Best Friend Into Hats Now

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Long-time best friends Jon Rowe, 29, and Mike Mullins, 30, have seen each other grow into adults and rarely spent more than a week apart throughout their friendship. But Rowe reports his closest friend since middle school has suddenly turned into a “hat guy” without any warning.

Rowe first noticed his oldest friend’s new wardrobe accessory over a month ago and seemingly thought nothing of it at the time.

“We were meeting up for coffee and he comes walking up in this weird explorer hat, and I just said, ‘What’s up, Indiana Jones?’ He laughed and we got coffee,” said Rowe. “If I knew this was going to become his ‘new thing’ back then, I would have tried to stop it right then and there.”

In the past, Mullins has had passionate but fleeting interests in many different types of men’s clothing, such as Japanese selvedge denim and an ill-advised infatuation with crocodile skin boots.

“For a while he was paying around $450 for jeans that he had to wear in the shower and then stand around his apartment awkwardly until they dried — it seemed like a bit much. But now, he’s telling me about this ‘great millinery shop downtown’ where ‘all the hats are custom made’ and that ‘we need to go sometime.’ I’m seeing all the familiar warning signs, and I think it might be too late,” said a forlorn Rowe. “I feel like I failed as a friend by not making fun of him enough from the start, because now it seems like he thinks these hats make him a cool, interesting guy.”

“I’ve even seen him practicing these, for lack of a better term, ‘hat tricks’ for hours on end. They’ve become an extension of his personality,” added Rowe. “He even tipped his awful tweed Victorian detective hat at a lady we passed. The situation is getting pretty dire.”

Mullins did confirm that he plans on buying many more custom hats for all different occasions.

“I need a hat for formal occasions, and another casual hat — like maybe a bowler or fedora — could be nice. Right now, I am wearing what I call my ‘adventure hat’ — because I never know what sort of trouble my hat and I are going to get into,” said Mullins from his bedroom while folding his laundry.

Photo by Matt MacDonald @Freewheelin_Matt.