Utility Locator: Underground Jurisdiction Hats

A locate ticket starts with an 811-center request and a unique identifier, according to the Damage Prevention Institute's definitions. Its metrics distinguish tickets marked from tickets cleared. Out in the yard, the language is more colorful: a worker in the UtilityLocator community describes a homeowner asking for the whole property marked while refusing both paint and flags. These Utility Locator hats take that impossible assignment and give the person holding the paint stick an oversized claim to the underground. The colors have specific meanings. NYC311's guidance identifies red with electric, orange with communications and blue with potable water, alongside separate categories for survey marks and proposed excavation. North Carolina's 811 guidance also distinguishes private lines: contacting 811 does not get those marked, and its FAQ points people toward private locators. That distinction gives PRIVATE UTILITY LOCATOR its own badge here. The remaining designs turn the register into jokes: buried internet, legal graffiti, jurisdiction below grade and abandoned lines as a haunting. I KNOW WHERE THE INTERNET IS BURIED and LEGAL GRAFFITI ARTIST each receive a second colorway. The jokes claim an imaginary underground kingdom; the research supplies the tickets, paint and vocabulary that make it recognizable.