Diallo Cap USA New York

Team logo wear

Geoffrey from New York

About me I travel to discover how people elsewhere live, how they manage living with low incomes in expensive cities, how they grapple with hard times and failing economies, how they deal with ageing or crumbling families and how they themselves age and adapt. Knowing and loving New York comes from having lived through many of its manifestations while witnessing its changes....
""Diallo Cap USA" in Harlem, New York, is where you should go to get baseball caps. You can hold, feel and try on caps from among hundreds, maybe thousands."

The New York Knickerbockers (now the moniker of Manhattan's NBA basketball team, the 'Knicks') were the first baseball team to don baseball caps, in 1849. Since then the world is crazy for this invasive style, supplanting almost all others including the historic designs of most of the world's military, police and even overgrowing the US Navy's white cotton Gob caps.

For any group that wants to convey a team or military "all for one and one for all" motif, baseball caps are rigueur.

You can buy online for bupkis but you must select from tiny images that tell you nothing about the feel of fabric, fit or true color.

Or, you can stroll 125th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, in Harlem, until you reach Diallo where you can hold, feel and actually try on caps from among many hundreds of examples. Maybe thousands.

I remember the way hats used to be --- 6 panel wool, sewn crown eyelets, leather or pure cotton sweat bands, and a felt logo stitched on.

Now, they come with a big gold sticker on the top side of the peak proclaiming something or other and a square tag dangling from somewhere around the backside.

Do not remove these labels --- they are part of the style.

What to do when you really need a St Louis Cardinal bright red wool cap and this is your last trip to the USA? Go the land of a thousand caps up on 125th Street.

It is not a chain.

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New York Spotter Geoffrey

About me I travel to discover how people elsewhere live, how they manage living with low incomes in expensive cities, how they grapple with hard times and failing economies, how they deal with ageing or crumbling families and how they themselves age and adapt. Knowing and loving New York comes from having lived through many of its manifestations while witnessing its changes. Why New York I love New York because of its broad cultural spectrum realized in all forms of the arts, food, technology, politics and transportation, and its easy access to the beautif...

About this spot

West 125th Street 18

Standard cap:

US$

25

+1

2122227942

Oct 4, 2025

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