Dumpster Diving & Curb Shopping Hats

Dumpster diving as a term emerged in the 1980s, and the habit has many names: curb shopping, trash picking and street scavenging, or "skipping" in the UK. The people who do it are rarely ashamed. One curb shopper wrote that she is not ashamed to go through her neighbours' discarded things, another noted that since the buy was $0.00 she had literally nothing to lose, and a third said she has been at it for twenty-five years, "at first out of necessity, then out of the thrill of the hunt." The finds are the stuff of legend. Reddit roundups list a telescope, a 1950s bike, a drum kit, a Chromebook and Apple Cinema Displays pulled from the trash, one commenter found a mannequin, and a Texas mom furnished around 75 percent of her house from recovered items. College move-out day is peak season, and trash day is the diver's Black Friday. These dumpster diving hats are written in that voice. DUMPSTER DIVER and CURB SHOPPER are the badges. The sentences carry the bits: the question at the lid, a benevolent society that meets before dawn, a curb that has never let the wearer down, and a heist briefing in which the crew is one person and the getaway car is a minivan. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Wear one to bulk trash day, or give one to the friend whose living room is a curb find.