People

noun \p-pol\
the mass of a community as distinguishedfromaspecialclass

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Is It Is It

the the Peo ple?

Is it the people? The way they smile? The way they dress? Are they quirky? Are they loud? Howyoucanbeinagroup? Or by yourself?

Does it matter?
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Keeping it Weird in Austin, Texas

Arent the residents of the proudly hip city of Austin, Texas, just traditionalists at heart?

By ZZ Packer

Hipsters of all stripes trek to Austin, Texas. By hipsters, I mean people who love irony but are suspicious of symbolism, who are laid-back without being lazy, who groom their music collections the way Wall Streeters monitor their stock portfolios, people whose relentlessly casual dress is constructed as painstakingly as stanzas in a pantoum. Hippie or hipster, liberal or libertarian, salaried professional or hourly wageworker, people of all stripes here often refer to their work as their day jobs, rather than their careers. Youll find coffee shop baristas, retail shop clerks, bookstore cashiers as well as doctors, lawyers and computer programmers who view their real work as something else entirelymusic, art, an unpublished novel or collecting Popeye mugs.

Photographs by Darren Carroll

My first time living in Austin felt more like a layover. I was teaching at the University of Texas and living in the leafy collegiate Hyde Park area, but I was in town only for the semester. I had a full teaching load and was the mother of two toddlers; I was on autopilot. Still, I dug the Austin parenting ethos: Kids cavorted on the outdoor play structures at Phils Icehouse or at Amys Ice Creams while parents watched from the sidelines, nursing bottles of Lone Star beer, comparing preschools and body piercings.

I was an instant fan of this brand of parenting, as it seemed an extension of Austins patio culture. Almost every restaurant, bar and music club has a patio annex as bigif not biggerthan its indoor space, since so much of Austin life is lived outside pushing kids in a stroller, biking around town, or hiking to the coffee shop or watering hole. All of this is pleasant enough in March, April or May, but in summer, with 100-degree heat, its Survivor in flip-flops and a straw cowboy hat. It was during this first grown-up foray in Austin that I became a breakfast taco fanatic, a complete surprise since the only breakfast tacos Id ever seen were in ads for Taco Bell, where the tortillas were filled with gray florets of ground beef that appeared to be doused in WD-40 and topped with Cheez Whiz. Real breakfast tacos are something else. Theres the migas taco with egg, cheese and fried tortilla chips; the tinga de pollo with chipotle tomato salsa; the enfrijolada with tortillas dipped in black bean sauce and topped with cilantro. I loved that Austin had strong Chicano roots, was Southern, friendly and even neighborly: the perfect combination of Southern heart, Western spirit and Yankee intellect. The citys unofficial motto is Keep Austin Weird. Its a clarion call for residents to support local businesses and everything indie, to say no to big corporations or whomever Austinites suspect of attempting to package their scruffy slacker-factor authenticity. Many other citiesPortland, Madison, Santa Cruz and Asheville, North Carolinahave promoted similar campaigns, but it all began in Austin with Red Wassenich, an Austin Community

College librarian, who was frustrated that Austin had been moving away from its funkier roots. Wassenichs 2007 book Keep Austin Weird is a tribute to personal expression, ranging from a mosquito collection to art cars (imagine vehicles decorated by Pippi Longstocking or Hulk Hogan). Then theres Austins yard art, which can be as simple as showing off a hundred or so of your best pink flamingos, castoff statuary and upcycled furniture pieces on your front lawn, to more complex projects that give a sculptural middle finger to city ordinances. The rusted three-story hubcap- and bicycle-based Cathedral of Junk was created by Vince Hannemann, a South Austin guy who decided his backyard was as good a place as any to build a cathedral. Now the weird rallying cry has expanded to include food trailers where you can buy your hearts delight from plate-size doughnuts at Gourdoughs to paper-plated gourmet food at Odd Duck. Though I could eat my way through Austin 365 days a year, most Austinites would say its music, not food, that fuels the city. You cant throw a cowboy boot without hitting a guitarist, music club or someone hawking playbills for an open-mike night. Austin is the self-styled Live Music Capital of the World, and thanks in part to University of Texas students, up-and-coming alt-country, alt-rock, alt-blues musicians flock to venues like the Broken Spoke, the Mohawk or Antones. The Broken Spoke started out as a honky-tonk, and eventually you had [acts like] Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, says Texas native and UT English professor Michael Adams. It made being weird normal. Now, the once-tiny music conference and festival South by Southwest has become one of the countrys largest.

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Keep Austin Weird

The Keep Austin Weird slogan reaches far beyond a marketing campaign.Austin is the self-proclaimed live music capital of the world and the people of Austin reflect a friendly, accepting culture of artistic and individual expression that maintains the city as a vibrant and eclectic creative center and haven for an LGBT community, intellectual community, community of naturalists and environmentalists, and for subcultures and people(s) who are not mainstream. In a mostly conservative Texas, Austin is Weird because of that and because it continues to be liberal and progressive politically, socially, in culture, in the arts and in music, among other things. Keep Austin Weird moves beyond a mere slogan, to reflect the dynamics that encompass Austin. In January 2009 alone, over 1700 live music venues were supported. In addition, multiple festivals such as SXSW, Austin City Limits, Armadillo Bazaar and the Batfest, among many others are highly attended with enthusiastic and often large audiences. Austins culture is further enriched by a multitude of celebrities such as actress Sandra Bullock, athlete Lance Armstrong, writer Bruce Sterling, film directors Richard Linklater and Robert Rodriguez, actor Matthew McConaughey and fashion designer Tom Ford. There are many other notable figures who make Austin their home exactly because the culture is Weird and highly supportive of non-mainstream individuals and subcultures, intellectuals, and artistic and creative personalities. Another weirdness to the city is the 1.5 million bats that live under the Ann W. Richards Congress Avenue Bridge, the largest urban bat colony in the world. When the bats first moved into the bridge following a rehabilitation of the structure in the 1980s, they were initially reviled, but have come to be celebrated as a tourism boon for the city, bringing in an estimated 7.9 million dollars from tourism and related business. A prominent piece of public art is in the shape of a swooping bat, and the annual Bat Fest, held in the summertime, further promotes them.

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