Kia, 21, who's been skating since middle school, is wearing a custom-made hat he bought at the clothing/biking/skating boutique Shop Gentei in Baltimore ($25, 1010 Morton St, Baltimore, Maryland, www.shopgentei.com). It's a plain black hat—the label reads, simply, "Made in USA"—that Shop Gentei customized with purple plaid flannel on the bill and stitching on the back ("The Almighty Shop Gentei"). Shop Gentei is in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, the very neighborhood where, in 1843, Francis Scott Key, the poet who wrote the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner," died of inflammation of the pleura, aka pleurisy. Pleurisy also claimed the lives of Thomas Hardy (1928), William Wordsworth (1850), and Charlemagne (813). Symptoms include coughing, shortness of breath, loss of appetite, chills, chest pain, an itchy back, and dizziness.

We found Tineke, 20, standing outside Pike Place Flowers, where she's been punching the clock since Halloween. The rainbow-colored hat she's wearing, made in Ecuador, comes from Traditions Cafe in Olympia ($20, 300 Fifth Ave SW, Olympia, 360-705-2819), which stocks handmade products from many countries. Traditions Cafe, according to its website, "is a place to discover folk art products from cultures around the world, made available through fair and equitable trade relationships with low-income artisans and farmers from more than fifty countries." Ecuador is bordered by the countries of Peru (known for beautiful textiles) and Colombia (known for delicious cocaine).

You've seen him wandering around Pike Place Market in the afternoon. He is a Seattle legend. His name is Earl, aka Montana, aka the Opossum Man, because he's from Montana and he has a pet opossum (the animal on his shoulder, which is alive). The animal on top of his head is not alive. It is a scrap of roadkill he found in Montana and turned into a hat. "I saw it and I didn't want it to go to waste," he told our photographer. The animal (fox?) was killed on a Montana highway sometime after December 1998 but before June 1999, a period of time when Montana officially had no speed limit and you could go as fast as you damn well pleased.