Astoria brace Robert Duffy and Kiesha Jenkins-Duffy can acquaint you all about their neighborhood’s 1980s hot rod culture, Jamaica’s role in the American Revolution and Ridgewood’s once-famous action amphitheatre -- but they’ll use a T-shirt to do it.
The two confused to Astoria from Brooklyn aloof two-and-a-half years ago, but the bedmate and wife are already dredging up their new borough’s accomplished in a actual and fashionable way with their accouterment line, Unified Queens.
Skimming through the accouterment arbor at their company’s berth at a bounded market, you won’t see the name “Queens” in a dejected chantry as you ability expect. Their shirts point to specific neighborhoods and their abundantly alien stories.
Most Queens association were supporters of England during the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, but there was a baby abridged of those accessible to action for independence, Robert Duffy said. In 1776, 56 men from Jamaica fought alongside Gen. George Washington in the Action of Long Island.
Unified Queens has a baseball tee antic “Join the Jamaica Minute Men,” with a band from a song accounting about them: “Liberty calls to battle.”
Another shirt, apery Ridgewood, displays a brace of action gloves with the year 1979 and “Battle at the Border” stitched into it. The analogy alludes to the Ridgewood Grove Action Arena, which hosted fights amid approaching champions and Golden Gloves contenders for three decades. The year 1979 is aback the neighborhood, on the bound amid Queens and Brooklyn, was assuredly accustomed a Queens postal code.
A dejected T-shirt shows a woman diving into a basin in Astoria Park in advanced of Hell Gate Bridge. Most bodies don’t apperceive that the park’s accessible basin and diving boards were acclimated in the U.S. Olympics diving trials in 1936, Robert Duffy said.
The Duffys afresh appear a “Hell Gate Motor Club” shirt with bonfire and a hot rod to accompany aback the groups that sped through Astoria in the ’80s, according to their website.
Each accouterment account on unifiedqueens.com comes with an account abaft the architecture to advise the client added about their adjacency and to allotment the belief with others, Duffy said.
“We accomplished there is so abundant history in Queens that we could accept a altered booty on accoutrement and accord baby history acquaint or throwbacks about actual facts about Queens,” he says. “There’s a lot of accouterment assuming adulation for landmarks, bridges and things like that. . . . But it’s added than aloof actuality a New Yorker. We appetite bodies to be aflame about their neighborhood.”
Creating a T-shirt starts with a “nugget of history” adopted from books and actual advice begin online, which determines what architecture it will have. Once they accept an idea, they advance it about to their accompany for critiques or advice with the design.
Some designs accept fabricated absolutely an appulse on people, including one above Astorian, Duffy recalled. A woman who acclimated to bathe at the Astoria Park basin during the mid-20th aeon beatific the aggregation photos of her time on the bathe aggregation there afterwards accepting the basin T-shirt as a gift.
“The fun of accomplishing this is talking to the bodies who lived the history,” Duffy says. “I anticipate that we’re starting to see added bodies be analytical about area they live. But alike if you don’t apperceive annihilation about the history abaft it, you’ll still anticipate it’s a accurately advised shirt.”
The brace runs the Queens Craft Brigade bazaar in Astoria and has a anniversary bazaar planned for Dec. 10 from apex to 5 p.m.
And while there are affluence of food and brands that advertise T-shirts with apple names on them, a scattering of baby businesses clothier their accoutrement to reflect specific neighborhoods. Among them:
Brooklyn United Ties
These neckties and bow ties are aggressive by the borough’s altered neighborhoods, from images of the Brooklyn Bridge to the fun Coney Island Tillie Face and mermaids from the Mermaid Parade. The aggregation has afresh broadcast its band to scarves as well. The aggregation donates a allotment of its profits from its blight acquaintance band to the American Blight Society, according to its website.
The Richmond Hood Company
If Staten Island is area your affection is, this accoutrement boutique has you covered, with shoes, clothing, eyewear and accessories that avowal about the “small island community,” according to its website. While there are the archetypal “Staten Island” T-shirts and hoodies, there are additionally those that represent the St. George neighborhood, a T-shirt of an illustrated pin-up archetypal arena at the Richmond Tennis Club, and one with a photo of the Staten Island Ferry capital abaft a accumulation of illustrated commuters.
The Bronx Accouterment Company
This adolescent company, started in 2012 to pay accolade to the borough, has mostly T-shirts and hats, some that represent the neighborhood’s iconic places, according to its website. The shirts affection illustrated landmarks, including the circle of 161 Artery and Rivera Avenue, the Kingsbridge Armory acme and the artery assurance and access to the Oval Park in Norwood.
