You Can Buy an 'I Survived the L.A. Riots' Shirt for $200 on eBay

Can't get enough of the L.A. Riots' (completely oversaturated) 20th birthday coverage?

This hot-ticket eBay T-shirt might be just thing. “I Survived the L.A. Riots,” it reads across the front, with a map of the city's hardest-hit burn spots on back. Also, awesome factoids, like “Vandals set more than 523 blazes” and “6,000 National Guards, Marines and Federal Troops descend on L.A.”

All this disaster nostalgia can be yours for just…

… $199.95, if you're first to Buy It Now from eBay seller whitechevelle. (There's one other L.A. Riots shirt up for auction, but it's wayyy creepier, with a Rodney King quote and a children's drawing of various vegetable-people parading in front of a rainbow. That one's $49.99. Weirdo.)

“This is one of the coolest shirts I have ever seen,” writes the auctioneer of the “I Survived” shirt, selling it hard.

Strange how living in gangy, graffiti-ridden Los Angeles has become such a source of pride for the gentry. And it apparently was back in '92, too. Check out these mail-order tees featured in an LA Weekly advertisement a couple weeks after the riots, as the smoke was still clearing:

Credit: LA Weekly archives

At least there's a rebuilding angle?

All this lighthearted T-shirt sloganing has nothing, however, on a cartoon that Matt Groening, then LA Weekly's resident cartoonist, drew for the paper one week later. We don't know whether to laugh or cry:

Credit: LA Weekly archives

Think we might need to start a line of “I Survived the L.A. Riots 20th Anniversary Newcasts” in 2012. Did you know that NBC LA even started a Twitter account to live-feed all the burning, looting and policing in “real time”? Oh, and Los Angeles Magazine actually compiled a commemorative L.A. Riots Playlist. No joke. Careful what you wish for, guys — Team Trayvon is in town, and their cause is more than riot-worthy.

[@simone_electra / swilson@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

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