In early December I was visiting my home town of Akron, Ohio. The occasion was a concert that my girlfriend and I were attending in nearby Northfield, Ohio. Part of our trip was me sharing the city with her, which necessitated a trip to Rubber City Clothing.
Rubber City Clothing is a local business that sells apparel and other Akron themed designs. I wrote about them in my first book where I highlighted them and several other similar companies that were in the business of “selling local pride.” RCC has been going strong for over a decade and they exemplify these types of businesses that have tapped into a strong market desire to share love and pride in your city. Others such as STL Style House in St. Louis, Fleurty Girl in New Orleans, Raygun in Iowa and CLE Clothing in Cleveland have become champions of local love in their communities.
On this day in December, Lisa and I were equipping ourselves with Akron and Ohio themed paraphernalia; Lisa is from Toledo and went to Kent State so the Ohio theme worked for both of us. The clerk who helped us was wearing an interesting shirt with a design that I did not recognize. She was wearing this:
I asked her about the story behind the shirt and she told me of the “Fulton Angel” – an iconic, art deco design element on an old building of the east side of Akron. I had grown up in Akron and had been coming back regularly for years but I had NEVER heard about the angel.
In 1929, Daniel Guggenheim (yes, that Guggenheim family) established the Daniel Guggenheim Airship Institute in Akron to study aeronautics. At the time, Akron was home to two of the largest airships in the world – the Akron and the Macon and the institute was adjacent to the airfield that would eventually house the Goodyear blimp. The institute was founded to study airships and included a then state of the art vertical wind tunnel. And in addition to these scientific elements, Guggenheim commissioned a design on the back of the building that faced the landing area for the airships. Dubbed the “Fulton Angel,” she cradled the airships in her protective embrace and this is the art deco design that pilots landing and taking off would see:
As I said, this great story and this gorgeous piece of art and history were entirely new to me! How wonderful to discover something new about your hometown and it all started with a t-shirt! I have said many times that t-shirts are one panel stories and often they can be incredible distillations of our feelings, our perception and the identity of our places. T-shirts are an opportunity to tell your story and to share with the world. When you wear your local story, you never know who is going to see it and maybe learn something amazing about your community!