Oakland Review of Books

The things Oaklanders put on their heads

An illustrated hat story.
Frederick Noland
An illustration featuring four people wearing headwear of one kind or another: two newsboy caps, one headband, and one raccoon.
• Vibe Reports,
Illustration showing the author and his girlfriend in the back of a cab. The author is wearing a newsboy cap like the driver. Both are thinking "Fucking Amazon."

My girlfriend and I hit the town for Halloween and discovered our driver was a fellow Black “Peaky Blinder.” I coupled my tweed and flat cap with a black shirt and tie, though, so I was a proper piece of ass. 

Illustration: The author with his girlfriend at a party. He's grouchily eyeing another partygoer wearing—as he is—a newsboy cap, vest, and tie.

Full disclosure, I know almost nothing about the show—I just like shows (or is it “programmes”?) with organized crime and sharp dressers.

The hat makes it though. It’s a funny bit of telegraphing, the head covering. It can say a lot at a first glance.

Living in Oakland, I’ve seen some interesting chapeaus that didn’t always hint at their intentions so clearly.

Illustration: a kid wearing a balloon hat.

She was selling crack to two grown men next to my first place here. Welcome to Oakland!

Illustration: the disco cowboy mentioned below, with square glasses and Fu Manchu facial hair, doing some sort of kung fu dance move.

This very early ’80s disco cowboy confection took me by surprise. Vintage! The owner (original and only, I’m sure) was fond of muttered nonsense. Despite getting around on a Rascal, he was known to cut a rug, or at least bust out some kung fu dance moves.

Gotta say, the ’70s leisure suit jacket, 2000s “gun metal” denim and “urban cowboy” hat was pulled off with aplomb.

Illustration: a curly-bearded middle-aged man sprouting a curly Afro.

This wasn’t a hat, but it easily could’ve been mistaken for one. Before Steve Harvey retired the foam mic screen he wore, one of these might have been in his closet for special occasions.

Illustration: a slit-eyed woman with a dead raccoon on her head.

This one wins though. I like to believe it was real: a particularly mean raccoon that she dispatched, claiming the hide as a trophy and warning. She called the employee of the bodega we were in “Iraqistani or whatever” before adamantly jaywalking across 18th.

I offered an “I’m sorry” along with payment for my smokes. I was too stunned to be specific as to what it was for. Casual racism with a raccoon cap just hit different.

\O/

Fred Noland is a professor at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in the Comics BFA program. As an artist, his expertise is complex visual storytelling.