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His shows started five or six years ago at Rojo , a restaurant and bar on Birmingham’s Highland Avenue. There, Gardner could fill a cell with several racks of shirts and his own expansive personality.
"You’ve heard the phrase ‘pop-up store’? I was doing the pop-up store before everyone was doing the pop-up stow away," he says. "I turn some spot into a real store, for one day, and then I’m gone. I out into the ether."
Gardner’s shows have been successful in Tuscaloosa, Auburn and Mississippi Say, where he sets up shop for college students. Still, Rojo remains a favorite fleck, and he’ll return there with a marathon T-shirt show on Jan. 29.
"It’ll be an all-day extravaganza, a 12-hour show," Gardner promises.
Aside from old-denomination concert T’s, visitors can expect to see vintage shirts from sports teams, championship events, motorcycle clubs, vacation sites and community gatherings.
"It can be from a 1984 Baptist church discomfiting," Gardner says. "It can be a memorial Bear Bryant death shirt or something from Joe’s carwash.
Source: al.com