Those who lived in the Texas capital in the ’80s fondly remember Las Manitas, the now closed downtown café where Austin politicos of all stripes, including Karl Rove, had to walk past pro-Sandinista posters to order their tacos. People who were in the city in the ’70s wax nostalgic about the days when Guero’s was a feed store, SoCo was home to prostitutes, and the truly weird festival was Spamarama, an April Fool’s Day event started in 1976 that featured an artistic Spam-carving contest and an athletic event called the Spam Toss.
“You should have been here back in (fill in the year)” is a popular admonition among sentimental old-timers.
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For naysayers, some of the more recent additions to the calendar, like the Weird festival, are parvenus, hitching a ride on a popular image of Austin and supported by corporate sponsors, a contrast to the days when Austin celebrations were free and funky.
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Some 19.7 million visitors go to Austin annually, according to the city’s convention and visitors bureau, drawn by the city’s music and foodie scenes, plus a packed calendar of events that celebrate the Austin spirit the Keep Austin Weird Festival and 5K run, now in its 10th year, is a highlight of the late-June calendar. Is Austin becoming a kind of a theme park of weirdness? Standing in a crowd in front of Guero’s Taco Bar on South Congress Avenue, the center of the once faded, now hip “SoCo” neighborhood just south of downtown, a visitor to Austin was recently overheard talking excitedly on her cell phone - “I just can’t believe I am really in Austin!” - like she had just arrived at Disney World, not an industrious American city. ( MORE: Revenge or Revival, Perry Raids Blue-State Jobs With New Vigor) And while they sell T-shirts and coffee mugs, his website features odd city sights and bemoans “Austin’s descent into rampant commercialism and overdevelopment.” That was the year Austin Community College librarian Red Wassenich coined the phrase “Keep Austin weird.” He declined to copyright his catchy mantra, but others did. By 2000, the population stood at 650,000. Then came public-private research consortiums MCC and Sematech, which were soon joined by Dell, Apple, Samsung and many more. Motorola and Texas Instruments followed IBM. In 1967, state government and the University of Texas were the city’s major employers, but when IBM opened a facility that year, it set in motion a high-tech boom that has seen Austin’s population grow eightfold to nearly 2 million today. But as Austin booms, there’s a growing debate over whether its weirdness is being institutionalized and subverted in the process. It has become shorthand for all that is hip in the city. The notion that weirdness is the essential spark to life in Austin is at the heart of the “Keep Austin weird” mantra that has been emblazoned on tie-dyed T-shirts and bumper stickers, adopted by eccentric and creative Austinites, and co-opted by local businesses small and large.
An entrance ticket to Barton Springs Pool: $3.
Follow chorizo-and-egg breakfast taco: $2.25.
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