There’s been a pretty sudden change in weather here in the Oslo fjord where we live, and it’s gone from an OK 10 degrees Celsius to about 20 degrees Celsius in the last couple of days. This can only mean we’re getting closer to summer, and it’s time to dig out some comfortable t-shirts from the bottom of my clothes drawer.

When I went on the US road trip in 2012 and the airline lost my luggage for two weeks, I accumulated a large collection of plain, white t-shirts¹, but they are pretty worn out now and Anniken is secretly throwing them away. So it’s about time to buy some new t-shirts, and perhaps something more interesting than those plain ones. I used to get a lot of fancy t-shirts from Threadless, but ever since they more or less closed their Type Tees collection, I started looking elsewhere for leisurewear - most of their designs were done by people high as kites on LSD and other psychedelic drugs and hallucinogens.

Also, Threadless and pretty much every other online outlet that sells high quality, printed t-shirts are rather pricy. A single t-shirt can often set you back as much as USD 20, not including P&P. That has stopped me from going on a t-shirt shopping spree in the past. But when I think of it, 20 dollars isn’t perhaps too bad for a t-shirt - given that it won’t shrink to half its original size during the first wash and that the print doesn’t come off as soon as the sun shines. Also, since I blindly throw twenty dollar bills at Kickstarter projects, why shouldn’t I spend the same amount of money on a t-shirt that’ll make me look awesome?

That settles it, let’s go shopping!

Although most of the t-shirts sold by Threadless are designed by potheads, there also have a few that’s a bit more low key. Ironically enough, they’ve just announced the winner of their Big Lebowski contest - a movie about a guy who smokes a lot of pot. And, for some curious reason, some of the designs submitted to the contest, are among the saner designs I’ve seen on the site. But in the end, I didn’t go for any of the Big Lebowski t-shirts. Instead I settled on these three designs:

From left to right: “Summer Trip”, design by Martin Osimani, “Window Seat”, design by Ross Zietz and “Tokyo Extreme: Part 2”, design by Draco. Nothing too trippy, but also one design that’ll take me out of my t-shirt comfort zone. I usually like to wear clothes that are less flashy than Tokyo Extreme, but I love the colors and the amazing detail of the design and the idea that it’s a snapshot of a much bigger story and a crop of a picture with a lot of other stories we can’t see.

My other go-to-source on the internet when I’m looking for t-shirts is ThinkGeek, partly because I’m a geek and partly because they have a lot of t-shirts with one-liners on them. We geeks like to spread our wisdom through t-shirts because we’re usually introverts who don’t really enjoy small talk², but we still have a lot of things we want to say. Hence the proverb “all true wisdom is found on t-shirts”.

This year, however, my ThinkGeek scavenger hunt didn’t really result in anything amazing, but I did find these two potential designs:

“For Science!” and “Atari”. I like the “For Science!” one because it’s a play on the Portal and Portal 2 games by Valve and “Atari” because, hey, it’s Atari. The company might have gone slightly downhill lately, but it’s still Atari, the pioneer in arcade games, home video game consoles, and home computers. And that we love them for. Also, when wearing the t-shirt with the proud logo, I’ll actually know what it means, as opposed to all the hipsters who picked it up at a second hand store because “the logo was cool”.

While we’re on the subject of logos, or perhaps “symbols” is more fitting, I’ve decided to go full superhero this summer. Inspired by the TV show The Big Bang Theory and Doctor Sheldon Cooper’s love for superhero t-shirts, I started looking for a Batman t-shirt. As a kid I had a black t-shirt with a yellow Batman logo and I used that particular t-shirt a lot. In my Batman hunt, I also came across other superheros, and in the end I settled for these three:

Superman, Batman and The Flash. Although The Flash isn’t a superhero I have any childhood memories of, I decided to get one because Sheldon is wearing a The Flash t-shirt occasionally. It’s somewhat embarrassing, but I can live with that.

I can’t be ordering all of these t-shirts at the same time, since I need to buy food and stuff, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be ready for summer when it eventually arrives here on the northern hemisphere.

Here’s to a sunny and t-shirt friendly summer!