Obama-themed merchandise sales strike it hot

Scott Lewis for The Boston GlobeT-shirts with the image of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama were for sale at the Urban Unity store in West Philadelphia. (Scott Lewis for The Boston Globe)

PHILADELPHIA - Malik Onley was standing behind a table filled with hip-hop CDs on a West Philadelphia sidewalk, fondly recalling the weeks this spring when he quickly sold out of 150 copies of a $5 mix tape featuring Jay-Z's raps interspersed with Barack Obama's speeches, when the candidate's logo caught his eye.

It was barely the size of a dime, prominently featured on the cover of a new "One Hood Promo TV" DVD of music videos curated by Jim Jones, a New York hip-hop impresario. Onley picked up the case and skimmed its contents.

"There's nothing with Obama on there," Onley said, shrugging as he gestured back at the logo. "That just says it's cool."

"They'll sell Obama anything," said Gregory Muhammad, a photographer and friend of Onley's.

The Obama cargo cult is vast, stretching from quirky online precincts, where action figures in his senatorial likeness and replicas of his Number 23 high-school basketball jersey are readily available, to the outskirts of high style. Paparazzi last year caught actress Halle Berry in a $46 "Obama for Change" shirt, and these days fashion-forward Tokyo teenagers promenade past an Obama shirt hanging prominently in a shop window in the trendy Harajuku neighborhood.

But nowhere has the presumptive Democratic nominee's unusual persistence in consumer culture been felt as strongly as in the informal urban economy, where his candidacy is delivering an unexpected summertime jolt.

In downtown business districts and uptown commercial corridors, wares with Obama's words and image - and even items with no real connection to his campaign, but bearing his name nonetheless - are taking space on vendors' tables that once were reserved for sports and hip-hop icons.

In Cleveland, Scott Jefferson estimates that since February he has sold more than 2,000 T-shirts featuring Obama's face or campaign logo, priced between $10 and $20. Jefferson supplies other vendors in the Midwest and has driven coast to coast to sell outside Obama's campaign stops, which have come to host a growing tent city of sellers.

"There's too many guys out there now," said Jefferson, who used to sell team merchandise outside sporting events but this past winter shifted to Obama. "The guys with McCain stuff say it isn't selling. Even if people are going to vote for him, they aren't going to buy his apparel."

As many as half of the vendors who crowd the blocks of West Philadelphia's 52d Street have added some Obama goods to their tables, and all said they had never before carried items promoting a candidate. "What would I sell last year?" said Rick Logan, a vendor of scarves and cellphone chargers who had a variety of baseball caps with approximations of Obama's familiar "O" logo on display alongside those branded with the more familiar insignia of the Phillies and Yankees. "Some congressman's hat?"

The nearby corner denim emporium Jeansworld began stocking two Obama shirt designs - which now hang alongside those featuring gangsta tribunes Tupac Shakur and Scarface - during the long run-up to Pennsylvania's primary in late April.

"It started during the election between him and the lady," recalled salesman Mike Bennett, who said that Obama merchandise appealed to people who "are not regular customers" - older and more likely to be female than the store's primarily young, male clientele.

"I was surprised: I didn't think there would be a market for it," said Charles Lee, manning a sidewalk stall for Sneaker Villa, a sportswear shop that had nearly sold out of Obama shirts produced by a Los Angeles designer. "You have older people who come and understand the election, and you have high school students who are just getting interested."

Obama's emergence as a marketable product for street vendors paralleled his growth from a subject of political support to an object of cultural attachment.

"Generally when there's something that people are into, the street vendors are going to move on it," said Maurice Floyd, a Democratic political consultant in Philadelphia. "It's the pulse of what's hot."

Obama's campaign, like McCain's, has trademarked its logo and sells an array of authorized goods, from fleeces to refrigerator magnets.

The campaign has not taken any steps to discourage vendors as long as they do not encroach on the trademark or mislead buyers about their connection to the campaign, a spokeswoman said.

"There is unprecedented interest and incredible grass-roots energy and activism around this election, and that is reflected in the enthusiasm for Obama gear," Obama spokeswoman Moira Mack wrote by e-mail.

The boom in unauthorized merchandise has created not only a parallel economy for Obama goods, but an independent creative space where supporters have been able to interpret and rebrand his candidacy in ways Obama's handlers would consider dangerously off-message.

One shirt available on 52d Street shows Obama wearing a crown studded with plastic rhinestones. Another has him flanked by Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X. A third renders his "Change We Can Believe In" motto in a gothic script favored by hip-hop typographers.

"There's always going to be a market until the election," observed a mix tape producer who goes by the name DJ Difference and had stopped to look at Onley's selection of DVDs. "But after we win, it's going to be a whole new product."