I have a lot of cash in my paypal account from selling Pirates tickets this Summer. It's time to cash in! I have a birthday coming up and it's the holiday season, so, like it or not, I will be doing some shopping over the next month and a half. In fact I already made my first purchase using some of my "Pirate Booty." You'll never guess what it is....
I recently became a dude who wears hats again. Wearing hats is somewhat universal for dudes. You have caps for sports team, obviously; the whole hip-hop/urban cultural influence; dirty hippies have their rasta hats; 90's ravers and their visors; hunters wear hats; the trucker hat phenomenon; practical hats; status symbol hats; early 20th Century black-and-white Italian mafioso style hat sitting askew... I think it satisfies an urge to collect something. And it gives guys a way to "express themselves" by accessorizing in their own way. You can say something about your identity, your socio-cultural status, or just your mood -- with a hat. I'm not saying it's who you ARE, but it is what you're wearing right there on top of your head, sometimes every day all day for a lot of guys!
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| D-Train, the O.G. flat brim MLB guy? |
Personally, I'm too fidgety to really rock a hat most of the time. I'm more likely just to grab it for certain occasions and constantly take it on and off or tug at it. My return to hat wearing came for two reasons. First of all, I realized why hats just started looking different... flat brims! For years I didn't understand this. I mean, it never occurred to me that there were just two different styles of "baseball cap" that were just shaped differently! I can remember watching Dontrelle Willis pitch, and I'm like... how does he wear his hat like that? Not why -- how? How do you make it do that? I just thought some people didn't bend their brim, but I didn't realize it was actually made differently. You really can't make a traditional style cap look like that.
Anyway, I had stopped being a dude who wears baseball caps when I had long hair (and because, well, I'm a grown man, you know?). In the early 2000's when I had lusciously long hair (and a few dreads) I did have a some very stylish rasta hats. So a couple of years ago I started thinking in the back of my mind, Ok, I'm slightly on the look out for a hat. If I find a hat that speaks to me, I'll check it out. I had started to realize how the whole flat brim thing worked. And then the Pirates hit first place for a day in the Summer of 2011. By this point, I understood the fashion, I knew I was ready to get back in the game, and I felt like maybe it would be ok to wear a Pirate hat without shame -- the shame of giving my money to the Pirates franchise.
Having long hair at the time, I needed it to be a snapback, not fitted. And just getting back into the hat wearing game, I didn't want to spend a lot. Hats can cost 30 bucks or more, and I didn't want to spend that on something that might end up looking really stupid or ridiculous.
My very good friend Brandy, a graphic designer, works for a wholesaler in the Strip called Aim Gifts, and has access to unlimited Pirate/Penguin/Steeler junk, I mean gear, at a discounted rate. Now, the Pittsburgh Pirates traditional baseball cap -- all black with the classic gold P -- is definitely classy. So it became apparent. The time was nigh. She grabbed one of those classic Pirates hats, flat brim with a snap back, for me, and it has been a very solid item over the last 15 months or so.
But it's time to add to the collection. My choice may seem odd, but I think it was a reasonable one. This one is not about the actual team at all, but the style and the logo. I love basketball. I love music. So check this out...
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| Do you know what team this is? |
