Nobody from Washington owns an umbrella. Not really.

You might have one from a wedding or a conference or a time you were in an airport when it was raining harder than usual. It does not come out very often.

This is a choice. It is how you signal that you are from here and not just passing through.

WAAF. Washington As Fuck. Strange Allies put it on a T-shirt and long sleeve in youth sizes and men's and unisex, for the kids who grew up in Tacoma or Olympia or Kirkland.

Who spent every November outside and thought nothing of it.

The rain in this state is not an obstacle. It is ambient. It is the sound of everything growing.

The kids who grow up in it stop registering it as weather and start registering it as air.

By the time they are adults they look at other people's weather apps the way you look at someone who needs directions to their own neighborhood.

Port Townsend in October. The Gorge Amphitheatre in September when the Columbia River valley fills up with music and nobody leaves early because of the temperature.

The Mariners game that goes to extra innings in April in the drizzle and the fans are still there.

The long sleeve gets worn when October shows up and the decision to go outside or not is not really a decision. It just happens.

Because this is Washington and being wet is not a reason to change your plans.

Washington people stay. That is the whole personality.

They stay outside. They stay through the gray. They stay in a state where the moss does not take a day off and neither do they.

Strange Allies made this for every version of that person.

The kid who is just learning to be from here. The man who is WAAF the same way he is from Washington: without having to announce it.

Buy it as a souvenir that means something more than the trip.

Give it as a gift to anyone from the Evergreen State who has looked at a gray February and thought, fine.

The rain here knows what it is doing.