It's by a company in San Francisco called Goorin Bros. They've been around since 1895! They have a few shops in San Francisco, and we recently discovered their great store in North Beach.
Anyhow, Dick loved this hat. He wore it all the time. He wore it every day in Japan.
Unfortunately, on our last day in Japan, Dick accidentally forgot his hat as we were getting off the train from Kyoto to the airport. Poor hat. Poor Dick. He had made it the whole trip, without forgetting it, and he lost it at almost the last leg.
Well, there was nothing to be done. We didn't realize it until we were at the airport, and the train would have been well on its way.
We figured that the good news is that the company that made the hat was in San Francisco and that Dick could just get a new one!
Dick checked the website on Monday, and found out that they only had the hat available online in Small. He would need a medium or a large, so asked if I could call the store to see if they had any.
There are four stores in SF, and one in Berkeley (and a few spread out the US). I called the North Beach store and found out that although quite popular, they weren't going to be making that style hat anymore, and that they were out of stock. The other stores didn't have any in stock either.
It seemed dire.
Until, I heard from one of the store employees that the company would be having a Trunk Sale this week! He said there was a chance that they might still have a few of that specific model at the trunk sale.
The Trunk Sale was scheduled for Thurs, Fri and Sat. How's that for timing?
I went at 12:30 yesterday (Thursday). They had a large selection out, all well displayed. Rather than search for a needle in a haystack, I spoke with the employees and told them the story of Dick's lost hat. They immediately knew the hat model from the description (and I had the original email from Dick with the hat style). The sales guy knew there weren't any on the floor, but he offered to check the back for me.
10 minutes later, he came out with one hat, size Medium, in Black. Dick's last hat was brown, but I knew he'd be happy with any color, as long as the hat fit.
The other great part to this story? Trunk Sale price: $15.00.
How's that for a webTrina find?!
I found another similar hat for Dick that I thought he'd like (made of cloth, rather than straw), also $15 so I bought that for him, too.
The straw hat that we found was a little bent out of shape. The sales guy suggested that I bring it home, put it on a cylinder stand of some kind and steam it to reshape it. Dick was super happy to get his new hat!
The sale goes through tomorrow (Saturday). We may be going back to get Dick's hat stretched a bit, and to see what else they have.
one of the last pictures of Dick in his favorite hat
steaming the new hat
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