Townie Hats

Townie is an old word. It dates to 1823, and the dictionaries define it as a resident of a college town who is not a student or staff. It is also a contested one. In a 2021 poll by the Miami University student paper, 36.4% of 231 votes said it is pejorative and 35.5% said it is not, while locals quoted in the same coverage call it a badge of honor. These college town local hats take the badge side. The jokes come from how year-round residents live. A Champaign-Urbana resident told the Daily Illini she sometimes parks a block from her own house because visitors use her street as free parking, and another said you have to avoid campus at move-in and skip Target when students mob it. In Athens, Georgia, the university has urged people without tickets to avoid the campus area on game Saturdays. That is where the game day weather event and the May parking line come from. TOWN OVER GOWN puts the town first, in a collegiate arch. A Charlottesville shop, Bottom Drawer, launched a plain TOWNIE tee in 2020 and called it the first perfect shirt in a line of them, so the bare badge works too. TOWNIE and COLLEGE TOWN LOCAL open the set. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Wear one for the town you never left, or give one to the neighbor who never left.