T-shirts demand Pitt for New Orleans mayor

NEW ORLEANS, July 2 (UPI) -- The owner of a New Orleans T-shirt shop said the grassroots movement to elect actor Brad Pitt as the city's next mayor is sounding "less and less crazy."

Josh Harvey, owner of shirt shop Storyville, said the first "Brad Pitt for Mayor" T-shirt was made by a Tulane University professor who invited the store to use his design, WSDU-TV, New Orleans, reported Thursday.

Harvey said the T-shirts have some people thinking Pitt -- who filmed "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" in the city and runs a non-profit dedicated to the post-Katrina rebuilding effort -- would actually make a good mayor for New Orleans.

"Brad Pitt is someone who's really done a lot for the City of New Orleans and the more people are talking about it. It sounds less and less crazy, especially with Gov. Schwarzenegger and Al Franken about to be sworn in as the U.S. Senator from Minnesota," Harvey said.

He said a portion of the proceeds from the T-shirts goes toward the actor's Make It Right Foundation.

The foundation already sells a line of T-shirts, baseball caps and other items, with 100 percent of net proceeds going to "exclusively to the process of building new Make It Right homes," the organization says on its Web site.