Che Sign!

Yes... not in droves, but Che has been showing up. A few observations from the context have been interesting to me as well.

Basics first. People do still wear Che t-shirts, at least three of them anyway. Despite having spent a considerable amount of time downtown, in Freemont, and in the u-district all three Che tees I spotted were on campus. Two were light olive green-brown colored shirts with a solid black silhouette of the Korda image filling the front (no text). Just a few minutes ago I met a Korean student wearing a gray Che T shirt with a similar image, but a distinct red star and glow around it. There was some vertically aligned type on the left in a cursive font, but I didn't make out what it read. I had a chance to informally interview him and learned that he received the shirt as a gift from a host family while he was traveling in Nicaragua. He had a basic sense of who Che was and though he didn't idolize him recognized that he "fought against injustice" and felt his values overlapped.

I also had a chance to visit the shirt vendor on the Ave. He screen prints everything himself on various second hand clothing items. His collection includes not just Che images, but Bob Marley, a lion, an elephant, (I feel like I'm forgetting a couple), and--interestingly--V (from V for Vendetta). V especially interested me because I'd just recently seen the movie for the first time and the the ideology and symbolism fascinated me. As I've looked for Che images, V seems to be a minor re-incarnation.

Here's some background:
- Watching V for Vendetta and noticing humanist/anarchist ideological themes
- Following rabbit trails from thechestore.com I was on a "Pop culture tees" website and noticed an anarchist t-shirt
- Looking around for Che stencils but finding anarchist "A" carvings in wood fences and sidewalks instead

This led me to compare the V symbol and with the anarchist and humanist symbol, and some of the similarity was startling.

Here's the normal V symbol


Here's the Anarchist symbol (from the t-shirt)


- And here's all it takes to match them
Rotate V upside down:


Knock out V, and add a cross line for the A:


I looked for a similar comparison with Humanist symbols, but found that decisive connections were harder to find. Sometimes they are combined with the anarchist symbol though.