You might have seen Santa Cruz resident Steve Engel at a festival and noticed his hat because these are not your typical lids. Some have flashing lights, others twirling flowers, whistles, bells — one even has a dragon that spews fire and has eyes that light up.
“The hats get messed up at the festivals, but what the heck, that’s what they’re for,” he said.
The Mysterious Planets hat.
At 83, Engel never imagined he’d be making the most bizarre hats you’ve ever seen. A retired aerospace engineer, he first worked for United Aircraft and designed jet engine exhaust nozzles. He then moved to Burbank and worked for Lockheed on a project to reduce aircraft flyover noise. Other projects would follow, but all the while he dreamed of inventing something of his own and producing it as a manufacturer.
Then, while on vacation one year, he came up with an idea for a better, safer ski binding. He got it patented and began to look for manufacturers, but was told that producing it wouldn’t be profitable. It dashed his dream.
“I started an amateur rocketeer club as a teenager. That was always my dream, but I ended up with a ski binding,” he said.
Engel left engineering and got into real estate. He started investing in and managing properties and was quite successful. He migrated to Santa Cruz by accident. After promising to put his three daughters through school, the first one chose UC Santa Cruz and the other two followed her. He and his wife bought an apartment here so they could visit them easily. Eventually, he bought two homes across the street from each other on Sunny Lane.
Then tragedy struck. Engel’s wife Christiane was diagnosed with terminal cancer and the couple decided to move into one of the homes to be closer to the grandchildren. She passed a year later in 2022. Engel then split his time between his home in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz, but then the 2025 Palisades Fire destroyed it. So, he is in Santa Cruz full time, but with grandchildren growing up across the street, it’s where he wants to be most.
“The grandkids come over and right away start pushing buttons,” Engel says, as he points to a shelf full of odd-looking gadgets, mixed with various hats in his home’s entry hallway.
Engel makes his hats mostly using parts from erector sets and items he finds in various toys, mechanical instruments or just plain oddities. They are often solar-powered and have items that will spin around or move.
Some are battery powered and spark or make loud noises, and others seem a little dangerous, like the one he calls “Danger Hat.” A plate installed on the top of the hat holds parts of an erector set, a cake container lid, a Tesla coil and four AAA batteries.
He has it dismantled for safety, but puts it together to show me. He sets it down on the ground and turns it on. A copper wire scrapes across the cake pin lid, making a spark and it’s loud, like a string of firecrackers going off.
“This one took me years to figure out, but I can’t operate it while wearing it. It hurts my ears too much,” he said.
They often have items that spin around. One has glow in the dark wire ties that spin, while another has plastic flowers that will rotate around. There’s a lighthouse with a tower that lights up on yet another. Engel is constantly experimenting with new ideas. He put a train set on a hat, but he couldn’t dance and keep the engine on the tracks.
“I find this stuff online and just buy it. Ten years later I might find a use for it. I just try stuff out. I’ve got a lot of half-made stuff,” he said.
One experiment he stopped working on has strange-looking bits of rope, about two inches long, that look like they could spin around on top of a hat.
“I wanted to do fire, and this is what fire spinners use when they jump rope. It’s Kevlar and you can light it.” he said, pointing to the short bits of rope. “But I decided to be more cautious.”
Engel won Best Hat in 2024 at the Santa Cruz County regional Burning Man event, the UnScruz festival. His Explodofone Hat is ringed with empty .32 shells that he places bits of Quickmatch inside, used to light commercial fireworks. He fires them electronically and flames shoot out of the shells.
“I put some magician’s flash paper in there too and it gives a lot more fire,” he said.
Engel slowly worked his way into hat making. He attended his first Burning Man festival in 2004 and created a replica of the man with an erector set. Solar-powered, its limbs would move. He mounted it on his shoulders while he rode around on his bike, but discovered it was just too cumbersome. The next year he made a smaller version of the same sculpture and put it on a hat. That worked better and he decided to make more hats. Now, whatever fun he is off to find, he has a hat for it.
“I just experiment around. There’s not much I do on paper,” he said.
And if he is called the Glad Hatter?
“I’ve heard worse,” he said. “I am glad to do it.”
TOP PHOTO: Steve Engel holds a contraption he created for a hat.