Randy and Jeff Vines, right, sell shirts with inside jokes about St. Louis.

By CATRIN EINHORN

As Jeff Vines pulls down the iron on the heat press in his small studio here, he is trying something far grander than simply searing another image onto another T-shirt. The machine hisses, Mr. Vines opens it and examines his handiwork: a cotton weapon in his quest to revive his longchallenged city.
The St. Louisthemed shirts that Jeff Vines and his identical twin, Randy, make are not for tourists. They sport neighborhood references and inside jokes unintelligible to those not from here. Some easily offend, displaying profanity and raunchy innuendo. But to the Vines brothers, their edginess is part of their mission for St. Louis - a place many of their friends from high school fled - to rehabilitate its image from the inside out and, ultimately, to make future generations want to stay.
“You have to get the people who live there to be the best advocates for the city, or else you don’t really have much,Randy Vines said. “So you need to change the psyche and change the way they see their own city.
The Vines brothers, 30, are not alone in their effort. In cities like Youngstown, Ohio, and Detroit, damaged by the decline in manufacturing and decades of population loss, entrepreneurs in their 20s and 30s are pushing back with the simple stuff of T-shirts, tote bags and soap. The Vines brothers’ company, STLStyle, makes retro-looking T-shirts that extol and lovingly tease St. Louis. In Pittsburgh, Lindsay Patross, 28, offers T-shirts and aprons that read “Pittsburghers are tasty. City Bird makes clocks, lamps, earrings and bracelets patterned with maps of Detroit. Another company, Rusty Waters Apparel, sells skull-adorned T-shirts celebrating Youngstown, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
While some of the T-shirt makers said they made essentially no money on their merchandise, most dreamed of building successful businesses .
In their first year, the Vines brothers sold about 250 T-shirts; six years later, in 2007, they sold about 1,400, plus some 300 other items, including underwear, baby clothes and stickers. Both work full-time jobs.
These T-shirt makers know, of course, that their merchandise will not cure the deep-seated problems of their cities. But they see them as one way to fight against stereotypes, and consider them more authentic than city officials’ public relations campaigns.
Mark-Evan Blackman, chairman of men’s wear design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, said T-shirts can have a profound effect on social change, and that these shirts should not be underestimated.
“It’s saying we’re cool, we’re here, Mr. Blackman said. “We’ve not jumped out of the boat, this city is cool and we’re making it cooler, and look at us.