The Real Deal Brazil: A Geocacher's Hat of Choice

From angling to alpining, hiking to hunting, kayaking to kicking back, camping to canoeing, gardening to gun-shooting, traveling to tailgating, hoedowning to hoisting a few, zombie killing to just killin' time, our Real Deal Brazil recycled-tarp hat is the hearty, hardy headwear to beat! And now you can add modern-day treasure hunting to that growing list of livin'-large leisure pursuits.

We've been hearing more and more frequently how our hat just fits in with the whole geoacaching idea, and how geoaching fans are constantly praising our rugged headwear to fellow cachers. About a month ago, in fact, we found ourselves happily mentioned in yet another geocaching forum, http://www.utahgeocachers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7601&highlight=realdealbrazil+com (Thanks, TeamThom!)

So today we added a new photo gallery at our Facebook site (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Real-Deal-Brazil/106664188492) dedicated to the increasing number of geocachers who've adopted our Real Deal Brazil recycled-tarp hat. The photo here, of Chapel Hill, Tenn., geocacher Brad "Monkeybrad" Simmons, was taken during a geocaching trip to Florida's famous gator-filled swamps in early 2010.

For the Muggles among us -- not non-wizards a la Harry Potter, but non-cachers, in geo-speak -- geoaching is an intriguing outdoor activity in which a GPS device is used to find "hidden treasure" stashed in often out-of-the-way spots around the globe. Geocachers tend to be environmentally minded folks; their "cache in, trash out" motto means they spend a bit of time cleaning up the site after finding their cache.

We're thrilled to be part of such a cool and clever pursuit, the swag that tags along!

The Real Deal Brazil in "Zombieland" -- New Revelations on How It Came to Be!

With a lot of important stuff that happens in life, we never get a full picture of how it came to pass. Often the info is just not there to know, or else it takes some time, and maybe a very indirect route, before the whole story shakes itself out. Which brings us to our own Real Deal Brazil recycled-tarp hat, and the blockbuster horror-comedy Zombieland, which upped our hat's profile more than we ever could have imagined.

We'd always understood that our hat's star-turn in the film, which came out in October 2009, was due solely to someone in the Zombieland costuming department being charged with finding some really cool headwear for Woody Harrelson that also had the unusual distinction of being exceedingly Earth-friendly to boot. And all that is, in fact, true. However, it's only part of the truth. The whole story, which we just learned only recently, and totally by accident, is more complicated, and also a whole lot cooler still!

The total tale dates back to a wildly favorable article that appeared early in our company's history, in Tattoo magazine, and a guy named Steve Barnes who read that review thinking the Real Deal Brazil hat, and its recycled origins, were right up his own alley.

"I saw that hat and just thought it was too cool," he says.

So he bought one through our website. And he loved it.

"Too cool," he reiterates.

That's Steve in the picture above with his hat and a just-caught lake bass, during a trip to Shreveport, La. Steve actually lives in Houston, Texas, working as a directional driller, which means land, ocean and inland-barge drilling, often for oil. Steve explains his work with words like "azimuth," "porosity," resistivity," "payzone" and "geo-steering," none of which we remotely understand. All we know for sure is that he's obviously way smarter than we are!

Some months after reading that Tattoo review and buying his own hat -- Steve thinks maybe as much as a year later -- he was bound for a drilling job and loaned his much-loved RDB to his brother, Patrick, who works as a film-set crane operator. And it just so happened that Patrick was then part of the initial filming in south Georgia for a much-buzzed-about zombie flick starring Woody Harrelson -- you probably can guess the one. So there was Patrick on the Zombieland set, his brother's Real Deal Brazil recycled-tarp hat perched upon his head.

Woody Harrelson, ever the hat guy, noticed Patrick's distinctive headwear almost immediately. "He saw it, and loved it and wanted more just like it," Steve says.

The outcome of that decision? Well, Woody looks pretty cool in that Zombieland hat of his, huh?

