Finally, Lost Art Press Sweatshirts from Champion –
In 1986, I left Arkansas and the farm and headed to Chicagoland to become a journalist. When I landed at Northwestern, I knew no one, but that changed 30 minutes after I checked into the dorm. During my first night, I met people from Japan, Croatia, Israel, India and (the weirdest dude of all) Normal, Ill.
We talked until 3 a.m. about everything imaginable. (You’re from Arkansas? Have you used a flush toilet?)
The next morning I was drunk on the experience of the night before. I had – finally – left my segregated high school behind, and I gladly entered a melting pot of cultures in a huge city. That day I had to buy my books for my first term, and I walked to the Student Book Exchange (SBX), where my joy lurched to terror when I realized the books for my first quarter cost $300.
I remember standing at the SBX with a huge lump in my throat. Would I be able to afford college? I’d never spent $300 on anything. (My first guitar was $125.) I was standing next to the sweatshirts and saw a grey Northwestern sweatshirt with purple lettering. I put my hand on it. It was nice. Nicer than anything I owned. The price? About $60.
That’s when I said, “screw it.” I grabbed the sweatshirt and checked out – $360 down the flush toilet. If I was going to crash and burn I was going to have a nice sweatshirt in the process.
I’m wearing that sweatshirt now, 32 years later. It’s a Champion. A USA-made brand I love that wears like iron. My sweatshirt has been all over the world, endured raising two children, four jobs, a graduate degree and a failed newspaper business.
This is the long way to say that I am pleased that we are now offering Lost Art Press sweatshirts from Champion. At about the same price I paid in 1986 (we are taking a slim margin on these).
You can order yours here.
I hope you will write fondly about this sweatshirt in the year 2050, perhaps while are you sitting on your zero-g toilet.
— Christopher Schwarz
