There are plenty of things one can do with dirty laundry: hide it, air it out, take it to the cleaners. In 1985, Bill Mooney and friends decided to screen print it.

The rock band Redd Kross was in Raleigh for a show, and ended up stuck in town an extra day for car repairs. Mooney and a couple of friends, one of whom, Barbara Herring, later became his wife, hung out with the band and demonstrated their screen-printing kit.

The band happily decorated the contents of its laundry bag. A couple of years later, Redd Kross asked the group to design its tour T-shirts, which led to work for indie-rock legends Sonic Youth and the start of a successful rock 'n' roll merchandising business, Tannis Root. Today, the downtown Raleigh business handles T-shirts for bands such as The White Stripes, Animal Collective and Spoon.

"We never even had a business plan," says Mooney, now 39.

They were music fans, and designing and printing T-shirts brought them closer to it. As a longtime, bona fide member of Raleigh's creative class, Mooney will speak at Spark Con as part of ideaSPARK, the convention's workshop and discussion arm. Mooney will talk about the tendency of creative types to help revitalize a city, only to see it grow beyond their means.

It's a problem familiar with artists in re-emerging urban districts. The rents start off cheap, so creative people -- artists, rockers, etc. -- move in. Development dollars follow, and before long, the artists can't afford the rent. Mooney experienced this five years ago when the rent quadrupled on his old business space in Raleigh's warehouse district.

Today, Tannis Root and its sister company, Kung Fu Nation, have offices on Hargett Street. The creatives-get-priced-out issue is a complex one, for which Mooney has no definitive answer. But the idea that one could be found is part of what makes Spark Con interesting: gather a bunch of folk in a room, throw the problem out there and see what kinds of solutions they can conjure.

Mooney has been a longtime advocate for change in downtown Raleigh. He likes some of what he's seen over the past decade or so.

"I really wanted downtown Raleigh to become more developed and more lively and I think that's happening. But now I fear for the things of character in downtown Raleigh. The more it becomes like Atlanta, the less I like it."

Certain linchpins of Raleigh's indie culture, places such as King's Barcade and Vertigo Diner, are no more. Cities that change quickly, as Raleigh has, can lose what made them interesting in the first place. "I hope people are careful to preserve the things of character."

JP Reuer, a local architect and ideaSPARK organizer, has known Mooney for more than a decade and invited him to speak.

"I always thought Bill was a very creative person," Reuer says. "I think he's really a clear thinker."

Mooney approaches the priced-out problem from a practical perspective, not one of urban planning or design, Reuer says. Perhaps, Mooney's talk will help generate new ways of approaching the problem, from a Raleigh point-of-view.

That's something Mooney has no shortage of. A 1985 graduate of Cardinal Gibbons High School, he and Barbara thought over the years about moving, perhaps to someplace like New York, which is closer to the hubbub of the entertainment industry. But the couple, who have a young son named Oscar, are rooted here.

"We like living here," he says. And besides, they know plenty of creative folks who left to pursue work and would love to come back.

Because of that dirty laundry, Mooney and Herring never had to.

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