For the three years, government and politics major Micha Weinblatt had been attending Terps basketball games, he’d seen a select number of “F— Duke” T-shirts pop up whenever the archrival played at Comcast Center.

The administration had even turned it into a campus-wide controversy, banning the spelled-out curse word from games, citing a lack of sportsman-like conduct. Weinblatt knew there was nothing like controversy to popularize an item, so his senior year, he and

University of Pennsylvania student Jon Mervis knocked on hundreds of dorm doors hawking the shirts for $15 a pop.

Weinblatt sold more than 700 of them, emblazoned with a drunken monkey leaning against a keg of beer on the back, effectively turning a Feb. 12 game against Duke last year into a sea of biting expletives. Now, almost two years later, the drunken primate has become the Crooked Monkey logo for Weinblatt’s company and is affixed to T-shirts in more than 300 stores throughout the country.

“It was that first journey that inspired us to move the company to a larger, more legal and legitimate arena,” Weinblatt said. “A lot of us are from Potomac and Bethesda, so people assume that we’re just rich kids fooling around with our money. But it all came from that initial sale of Duke shirts.”

A handful of credit-card loans, $3,000 and 18 months later, Crooked Monkey is selling more than 100 different designs in almost 400 stores, generating annual revenue of about $500,000. And although “the Duke shirt wasn’t up to the same quality as our other shirts” and has gone the way of the marching band’s sheet music to “Rock and Roll, Part II,” Weinblatt said, many of the shirts still veer toward the raunchy.

“France sucks but Paris swallows” is a popular item, although “Either your collar is messed up or you’re just a douchebag” has made the bestseller list. For the liquor lovers, there’s “Tequila makes it Sweeta” and “Drop the chocolate and no one gets hurt” for those looking for something less edgy. Other, more ambiguous slogans exist as well: “Living the Dream,” “Butterface,” “That’s How I Roll” and “I’ve had Better,” are all hot sellers.

The soft, vintage-cut T-shirts Crooked Monkey now uses in all its designs come from a broker in California who ships blank shirts to the company’s Bethesda office, located in Mervis’ basement. There, the company’s silkscreener applies designs to each shirt before the company ships them to stores or directly to customers from its website, where the shirts retail between $24 and $28.

Weinblatt said many of the slogans originate at parties over cocktails. His favorite, “Keep the Ratio Strong,” which depicts dancing hot dogs and buns and alludes to the frustrating reality that seven hot dogs come in a package, while packages of hot dog buns usually contain eight, came up a party when someone noticed an even male-to-female ratio.

Other slogans “started on cocktail napkins in bars,” said Weinblatt.

“We’re always thinking of funny things. Just talking to people helps – we do a lot of listening to things people say.”

Weinblatt admits the Crooked Monkey approach has traditionally been to capture the essence of college humor while parodying aspects of the college experience, which translates to a narrow customer base. But Ilana Kashdin, who carries the shirts in her Potomac clothing store B Scene, said the brand has caught on enough that parents now know to look for the logo when buying for their kids.

“We sell a lot to mothers for their daughters and to high school- and college-age customers,” Kashdin said. “The little monkey on the shoulder helps them stand out.”

Advertising ranges where one might expect: on Facebook groups and at campus parties, though Lord and Taylor, which carries the shirts, recently purchased an ad in GQ featuring some Crooked Monkey merchandise, said Weinblatt.

The company maintains close ties to the university, said Weinblatt, hiring current students as models, contributing money to last year’s

Art Attack and searching for employees among recent graduates.

“College is the epicenter of American life,” said Weinblatt. “High school students want to be in college; college students enjoy their time [in] college, and graduates reminisce about college.”

Contact reporter Alex Tilitz at tilitzdbk@gmail.com.