Built from real photographs.

RiverRoosters is one guy, a 1978 Caribbean, and a rule. The rule is that every part on the shirt comes from a photograph of a real boat — a flatbottom idling on the Parker Strip, a candy paint job somebody spent a whole winter on, a big block standing open behind the cockpit with the belt still on it.

The photographs are the authority. Hulls, motors, headers, pumps and paint stay where the camera found them. From there it is worked up into the airbrushed look the old marine artists used — hard chrome, drawn edges, and the sun doing what the sun actually does at that time of day on that water.

A finished design is not a portrait of one particular hull. It is assembled from real parts, photographed on real boats, and nothing on it is invented. That is the whole rule, it has never moved, and it is why these read right to anyone who has loaded out of Havasu in the dark.

The '78 Caribbean in the yard is mine. The big block came out, the chrome went back on, and this year it started and ran. Most of what gets posted is that boat, because it is the one I can photograph whenever I want.

The tees are Gildan 5000 heavy cotton, S through 3XL; the tanks are Bella+Canvas 3480 jersey, S through 2XL. The art runs the full width of the back. On a tee the chrome RR on the left chest is two exhaust pipes. Each one is printed after you order it, which is why it takes a couple of weeks and why there is no warehouse full of sizes nobody wanted.

4 designs so far. There will be another when there is another boat worth putting on a shirt.