![]() As of this writing they have given away over 200,000. They handed out free bumper stickers with the phrase and their logos. It slowly gained traction after a couple of years and it really caught lightning in a bottle when BookPeople and Waterloo Records used the phrase-with “Support Local Business” tacked on-as part of protesting a proposed city $2.1 million incentive for a mega Borders Books to build right across the street, a development that almost assuredly would have led to the death of both local, iconic businesses. We began a glacial grassroots campaign, handing out the bumper stickers to those we thought worthy. I mentioned the phrase to my wife, Karen Pavelka, who thought to get bumper stickers, and I set up the website (). (Happily, it’s still on 10-noon on Saturdays.) When asked why I was donating to the show, I said, “It helps keep Austin Weird.” A tiny cartoon light bulb ignited. The phrase originally fell out of my mouth while calling in a donation to KOOP radio, during my favorite segment, “The Lounge Show,” which plays smooth crooners and plenty of other oddball music-if you haven’t heard Bing Crosby’s “Hey, Jude” you haven’t lived. Is it still weird? Is it OK to be changing? What’s all this strange growth? Keep Austin Weird was born in the spring of 2000, so it has entered its troubled teen years: confused, torn between trying to fit in and trying to find its own identity. ![]() Keeping Austin Weird: A Guide to the (Still) Odd Side of Town Writing and compiling this book, he says, has helped him to have faith in the endurance of Austin as a place where people can be “fundamentally themselves, and be weird if they want to.” In this passage, he recounts the story of how his spontaneous utterance became, somewhat to his distress, the brand of Austin. Wassenich has generously shared with us a passage from the sequel. He is also the author of Keep Austin Weird: A Guide to the Odd Side of Town, and its forthcoming sequel, Keep Austin Weird: A Guide to the (Still) Odd Side of Town, both of which are verbal and photographic catalogues of some of Austin’s most unique sites and features. Red Wassenich is the name of that librarian, whose linguistic progeny now serves as a key symbol of a rapidly gentrifying city’s existential angst. It was in that year that a little-known librarian at Austin Community College called up a local radio station, and told the host he was pledging money as part of his effort to “keep Austin weird”–to date, this is the first known use of this now-famous demand. ![]() It may surprise some folks to discover that although this anxious ontological question seems as fundamental to our city’s character as burnt orange and grackles, nobody asked it until the year 2000, a mere 16 years ago. How Austin Became Weird: The Story of a SloganĮveryday, thousands of Austinites roam our city’s sidewalk-less streets, creep along its concrete highways, and ramble through the corridors of its universities and start-ups with one question burning in their brains: “Is Austin Still Weird?”
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