'I Bleed Baltimore': Shirts Become About More Than Sports
By DANIEL LEADERMAN
The Daily Record of Baltimore
BALTIMORE (AP) -- After the protest and riots that followed Freddie Gray's death last month, the T-shirts seemed to be everywhere: in the protesting crowds, on from the sidewalks of West Baltimore, and on cable news.
White fabric, black and orange lettering: "I Bleed Baltimore." The words sounding like both a declaration of love for the wounded city and a message of defiance.
But the shirts were actually a few weeks old, printed in honor of opening day at Camden Yards by East Coast Bail Bonds and given out for free by the business, which put its logo on the back. After the fires and looting, the shirts became about more than sports.
"It was kind of a perfect fit," said Vinnie Magliano, the company's owner. "I gave them out because it supports our city."
Free T-shirts are something of an annual tradition for East Coast Bail Bonds. Every year they make a new design, and distribute them as part of a guerrilla-style marketing effort that lets them meet people in the community. Magliano said he'd rather chat with potential customers face-to-face than go on the radio to tout his business.
The company will usually print upward of 50,000 shirts per summer at a cost of at least $150,000, Magliano said.
"If I could do 100,000 shirts in a summer, I would. It's my thing, I love it," he said. And he tries to keep the message positive: The shirts don't use jail-themed imagery such as bars or handcuffs.
"We perform a service," Magliano said. "And we try to represent our city." The company has also donated its shirts to homeless shelters, he said.
Last year, the shirts read "I Bleed Purple" to support the Ravens. This year, Magliano used Orioles colors. He initially had about 20,000 shirts printed; 10,000 of those were given out for opening day, the rest were given out after the riots.
East Coast Bail Bonds has a location not far from the intersection of Pennsylvania and North Avenues, where a CVS Pharmacy was prominently looted and burned, Magliano said. The morning after the riots, the company started giving the shirts to people in the neighborhood, he said.
Soon, they popped up in news photographs and in footage on CNN. Demand went up, and Magliano says he's ordered another 10,000 shirts and plans to give them away throughout the summer.
As for the extra publicity? Magliano said that while it's useful for marketing, he hates the idea of the city in turmoil and the fact that residents were scared.
"I hate to see Baltimore go through this," he said. "I'd rather see my T-shirt on the news with someone smiling and happy rather than being upset."
Graphic designer Jamal Harris said he got his free shirt near while celebrating with other residents near Penn-North on the day Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby announced criminal charges against the six Baltimore City police officers in connection with Gray's death.
Harris said that even though the shirts weren't planned for the protests, he thought giving them out was a decent thing to do. "It shows pride in your city," he said. "At the moment they were out there (giving out shirts), there was a lot of pride."
Harris said people were handing giving out shirts on either side of North Avenue that day. He got one as he was walking back to his car, but it was the wrong size and didn't fit him, he said.
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Information from: The Daily Record of Baltimore, http://www.thedailyrecord.com
(Copyright 2015 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
