Among pickup beds stacked with watermelons, barbecue plate\u00a0fundraisers and rows of graveside floral arrangements, another kind of street vendor has returned to San Antonio roadways this May after a long hiatus.<\/p>\n
With the San Antonio Spurs back in the NBA playoffs for the first time in six seasons, the hometown team\u2019s postseason run is fueling renewed demand for affordable Spurs merch \u2013 and bringing familiar street vendors back into view.<\/p>\n
Spend an hour on the weekend driving around the city\u2019s Southside, and you\u2019ll find a handful of them under tents, peddling mostly unofficial Spurs gear \u2013 from T-shirts and hats to banners and flags.<\/p>\n
And while it\u2019s fairly easy to find Spurs vendors, it\u2019s much more difficult to ask them questions about their side business. During a recent trip to the Southside and Westside on a Sunday afternoon, MySA stopped by six different street vendors selling Spurs shirts \u2013 and only one was willing to share their story.<\/p>\n
Their reluctance to speak, however, wasn\u2019t surprising. Most of these vendors operate in a very gray area when it comes to trademark and licensing laws, so any unnecessary attention was something we\u2019re sure they wanted to avoid.<\/p>\n
Still, on this particular Sunday afternoon, MySA wasn\u2019t interested in writing an expos\u00e9 on trademark infringement but rather capturing the colorful atmosphere of a revived Spurs playoff tradition.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, all the vendors we asked for an interview were tight-lipped, except for South San High School graduate Arturo Chavarria and his girlfriend Jade Sandoval. Chavarria, who sells both unlicensed and licensed gear, said his clientele visit him from all parts of San Antonio.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got white people coming all the way from Bandera Road,\u201d Chavarria, 40, told MySA. \u201cThis one lady told me she came down here because they don\u2019t have anything like this over there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of Chavarria\u2019s unlicensed Spurs shirt designs include images of Stephon Castle on the cover of the latest issue of SLAM magazine, the Spurs logo embedded with the Tower of the Americas and the Alamo, and Fiesta-style block letters spelling out \u201cGo Spurs Go\u201d with Victor Wembanyama in the foreground.<\/p>\n
Other vendors sell shirts featuring designs that were clearly created by AI \u2013 one of the reasons Chavarria believes there are even more vendors selling Spurs merch than ever before.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s more accessible to do it today,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can go online and make whatever you want and do whatever you want. Social media has made it a lot easier too. You can tell people where you\u2019re gonna be [selling] and tell them all your prices.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chavarria, who rents out inflatable castles for birthday parties full-time, said he considers his side business selling Spurs merch an \u201cextra hustle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just trying to put some change in our pocket,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not trying to take anything from the million-dollar corporations like Nike. It\u2019s fun being a vendor, meeting new people and seeing how excited they are getting into the Spurs spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Among pickup beds stacked with watermelons, barbecue plate\u00a0fundraisers and rows of graveside floral arrangements, another kind of street…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[821,820,82,84,83],"class_list":["post-286543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-mysabusiness","tag-mysastaff","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}