Bird Shirt

The barista always remembers my bird shirt. The one with a bright red-headed, yellow-beaked torito. "You’re wearing the bird shirt!", she exclaims.

I see her many times each week and she never seems to get as excited about anything else as she does about the bird shirt. I get the sense that she wouldn’t want one for herself though. It’s more the joy of seeing it light up a black background on the chest of someone waiting in line for coffee.

It’s a unique shirt here in Portland, but in Jardin they are a dime a dozen, un centavo por docena. They are made by a friend of mine, Sebas. The name ‘Sebas’ is also un centavo por docena. I swear in a Colombian town of 7,000, half are named Sebas and the other half are women.

Sebas makes the shirts from photos he has taken, transforming local endemic species into screen-printable icons. He sells them, but I also get that sense that he is prone to giving them away to his friends, like he did for me. You wander the streets of town and every chest beams with tropical birds. A neon blue barraquero, a sunset orange loro, a fiery gallito de la roca. Birds on every street corner. Birds behind every shop counter. Birds riding motorcycles and horses and bicycles. Little birds on children, aging birds on campesinos - aging birds on aging birds.

Sebas makes hats too, with monkeys and wild cats, climbing on people’s heads, sneaking up to startle the birds below. The colibri is too quick, and the azulejo too slow. The whole town an aviary, a cacophony beating from everyone’s chest.