Area Dude Attempts to Catalogue Every T-Shirt In "Heavy Metal Parking Lot"

You might not realize it, but today is a very important day.

On this day 30 years ago, a bunch of metal fans in Landover, Maryland, gathered in a parking lot before a Judas Priest concert. That's right: It's the pearl anniversary of Heavy Metal Parking Lot, perhaps the greatest study of late '80s metaldom ever captured on camera. University of Maryland student Jeff Krulik and partner John Heyn's short documentary—essentially just 17 minutes of interviews with epically wasted, elegantly mulleted Priest diehards sharing such insights as "Don't ever get laid in a car!" and "Madonna's a dick!"—became a bootleg classic in the '90s before finally getting an official DVD release in 2006.

Someone who's definitely aware of the day's significance is Craig Giffen. In 2011, the Portland-based Heavy Metal Parking Lot super-fan launched a website—which somehow looks as old as the film itself—attempting to identify and catalogue every T-shirt visible in the movie. He put the project on the backburner, until a Deadspin article earlier this year convinced him to complete his mission in time for the 30th anniversary.

Considering the film is only 17 minutes long, and that half the interview subjects aren't even wearing shirts, you'd figure the job would be easy. But the original movie and the outtakes on the DVD contain about 30,000 individual frames, and Giffen scrolled through each one by one. What did he discover? Well, not surprisingly, Judas Priest shirts are pretty popular at a Judas Priest show. You probably won't be surprised to learn that there's a wealth of vintage Iron Maiden, Dokken, Metallica and Harley-Davidson shirts, either. But there's also an inordinate amount of ZZ Top tour tees, both a Union Jack and a Confederate flag, a Coors Light half-shirt and a shirt celebrating D.C. rock DJ "the Greaseman." And of course there's this beauty:

Giffen's not quite done, though. Several shirts remain unidentified. Scroll down to the "unknown" section of the page, and if you have any tips, let him know.

"The T-Shirts of Heavy Metal Parking Lot" isn't Giffen's only notable web creation. In 2006, his site Human Clock—in which every minute of the day is represented by a unique photo, updated in real-time—was deemed one of the 50 Coolest Web Sites of the year by Time magazine.

Watch Heavy Metal Parking Lot in full below, and read Deadspin's piece about a recent cast reunion—which Giffen attended—here:

Willamette Week