Hey, all you cats and kittens out there, we have urgent, important news. Surely, you’ve all seen or started watching Tiger King, the Netflix documentary series that covers Joe Exotic, a rural zoo owner/big cat breeder and incredibly strange person, and his feud with Carole Baskin, the self-righteous and crusading head of Big Cat Rescue. She, too, is quite odd, with the unexplained disappearance of her second husband in her past.
There’s really nothing else to say about the show besides noting that it largely takes place in Oklahoma and Florida, involves plenty of adventurous lifestyles, meth, and questionable ownership and use of tigers. We’re here for one of the show’s few (okay, only) tangible links to the automotive world: Joe Exotic’s seemingly favorite hat.
If you watch Tiger King, you might notice that Joe wears a black baseball cap throughout most of his onscreen appearances. It has some red piping on the brim and the front reads “SW Seth Wadley Automotive Group.” Sounds like a dealership group, doesn’t it? Well, it is. Seth Wadley Automotive Group located just outside Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. We assume that’s where Joe Exotic purchased his vehicles over the years (he buys several for the men in his life—again, just watch the show), but we have no idea why he wears the hat so often. But now you can wear it, too, because Seth Wadley is selling identical caps to the public for $50 a pop.
At the time of this writing, the black version of the “Tiger King” cap—the one just like Joe’s—is sold out. Off-color versions in red and pink are available for $20; tan is $30, and the dealer is running a buy one, get one free special on all Tiger King-related items. (The four hats, plus more, non-Tiger-King-related apparel, are available here.) This is genius on the dealer’s part, not least because this upcoming Halloween, Tiger King-themed costumes are sure to be hot, while car sales might not be given the current shutdown climate. And what better way to get your name out there than to have it inextricably linked to a TV series about two big-cat-owning people, one of whom is at the center of a rumored murder while the second ultimately goes to prison for attempting to murder the other one?
