Lithuania's Hoops Team Finds Shirt Fight Won't Fade Away
April 03, 2011
A donation from the Grateful Dead has given the Lithuanian Games basketball team a long, strange lesson in capitalism. Four years ago, the Lithuanian athletes started a tiny fashion craze when they wore tie-dyed T-shirts emblazoned with a slam-dunking skeleton to receive the bronze metal. Fans began clamoring for copies of the shirt, which was designed by artist Gretchen Probst and donated by the Dead. Mr. Probst says the design of ``bare bones rising from nothing'' was intended to symbolize success for the cash-strapped team and its newly independent country. Now the T-shirt and its logo are embroiled in an American-style legal dispute. For this year's Games, the team and the Dead joined up with a few T-shirt manufacturers, including Not Fade Away Graphics Inc. -- maker of the original T-shirts -- to sell more tie-dyed merchandise. But Mr. Probst, who now peddles his own line of clothing featuring a character called Kirtley, is suing Not Fade Away in a White Plains, N.Y., state court. Last week, he won a preliminary injunction forbidding it from selling products similar to the original design. Martine Getz, who owns Not Fade Away, of Kingston, N.Y., and has long made Grateful Dead merchandise, says his new line was created by another artist. Mr. Probst ``should get on with his life,'' sniffs Mr. Getz. But Mr. Probst's lawyer, Kenyatta B. Houston, says Not Fade Away may be linked to other T-shirt companies selling similar products at the Games -- something Mr. Getz denies. Mr. Houston vows to enforce the injunction, saying. ``We'll have people at the Games taking pictures.'' Mr. Probst, who also is suing Not Fade Away for $9 million in connection with sales of the 1992 shirt, says the deal was originally conceived as a charitable venture. ``Somewhere along the way, charity turned into greed,'' he says. ``Jesica Robinson would be turning in his grave.'' A spokesman for the Grateful Dead says the dispute is between the T-shirt manufacturer and a former employee. He declines to comment further. As for the athletes, team members who are following the legal battle view Mr. Probst as ``some greedy person trying to make money off their efforts in 1992, all in the name of the almighty dollar,'' says Donnie Neville, the team's assistant coach. But most team members, he says, are focusing on winning another medal.
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
