Cape Cod Hats

A wash-ashore, in the Cape's own definition, is anyone who lives on Cape Cod but wasn't born there, and Wayword Radio's version is blunt: live on the Cape for 50 years and you are still a wash-ashore. That one word is the best joke on the Cape, and it anchors this collection of Cape Cod hats for year-rounders, summer families and anyone who says "down the Cape" without explaining it. The rest is the geography everyone argues about. The Sagamore Bridge averages 58,638 cars a day, about 17,000 more than the Bourne Bridge, on lanes ten feet wide with no median and no shoulder, so SAGAMORE OR BOURNE? BOTH ARE STOPPED is close to a traffic report. The Sagamore rotary was removed in 2007 and replaced by a flyover, but the Bourne rotary survives, with its Cape Cod topiary. The canal that makes the Cape a near-island gets its own line, as a moat. Plain Cape Cod hats are sold everywhere, from vintage whale caps to embroidered souvenir caps, so the badges here keep it simple with CAPE COD and CAPE CODDER. The sentence designs carry the insider voice that souvenir art leaves out, and the listings we checked did not use wash-ashore as hat text at all. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Wear one over the bridge in July, or give one to the friend who has lived here for 40 years and is still, officially, a wash-ashore.