Tony Incorvaia is a Deadhead. The Cleveland native grew up a fan of the Grateful Dead and, of course, wore more than a few of their signature tie-dye shirts. “I’ve been a hippie all my life,” he says.
He’s continued to live the lifestyle with his business Inkys Tie Dyes—he sells handmade tie-dye shirts, tapestries and other apparel featuring elaborate designs ranging from turtles to guitars to colorful mosaics. “The creativity aspect is what drives me,” he says.
Incorvaia moved to the Fort Myers area in 1995 and got into the restaurant industry, becoming a popular bartender at spots including the British Open Pub in Bonita Springs. He started playing around with tie-dyeing about seven years ago. He was admittedly not artistic by any means, but he found a creative spark in wrapping a T-shirt in rubber bands and soaking it with dyes to create unique designs. “I couldn’t draw you a stick figure,” he says with a laugh. “But after a while, all my T-shirt designs started to come together.”
The Grateful Dead, even after the deaths of some of its original members, has lived on in various iterations and has continued to tour, bringing with it the hordes of fans who follow the band from city to city. Incorvaia has twice toured with the vendors who pop up in the parking lots and fields outside the venues to sell their wares. On his last tour, in 2019, he took his van to 23 stops across the country. “It really becomes like a family,” he says of the fellow vendors and Deadheads. “It was an amazing experience. I got to do something I wanted to do since I was a child.”
He’s built his following locally mostly through word-of-mouth and at farmers markets, such as Koreshan State Park market, which has now moved to Three Oaks Town Center. He said he finds a similar scene at the farmers markets as he did at the Dead concerts. Artisans are there to make a little money, but what’s really rewarding is the bond that forms connecting to others. “It’s not about the competition,” he says. “It’s about family and the community you build.”
