Hat Trick
    from: Buffalo News November 6, 1988

If not the most fashionable door in town, the side entrance of Al-Ross Sports Screening scores with a practical and creative style.

Joe Cellino, owner of the business at 2756 Senece St., credits Marty Kohler of Cheektowaga's Kohler Awning Inc. with the idea. When Kohler came to discuss the West Seneca shop's awning needs, Cellino says, "He was sitting here looking at the door when he said, 'I could make a baseball cap out of it.'"

Carrying out the idea was more complicated than anticipated, Kohler says. The main concern was making sure it looked like a baseball cap. People don't realize how easy it would have been to strike out, he notes: "It could have turned out to look more like a jockey's cap."

The giant hat is vinyl fabric strecthed over a welded framework; the button on the top is a piece of foam covered with the same fabric, Kohler says.

Cellino's business does custom screen printing and embroidery on T-shirts, jackets and, naturally, headgear. The awning went up in March, he says, and "we've had people calling ever since to tell us it's the greatest thing."