Cul-de-Sac Hats

The word cul-de-sac comes from French, where it originally meant "bottom of a sack." Since the 1960s the pattern has been the dominant road network structure of suburbs and exurbs in the United States, Canada and Australia, and Wikipedia notes that a street with no through traffic encourages more outdoor play. One memoirist described the result: baseball, football, kick the can and hide-and-go-seek in the street any time you wanted, and kids up in the trees with a sack of water balloons. The block party is the other half of the culture. Party-slogan lists run on lines like "Kickin' It in the Cul-de-sac" and "Turning Driveways in to Dance Floors," and "Car!" is the street hockey stop call, enough of a childhood staple to title a memoir. These hats put the self-appointed organizer in charge. CUL-DE-SAC, CUL-DE-SAC KID and CUL-DE-SAC DAD are the plain badges, MAYOR OF THE CUL-DE-SAC claims the office nobody voted on, and the longer designs cover yelling "CAR!" mid-game, coming home when the streetlights came on, hosting the block party, the driveway bar, and the pedant's correction for anyone who says dead end. Two designs come in a second colorway. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. They are for the person who grew up on the street, and the one who never left it.