bendingoak
Vendor
- Messages
- 613
- Location
- www.Penmanhats.com
It's a continual problem...
I am not at all comfortable keeping my hat on when seated in a restaurant, or in a lot of other circumstances, My lap is probably out of the question for a relaxed meal, I have trouble enough keeping my napkin there.
The restaurant we frequent almost weekly has two sections, in the old section there is a (clearly visible) wall with coat hooks, but they aren't deep enough for hats. Fortunately there is an elbow-height partition with a platform top beside the booths where I can usually park mine. During the holiday season I've been known to scootch a poinsettia or whatever. The new section actually has posts with coat hooks between the booths. In general I've had a lot more luck with booths than tables, and we often request a booth when dining in other restaurants, they're used to the request and there's usually room on the seat if nowhere else.
We think of there being hat-checks everywhere back in the day, I'm old enough to remember them, but I was watching an old black-and-white movie with Jimmy Stewart years ago and he and another gent (whom I should remember) sat down at a booth in a nightclub and promptly put their hats up on a padded platform behind the seats. Apparently the hat-check thing wasn't universal.
John Penman of Penman hats had a small, wooden portable hat hook at one point that used bungee cord to attach to a chair back or whatever. By the time I saw it (and wanted one) he was no longer carrying it, but the Youtube video is still up, and it doesn't look like it would be impossible to make something of the sort. Every few years I'll think to do web searches to see if anyone has come up with anything better.
I'm re-working the design to make it even smaller and less expensive.