Dirty Coast t-shirts have become known for their perfect blend of self-effacing humor and hometown pride, like the one with the evolving man who ultimately devolves into a bead-wearing chimp which sports the tagline New Orleans. So far behind we’re ahead. Others are straight-up declarations of pride and place, such as I am New Orleans.
Still others have the delicious quality of an inside joke that the whole city can share, such as Finally, a Bush we can all agree on. or C. Ray? Not lately.
The designs and messages resonate strongly with a broad swath of New Orleanians because Haney knows what makes New Orleans matter to its residents. In 2001, at about the same time he was launching Whence, he founded New Breed, an organization he describes as a “forum for the socially conscious” which gave him a fuller understanding of and appreciation for committed, passionate individuals doing creative work in education, nonprofit, and for-profit ventures throughout the city.
Like the people Haney came to know and respect through New Breed, Dirty Coast’s t-shirts celebrate New Orleans as a society infused with un-self-conscious creativity at every level.
While selling 100,000 of his t-shirts— and ultimately, other products— is definitely on Haney’s to-do list, he also plans to continue the work he started with New Breed, turning his attention to citizen media once again with the development of a large-scale community blog that will serve as a portal to all things New Orleans.
A stretch? Not at all. The t-shirts and buttons are a means to an end for Haney. Regardless of the shape of the venture, the product Haney always, unabashedly promotes is New Orleans itself in all its imperfect, complicated, one-of-a-kind glory.
