It’s the Shirt

“We moved to San Diego from El Centro,” says Borrachos bassist Frank Rivera. “We started as a band, but we never got anywhere because every time we got together to practice we got too faded.…

“We started setting up shows as Los Borrachos. Our first show was at the [Pacific Beach] American Legion Hall in September 2006. We made shirts for ourselves.… Spitting on Cops from Victorville came to one of my shows at Chasers. They liked our shirts and then asked us to design a shirt for them. It caught on from there.”

Singer/guitarist Nick Apocalypse, who works at a surfboard shop, designs all the shirts.

“Our deal is we do the artwork and we make 30

T-shirts,” says Rivera. “You just pay us $5 a shirt, plus $50 for the artwork. The bands sell them for, like, $10 or $12.”

To date, Los Borrachos have done shirts for local bands Chaotic Mess, the Lugers, D.E.A., Gross Negligence, and Deadeye’s Revenge. They’ve also created merch for Lompoc’s Public Defecation and Dirtbag and Set to Destroy, from Victorville.

The shirts are made in Rivera’s Linda Vista garage. All business deals are done with a handshake. Part of the agreement is that Los Borrachos keeps the rights of the original artwork, and they retain the rights to reprint any band’s design they created.

“There’s not a lot of money in it for us…maybe enough money to buy some beer and an extra set of shirts. It’s all just punk rock. Punk pretty much never makes any financial sense.”

— Ken Leighton