Going back to Cali: Tony Marzette says T-shirt sales have never been so meager.

Going back to Cali: Tony Marzette says T-shirt sales have never been so meager.

Right outside of the green zone, where endless barricades and wire fences split the city in two, T-shirt peddler Tony Marzette says the remaining streets of St. Paul are a dead zone. He’s been carrying piles of McCain-Palin T-shirts in his arms for two days. He has two varieties for sale: White for the men, pink for the women. But so far, hardly anyone wants to take them off his hands. “I’ve never seen it this bad,” he says. “This has gotta be the worst sell ever.”

Marzette, of California, has been traveling the country for 20 years selling T-shirts outside of concerts, football games, and conventions. “In all my time doing this, I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m not selling anything. Literally nothing! All around here, this is the deadest spirit ever. It’s a dead zone here. It’s like a funeral.”

Marzette tries to get the attention of the throngs of people, many of them delegates dressed to the nines, congregating outside of the St. Paul Hotel in Rice Park. “Ten dollars! Show your support! Ten dollars!” No one stops. Hardly anyone even looks in Marzette’s direction. One guy in an off-white suit and wing-tips finally stops when Marzette asks if he’d like a T-shirt for a family member or friend. “I’m curious,” the man asks Marzette. “Who are you supporting?” Marzette shakes his head. “You,” he says. “I support you.” The man walks away.

Marzette is heading back to California early tomorrow. He says if he stays any longer, he’ll start to lose money. He wants to get back home and get more Obama T-shirts ready to sell. At the DNC last week, Marzette says he made a killing. “This is a waste of my time. In Denver, it was overwhelming. The spirit was so high. Here, I’m not hearing nothing. The protesters are saying more than the Republicans are.”

As for whom he supports? Marzette says he supports Obama, but he has a family at home he has to support, too. “Selling these T-shirts, sometimes you feel like a hypocrite,” he says. “I mean, I’ve done some bad things in my life. But this is one of the worst. Really. These people, even if I did support them, they don’t support me. ”

Yet Marzette at least remains hopeful that he’ll make his money back in two weeks. He’s coming back to Minnesota to sell the Obama T-shirts he’s going home to print up this week. “I just know I’ll sell those,” he says. “You can feel it. You can just feel it here. And Maybe it will even make up for this wasted trip.”