Chicago photos

Recently I was in Chicago and thought it was an appropriate time to take some photographs in Barack Obama's home town. Not unexpectedly, the level of Obamawear was very high, but there were also some interesting contexts and juxtaposition.

Sorry about the blurriness here--I was working with a disposable camera. This is a magnet of a bag of grocieries, saying "Put Food Back on the The Table: Vote Obama 2008," a clear nod to the economic crisis.
As you can probably tell, this was taken on Michigan Avenue. We see Chicago-nalia,  shirts, mixed with an Obama shirt. 
This is from the Tribune building, current owners of the Cubs. We can see balance between McCain and Obama here, mixed with the Cubs.

There is supposed balance here, but we can see three Obama shirts compared to one McCain.
A Hebrew sign with a more typical sign.

Here is an Obama shirt within a Chicago context--a Bears shirt and an Al Capone one.
In this particular Walgreens in Hyde Park, a variety of merchandise was on sale.
I'm sure this shirt exists somewhere else outside Chicago, but it adds to the diversity of Obama wear available.

A number of books, including the widely panned Jerome Corsi book, were available at the airport bookstore...

...as was another Obama shirt next to a Cubs division championship shirt. Obama had better luck in his playoff than the Cubs...

---J.S.

Follow Up on Fashion

Robin Givlin, the fashion critic of The Washington Post, writes about the Obama campaign's relationship with the fashion industry.

More T-Shirts

Who doesn't love a good t-shirt?

No one we know. In fact, Obama supporters have reinvented the political t-shirt. There are so many Obama tees out there, it's hard to keep up.

One of our favorites is the homeboy t-shirt to the left. Sure, his haircut looks a little too much like Bill Kristol's, but no one would ever mistake Kristol for a homeboy. We like the wood carved look of this shirt, and the Branson font is so downmarket it's upmarket. SemiObama Grade: A-

I call the shirt to the right the German postage stamp. I'm sure the designers would prefer to think of this one as the "Yes We Can" shirt, but we like "Ja, Bitte!" The small sun bursts shining up make Obama look royal, especially against the background that resembles a regal crest. SemiObama Grade: B+

One of the strangest is the Che/Obama shirt. I love how the advertisers make sure you see the enlarged Che icon, just so you won't think the "O" contains Obama's image. I wonder what the intentional connection is between Che and Obama. Liberation? Concern for the poor? Charisma? Cigars? My main critique of the film version of The Motorcycle Diaries was its silence on Che's post-revolution record as a thug, so over-romanticizing Che here costs the shirt SemiObama points. SemiObama Grade: C

The coolest shirt is the Bad Ass Obama shirt, a la Mr. T. We pity the fool who doesn't like this logo. Sure, it's an easy comment on race, power, and, most importantly, bling, but that doesn't make it predictable. Evocative of the iron-on decals of the 70s, the shirt is quietly political but loudly humorous. SemiObama Grade: A

The political t-shirt is an underexamined genre. More personal than a bumper sticker and more sassy than a sign, the political t-shirt combines both fashion and politics--two atypical spheres. Compared to the John McCain shirts, which tend to be largely textual and overly earnest, the Obama shirts skew toward the visual and the humorous, no doubt a reflection of of the candidates themselves. That said, we wait, anxiously, for the first Vice-President shirts of 2008.

Until the VP t-shirts hit the streets, though, we close today's post with some also-rans.

---D.R.