For those of you that don’t know, I live in a town called Rogers in Northwest Arkansas. As far as pecking order goes in NWA, Bentonville is the “sophisticated” town (because of Walmart and all the Walton family dollars spread around town), Fayetteville is the “funky, hip” place (due to the University of Arkansas), Springdale is the “industrial” spot (home of Tyson — the chicken people — and J.B. Hunt). That leaves Rogers as the odd-town-out. All of those labels can apply to us but nowhere near the magnitude as each of the big boys. Personally, I love living in Rogers for precisely that reason. There’s a variety of bike trails all around town for commuting, leisure rides, mountain biking, etc. They just finished building a big park/gathering area downtown with a stage for live music and an entertainment district. It’s humble but exciting.
As part of all this, I’ve been trying to find ways to instill some community pride for Rogers amongst the other towns in the area. Inspiration struck recently and I was sick to my stomach at how good of an idea it was. Even though I’m a DIEHARD Giants fan, I had to make this abomination because it was too perfect…
This isn’t the first time I’ve had the urge to bastardize the Dodgers logo for personal usage. My wife grew up in LA before finding her way to Arkansas and she likes to constantly rib me about the rivalry even though she cares very little about baseball. To keep her from bring Dodgers gear into our home, I made this compromise of a shirt in honor of our doggo, Winston, and gave it to her as a gift.
I ordered a 100 die cut stickers and actually sold a handful of these suckers at the Frisco Festival downtown last weekend. I only encountered one Giants fan at the booth that shook his head at me. Now I just need to approach a shop somewhere in town that would be willing to sell them in store. And if there’s enough positive feedback, perhaps they’ll make an appearance on some cycling jerseys in the future. I just need someone so on board with the design that they’re willing to pay for the cost of production so I’m not stuck with a bunch of cursed shirts sitting in my garage.
This is probably the first time I’ve created something I’m really proud of that I refuse to wear or display myself. I slapped one on my wife’s back windshield and would actually be stoked to see them on other cars about town or on some sort of apparel in the future. But I CANNOT put something so Dodgers-esque on my person.