What do the Grateful Dead and the U.S. Olympic Ski Team have in common?
The Dead can ski.Actually, the Grateful Dead are one of the biggest sponsors of the team, and they have the shirts to prove it.
"Last year, the team lost a lot of corporate sponsors," said Martin Leffer, production manager of Not Fade Away Graphics - the official licensed Grateful Dead merchandiser that specializes in tie-dye shirts, stickers and embroidery. "So after talking to the band, they thought it was a great idea."
Leffer, who has seen more than 400 Grateful Dead concerts, designed the psychedelic shirts, complete with fluorescent teddy bears and a slalom-running skeleton highlighted by the official U.S. Olympic Ski Team logo.
"Most other countries that compete in the Olympics are pretty much sponsored by their own government," said Leffer. "So we are glad to be a part of this."
Leffer has been designing shirts for 13 years - 10 of which have been directly involved with the Grateful Dead.
"I originally started doing this at Dead shows," he said. "I eventually met up with the band, and they liked what I was doing."
That's how it all began. Since then, Leffer's New York company grew to employ 50 people and three auto presses that cater to more than 3,000 retail stores worldwide.
In 1992, the company designed shirts for the Lithuanian Olympic basketball team and sold them for charity.
"When the Soviets left Lithuania, they pretty much took the food and clothing and left the orphanages hanging," Leffer said. "Sarunas Mariulionis, who was playing for Golden State (Warriors) at the time, was on the Lithuanian team and talked with me backstage during a (Grateful Dead) show. We made 150,000 shirts and gave the money to the orphanages."
The team wore Leffer's shirts - which depicted a skeleton slam-dunking a basketball - when it was awarded the bronze medal at the Barcelona Games.