The Beauty and Terror of the Funny Hats at the Democratic National Convention

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The Beauty and Terror of the Funny Hats at the Democratic National Convention

The Democratic National Convention is many things to many people but mainly it's a hat party.

Candidates come and go, platforms change, the leadership of parties lose elections, fall to scandal, and die off. The oceans rise, the sun burns, everyone you know and love will eventually die, their bones ground down by time and entropy into bits of carbon. But through all this, one thing remains constant: People will always love wearing funny hats to political conventions!

Now, it's safe to assume that the delegates at the Democratic National Convention this week in Philadelphia are not generally "cool" in their day-to-day lives. Many, many of them look like they are high school history teachers or at least had dreams of becoming a high school history teacher. They are, you imagine, not normally snazzy dressers, not prone to flights of fashion or letting their insides spill onto their outsides. The only sign that they are wonderfully, beautifully insane is the things they have decided to put on their heads.

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When you walk around the Wells Fargo Center, it's impossible to miss these hats, which are usually being followed by a camera and/or smartphone lens. Some are there to make explicit political points, like this hat, which makes the point "Donald Trump's border wall is dumb":

Others have a more obscure message, like this cheese hat. It's probably a Wisconsin thing, but honestly who cares? Good hat:

There's also this beer hat, made with cans of an actual beer that a brewery made because it loves Bernie Sanders so much:

This hat's "Vote, F*cker" button is about the most aggro thing at the convention—if it said "Vote, Fucker," you get the sense that this guy wouldn't have bought it, but that asterisk makes it clear he just really wants you to vote, he doesn't actually think you are a fucker:

We could have asked the guy in the chicken helmet what the deal with the chicken helmet was but didn't on the off chance that it was actually an advertisement for some kind of deeply wonky chicken-related activism. It's best to just enjoy this from a distance without knowing the reason why, like a sunset or a food product created by Guy Fieri:

By far the best thing about these hats is that the people wearing them wear them all day, even when they're bored or looking at their phones. Since "being bored" and "looking at your phone" are two of the Top Five Things to Do at the Democratic National Convention (the other three are "cheer," "protest," and "ask where the good parties are"), this means you are treated to a lot of sights like this:

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Congrats to the hats, their owners, and everyone who saw them.

Text by Harry Cheadle. Scroll down for more pictures:

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