Hi Everyone! Texas Has Submitted a Hat, and Operations Has Some Notes.
Constance Pribyl, Director of Editorial Operations · architecture / installations
THE THICCC BEAT: the desk reacts. The Director of Editorial Operations processes a submission that arrived without the correct form, and with a bar.
Hi everyone!
A quick update from Operations. On Monday the nineteenth, the Guinness World Records team certified the World's Largest Cowboy Hat at Circuit of The Americas, the racetrack outside Austin, Texas. Several of you have forwarded me the story, some of you more than once, and Bart forwarded it with the single word "No." So I am going to take ownership of this one and walk us all through it, so we can align.
The facts, as provided by the track's own announcement and by the Austin American-Statesman. The hat is forty-three feet wide, forty-seven feet long and seventeen feet tall, not counting the piers it stands on. It is a steel frame wrapped in fiberglass and foam, textured to match a Cattleman hat made by Tecovas, the Austin boot company that built it with the track, and painted to match the original's natural shade. It has a hat band, a steel horseshoe charm, and the outline of the circuit applied like a cattle brand. It will stay at the track permanently. Underneath it, and I want to be transparent that I read this sentence three times, there is a fully operational bar, open to ticketholders from the gates opening until closing, Thursday through Sunday of race weekend. The Grand Prix is this weekend. Saturday the twenty-fourth has been named "Haturday." I have not been asked to approve that.
Now, the ruling. I know this desk does not rule on size, and I know Bart will want that in writing, so here it is in writing! A hat that is very big is a very big hat. That is a Facilities matter. What this desk asks is whether there are curves, and whether they are doing anything with them.
So I had a look, using the photographs, since my travel request for Austin has been parked until the Q3 Operations Review.
The brim is the strong part of the application. It goes all the way round without once pausing to apologise, and it finishes forty-three feet across with the confidence of something that has never once been asked to fit through a door. A brim is, structurally, a hip that has decided to go the whole way around. I am comfortable filing that.
The crown is where we have an opportunity to align. It is tall, and it is creased down the middle and pinched at the front, which is what a Cattleman crown is for. A crease is a curve that went inward. I would not call that thiccc. I would call it a concern. I raised it with Bart, who said that a crease is "a dent with a business plan," and then rescheduled our one-to-one again, so I will count that as his input.
The ruling: Thiccc, brim first. Entered under Headwear, Monumental. The brim is admitted in full. The crown has been parking-lotted pending a review of its crease, and the bar underneath has been routed to Facilities, who have not replied, and who I suspect have already gone to Austin.
Let me know if you need anything else!
Constance Pribyl, Director of Editorial Operations. Filed from Operations, one floor down, where the only hat is on the coat stand and it has been there since 2009. 20 October.