Hitch hikers, board breakers, petty criminals, action hero wannabes.
Back in 2018, my buddies and I found ourselves working low-level enlisted jobs in the US Navy. This mostly involved busting rust, tugging lines, and chipping paint in the San Diego shipyards and out at sea.
Work was work, and adventure was pretty much mandatory; for kicks and for sanity. We'd get off base whenever we could to explore all the mountains, surf breaks, bouldering spots, and cheap burrito joints in the area.
Whatever time we had off the ship was lots of fun, but it was also more than that. The crew became aficionados of weekend warrior road trips, fireside beers, jerry-rigged roof racks, and discount tire repair.
Misadventures ensued. None of us had a whole lot of money, or really knew what the hell we were doing, but we somehow made it work and lived to talk about it. Our trips were blatantly disorganized, mostly unsafe, and amateur at best.
Here’s a picture of me and my friend Marco riding to Huntington Beach in a tricked-out school bus our crew found for sale on the side of the road and bought for $3500. Also notice the duct-taped sunglasses.
And here’s us rushing back to the San Diego Navy base, stowed in the back of a U-Haul when the bus’s transmission blew out.
Gear became a big thing for me. I wanted equipment that I could trust on the road AND score some style points. But most of the time, the stuff I really wanted was either too expensive at the local REI or straight-up didn’t exist.
Necessity gave way to invention. The idea that kept coming back to me, was to make my own t-shirts. I knew I wanted them to be simple, non-political, and cool but not too flashy. AND, I knew they would hold up against the competition if I only printed on shirts that were high-quality material built for anything, and sourced ‘em in America. But how?
The spark to really start making these things happened on the way to a rainy surf sesh at Tourmaline Beach, when I struck up a conversation with my buddy Wyatt about some dope t-shirt designs we both had in mind. And just like that, the journey that became Anywhere Shirts kicked off.
Here’s Wyatt rocking one of the first tees we made, a play off the Jeep I’d live in during the weekends.
And it snowballed from there. Whether I was working on the ship, catching waves in IB, climbing at Mission Gorge, or figuring out the barbell at the base gym, “the t-shirt thing” was always in the background, never enourmously successful but constantly improving.
And in 2021, my four-year contract with Uncle Sam came to an end. The Navy was over for me and it was time to get out of San Diego. I said my goodbyes to the original Anywhere Shirts crew, took off my ship’s coveralls for the last time, and headed up the coast.
My pursuits, misadventures, and personal blunders after the Navy have all over the place, too weird for me to explain coherently (even to myself). Vagabonding through the powder keg of Eastern Europe, vanlife experimentation, a flegdeling “career” in screen acting, and sampling a smorgesboard of dayjobs to get by. And a bunch of other stuff. It’s been a ride.
Nowadays I’m homebased in Austin, Texas; a sort of “rennaissance of the American dream” for struggling comedians, ice-plunge podcasters, and want-repeneurs such as myself. Currently working a dayjob as a professional couch picker-upper for Einstein Moving and pressing t-shirts on the side. The grind continues!
So at the end of the day, what even IS Anywhere Shirts? Up-front, of course it’s a BETTER graphic t-shirt. No one can hold a candle to tees that are only made in America, spun from soft and durable fabric, and shipped right to your door with sick but subtle designs.
But what is this actually about? Is it an invention? A brand? Outdoor gear? Street wear? An attempted solution to an explosive post-military existential crisis?
Well sure, I guess it could be all of those things. But to me, Anywhere Shirts is really just about having dumb adventures with my friends and figuring it out along the way. It’s about hopping in a Jeep on Friday and breaking out of the Google-mapped, orange caution taped micro-world of your 9-to-5, and getting away to someplace where YOU write the story.
So check ‘em out! I’m positive you’ll find something you like.
-Ben
Owner/founder, Anywhere Shirts
ben@anywhereshirts.com
