Amy Cray

Scroll through most Myspace band pages and you’ll see flash ads along the side columns for a snarky message tee company. All that insta-cool to be had for $34.99! The hipsters are all wearing them! Styley plastic sunglasses-clad kids are looking all “I just grabbed this off my floor and threw on a pair of vans and got on my cruiser bike” with their American Apparel tees, proclaiming something witty (sometimes) and standing against a brick wall in Encino, headed to a free show at a gas station (because THAT is punk rawk).

Let’s all have a moment of nostalgia and think back to the late 70’s iron-on tshirt shops. You picked out your shirt size and color, and then the art from stacks of binder books with images divided into categories like “girls” “boys” and “adults only” (Lord knows what was in those, I was five). Most were appropriate for that moment in time; my sister’s was a rip off of an ACDC album title. Mine was light pink, and I chose a cartoon drawing of a kidney bean dancing in a rainbow field of flowers with the message above proclaiming “I’m a human bean”. Awesome.

I’ve been temporarily tempted to buy into the message tee when I see something especially awesome like this one, available from Smash, whose message tees focus on their homestate of Iowa but has a few good general ones too:

or this one from Delia’s (who actually has a reliably cool selection but alas is cut for 10 year olds):

And there’s the classic Neighborhoodies, whose price points have kept me just out of reach from ordering pride shirts for my various SF neighborhoods for YEARS (though I am still considering “Lower Rockridge” because that’s just plain funny, and only to people who live within 3 square blocks of my house). Their readymades are often smart:

Ultimately, while trying to narrow down a choice, I realize that it’s ridiculous to condense my outfit’s intention for a day into a little snippy comment on culture, politics or certainly Team Britney. It’s a bumper sticker for my boobs. And it’s probably not going to be funny to me for long. And it smacks of “think I’m cool please”. And I just can’t commit. But I still browse. Looking for that “one” to make me overcome my hispter annoyance and dive on in.