elaborating a bit on the previous post, today i had what was by far the strangest experience since i’ve been in spain. and it didn’t take the expected form of a fundamental cultural or linguistic gap, but instead it was the result of a bizarre spanish reappropriation of american culture.
i finally made it to this vintage store in el raval that our spanish teacher recommended the other day, and was greeted by the familiar layout of a nice american vintage store. after making sure i was in the guys’ section as i usually do, i began sifting through a rack of t-shirts and was immediately greeted by the two gems pictured above. a cincinnati reds t-shirt in a barcelona vintage shop? kentucky derby? pretty cool i guess how much do they €30??!?! that’s about $40 at the current exchange rate for some ratty old t-shirts. oh well, i thought, maybe they have some cool old barcelona shirts, but no - the entire rack was full of cheesy tourist t-shirts from around the states - florida, minnesota, everywhere. something, methinks, is amiss.
i kept looking around the store to find what is basically standard fare for an american vintage store: some western shirts, old military gear, that weird rack of velour track jackets that you never see anyone look through, but my attention was elsewhere. what really piqued my interest were the racks upon racks of discarded american culture that’s so hip in the states these days: rec league baseball jerseys, college sports sweatshirts (UK, UT, auburn), star wars tees - expressions of old pride that have attained the all-powerful status of “ironic” in america.
to put it mildly, this blew my damn mind. people in spain (and anywhere else in europe for that matter) don’t know anything about american football, let alone baseball, and yet it’s becoming hip (and expensive) to wear old american sports shit. but the reason it’s fashionable to wear this stuff in hipster america is because of a very tongue-in-cheek awareness of the decidedly un-hipness of many parts of our cultural history (sports, star wars). over here across the pond, they’re just catching wind of the style, without having the actual cultural history behind it. i suppose that’s started happening in america now as well, but it was still a very strange day in el raval for old miguel.