Of course, Steve didn't learn any of this right away. "Patrick didn't tell me about it until after the movie came out, and I asked for the hat back," Steve recalls.

We didn't learn any of this ourselves until Steve sent us that fishing pic of him in his influential RDB hat. And the rest, as they say, is our own company's recent history: The Zombieland costuming crew contacted us and asked us to overnight them a bunch of samples, which we obviously, and very happily, did. Flash-forward another year from then, and our hat has become iconic perched there atop Woody's own badass head, with Zombieland fans responding accordingly, buying bunches of Woody's badass hat for themselves. So now we hear ourselves called "that Zombieland hat," and we just have to smile. Yep. That's us, all right!

And so now we offer even bigger thanks to our new hero Steve the driller, for his thinking so much of us in the first place, and for then sharing all that RDB love with his brother, Patrick. Another nod to Patrick, for sporting that hat pretty dang well, apparently, in Steve's absence. And finally, our thanks, too, to Tattoo, of course, for giving us the, y'know, ink!

Our own Real Deal Brazil hats are off to all of you!

Free Real Deal Brazil Shipping for Father's Day!

Dad's Day's 2010 is now not quite a week away! In honor of honoring the old man, and as our own Father's Day gift to our ever-growing legion of Facebook fans, we're temporarily offering free shipping on all RDB orders.

A Real Deal Brazil Ramble in the Cambodian Temple Ruins

We received the coolest set of pictures yesterday from Real Deal Brazil recycled-tarp hat owner Phil Caldwell, a small-animal veterinarian and aspiring writer living in Los Angeles. Phil recently took a trip to Cambodia, accompanied through several of the formidable ruins of the ancient Khmer Empire by his trusty RDB hat.

"I used it while I toured the temples such as Angkor Wat near the town of Siem Reap," Phil writes. "The hat survived extreme heat, humidity and countless children asking to wear it."

For Phil's well-written, way-fun insights about his Cambodian trip, his second visit to the temple-dotted Asian country, check out his own blog post.

Now, check out these great photos he sent us!

Real Deal Brazil Facebook Page Gets Big Photo Facelift

What the blazes is going on in that picture over there? We don't know, but we love it all the same!

We recently got wildly behind on posting fan-submitted photos on the Facebook site, so in the last few days, Frank, our Site Administrator Guy, has been feverishly working to get photos posted. The result: Lots of fun new content reflecting both the dedication and diversity of RDB fans. Hope you'll stop by for a peek!

And if you like what you see, and love your own hat and how it looks on ya, then by all means, send along a picture of the two of you together, to frabey@realdealbrazil.com. We'll proudly post it, rest assured!

New Real Deal Brazil Story Posted at Zombie-Fan Site

So embarrassing! We've been so busy with the success of our way-cool hat lately, from the jump in sales from our star in turn in both Zombieland and the upcoming release of The Losers, that posting here has fallen off like the arm or leg of one of the unlucky undead! So much to try to cover since the last post that it'd be just plain silly to backtrack -- check out our Facebook fan site for a blow-by-blow account of the great stuff that's been happening.

For today, a new Real Deal Brazil-related post you might check out at ZombieInfo.com (http://www.zombieinfo.com/?p=1522) with our Facebook site's administrator, talking about how the movie tie-ins came to be. A warning: The site where the interview is posted, while great, kitschy fun, also contains very adult language.

Entertainment Weekly tries on Real Deal Brazil Recycled Tarp Hat, Likes Fit

It's been a great couple weeks for us! First, Zombieland opened not only to great reviews, but also to great box-office, and that meant a lot of new folks very quickly discovered our hats. Then about two weeks ago, Entertainment Weekly contacted us to say they'd had a bunch of requests from people wanting to know where they could find the hat Woody Harrelson wears all through Zombieland. Next thing we know, we've got a half-page write-up, above, in one of the largest entertainment publications around. We greatly appreciate the kind words, and even more, the huge jump in the number of folks who've now joined our Real Deal family!