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A Wider Net
From geek chic to gang style, the tale of this techie lid gives those behind it their props.
While business isn't bad, Stacy Samuels can't help longing for the boom days of the early '90s.
If your memory is fuzzy, that was the time of the last big propeller beanie craze, most notably in Baltimore, where the multicolored hats morphed from being geek chic to a must-have item for the city's youths. In one incident that grabbed national headlines, police arrested a 10-year-old boy for holding up a 9-year-old at gunpoint to relieve him of his rainbow-hued hat.
"Everyone was buying them, kids, gang members, church-goers," says Samuels, who serves as "chief flight commander" at Interstellar Propeller, a propeller beanie maker in Berkeley, Calif.
While such beanies might not exactly be in vogue these days, they remain an enduring symbol of all things techie. You don't have to look into too many cubicles at many high-tech companies to spot a propeller beanie of one kind or another. Meanwhile, the term "propeller-head" still says scientist or engineer to most people, and has been incorporated into the names of everything from software companies to alternative music bands.
Interstellar Propeller, which employs from five to 10 people depending on the season claims to be the leading maker of these lids, having spun out...