'Believe In Boston' Brand Finds New Beverly Storefront Home

BEVERLY, MA — A big batch of Boston pride with a side of punk rock is coming back to the North Shore starting this weekend.

Chris Wrenn, the owner of Bridge Nine Records and the iconic "Sully's Brand" products of T-shirts and other items celebrating everything awesome that is Boston sports, is having a grand opening for a storefront for both brands in the former Beverly Glass space on Rantoul Street on Saturday.

Wrenn, who operated a store out of Peabody for 14 years before the building was sold during the COVID-19 shutdowns, previously had retail locations in Boston and Salem.

"Very excited to finally be opening after 18 months of construction and renovation work," Wrenn told Patch as he hurried to set up vinyl displays ahead of the weekend opening. "It is a drastic departure from how it looked as a glass company."

Bridge Nine Records actually predates the Sully's Brand business that has been widely promoted by Ben Affleck, Conan O'Brien and the many Boston athletes celebrated with shirt slogans and designs over the past two decades. Bridge Nine began as a hardcore punk promotion that Wrenn launched in 1995 when he was doing window displays for the former Tower Records on the corner of Newbury Street and Mass. Ave in Boston.

He said it was in 2000 when he realized he needed funding to promote the bands and help them go on tour to support the records.

Only one problem.

"Bank after bank basically laughed me out of their cubicles when I asked about a loan," he told Patch. "I had no collateral, no business plan, no distribution deal, or formal work experience."

So, instead, he said he began selling "Yankees Suck" merchandise outside of Fenway Park at a time when the Red Sox were still the most "cursed" franchise in all of professional sports. He said his first Sully's Brand vendors were his hardcore punk roommates, fans of his bands and friends who were connected to his record label.

Among a Boston fanbase that was just starting to get a taste of Tom Brady, David Ortiz, Patrice Bergeron, Paul Pierce and a generation of championships, the timing could not have been better.

"We made a lot of money doing it — hundreds of thousands of dollars back then — and I invested all of it into the Bridge Nine record label," he said. "Started buying vans for U.S. tours and plane
tickets for bands to travel overseas, and put band after band into studios to document their music.

"For many years, both brands existed side by side and very few people knew the connection."

Wrenn opened a Sully's store in Salem in 2003 and then moved to Peabody in 2007.

Now he is looking forward to bringing his "Green Monstah" T-shirts and his Sex Pistols albums together in Beverly when doors open at 282 Rantoul Street at 11 a.m. on Saturday.

"I think it's a pretty novel genesis story," he said. "I've come to learn that the Venn diagram of both brands had significant overlap, so we are opening a dual retail store to not only showcase each of their offerings but to also help tell the story of how they make sense together."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)