St. Louis Hats

St. Louis hats for a city that argues about cheese and asks strangers where they went to high school. That question is the local signature: Yahoo/AP traces it partly to Prom Magazine, which ran from 1947 to 1972, and to a Catholic school presence of about 30 high schools in the early 1960s, and Mental Floss lists it as the first thing St. Louisans ask a stranger. It is also, in the Yahoo piece's words, a conversation starter that irritates the heck out of non-St. Louisans, which is exactly why it earns a hat. The food gets the same straight-faced defense. Provel is a white processed cheese made from cheddar, Swiss and provolone, and the rest of the country keeps asking what kind of cheese that is. PROVEL IS A CHEESE AND I WILL NOT BE TAKING QUESTIONS answers in advance. TOASTED RAVIOLI is a badge in its own right; a toasted ravioli hat made by a local fan turned up at a St. Louis CITY SC game and then went on sale. GOOEY BUTTER CAKE gets its own serif hat too. Then there are the road and the restaurant: Highway 40 became Interstate 64 in 1988, and locals still say Highway 40, while ST. LOUIS BREAD CO. keeps the local name for Panera. Badges cover ST. LOUIS, STL and THE LOU. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat, and the high-school and Provel lines each come in two colorways.