Street Vendors Feed from Times' Lines

DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES — At an industrial space on Mateo, t-shirts bearing the image of Barack Obama as "President of the U.S." were frantically being silk screened. A crew member gave a quick nod but preferred not to say anything except, "I don't want to jinx him."

Why the concern? It was two days before the actual Election Day.

Lines to buy reprints of the L.A. Times November 5th edition started forming the day after the election, as previously noted here. It took a few days for the cottage industries to gear up, but this weekend the corner of 2nd and Spring became the spot to find Obama t-shirts and buttons.

While not as polished as the shirts I saw in production a week ago, street vendors were seeing brisk sales of their hastily manufactured merchandise.

Lines for reprint papers, replica posters and printing press plates continued to be strong over the weekend and will likely pick back up this morning in the Times' Spring street lobby entrance.

Beware that both the L.A. Times and the street vendors have a single retail sales policy -- cash only.