I was perusing this site when I started wondering why the Old English font is so popular with Mexican American youths? Any answers?
Well it is a site about calligraphy, and that font is basically the quinessential calligraphy font. Have you any other non-calligraphic latino sites to strengthen this claim of yours?
Oh, I think you find Old English Fonts and strong colors and an interest in texture and other creative traits in any group with a DIY ethic, Korean cab drivers, Colombian peasants, old black women… when you don’t just go to Target and buy coordinated everything, you gots to get creative.
Is there a society with poor people who haven’t learned how to make decorative planters from old car tires and cheap paint?
How about wealthy people? Didn’t Martha Stewart make it this way? 
As for the calligraphy font, I always viewed it as old German style, like pre-WWI letter-set German, and always assumed the Mexican affinity for it originated in Texas (you know, like Mexican polka).
Within Mexican-American culture, the ‘Old English’ fonts are mostly associated with some street sub-cultures (‘lowrider’, ‘cholo’, etc.). In El Paso, I mainly associate it with seeing last names stenciled in the back window of a Ford truck, or seeing it stictched to t-shirts and baseball caps…but its definitely a working class affectation. More middle class Mexican-Americans wouldn’t do such a thing.
So I think j.c. is probably right. Poorer people in subcultures may not wear Abercrombie and Fitch or drive Mercedes to show their “individuality” so they resort to other things. Its just a distinctive way of writing that gets more attention than sans-serif block letters. Also, while we call it “Old English” font, I am fairly sure that style of lettering is not unique to English.
A lot of elements of Mexican-American street culture arose in the 1940’s in California, for instance the popularity of sagged ‘dickies’ style pants or low riding. I am sure ‘Old English’ lettering probably comes from the same “pachuco” roots.
The “cholos” and “lowriders” mentioned previously were a prominent clique in the So. California schools I attended growing up. Many of them had their nicknames stenciled across the backs of their coats in this style of font and it seemed to me some of the graffiti they scribbled on their lockers attempted to emulate this style. I was looking for an origin to this and I think the answer probably lies with what syncrolecyne said, that it originated during the “zoot suit” times of post-war Los Angeles.
I’m not going to go hunting for sites for the simple reason that I grew up in LA bario during the 50’s and 60’s. I am personally familar with the use of “old English” style font for tats, grafatti, and other uses.
Yes, it is used by the lowriders, Cholos or Vatos.
I think the use of the font is from an attempt to look classy. (Kinda like naming your store Ye ole ______ Shoppe)
So it was adopted by the zoot suiters and passed down to the Vatos, lowriders, and Cholos.
I’ll hunt up a couple of sites - look at the items pictures on the sites, not the site graphics.
http://www.lazerwerks.com/carclubs.htm
Another vote for the look classy theory.
I’m heading down to Las Cruces/El Paso tomorrow. When I was living there in the early 1990s, that style of lettering was popular among the chollo crowd, as syncrolecyne said. Among middle and upper income Hispanics, I really didn’t encounter it.
You don’t see Old English typefaces (I’ve also heard it referred to as “gothic” lettering, but it definitely isn’t a German Fraktur script) used south of the border in the same way that it is displayed in American barrios, but you do see it used on some business signs and product labels much more so than north of the Rio Grande. One difference is that Mexican nationals use the lowercase letters; chollos and vatos limit their use of Old English almost exclusively to uppercase letters.
VIVA CHIHUAHUA!
(Let’s see how this looks …)