Said H.W. Brands, a University of Texas historian, quoted in "Austin Welcomed Musk. Now It’s Weird (in a New Way). The famously liberal bastion of Austin is grappling uneasily with Elon Musk’s rightward turn, which has begun transforming his adopted home into an unlikely hub of right-of-center thinkers" (NYT).
Tie-dyed T-shirts still urge residents to “Keep Austin Weird,” mostly in hotels and tourist shops. But a different kind of counterculture has taken root amid an influx of decidedly right-of-center figures (including Mr. Musk), self-described freethinkers (like the podcasters Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman), and conservative entrepreneurs (like Joe Lonsdale). Already in town was Austin’s resident conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, and his far-right Infowars. There’s even a new, contrarian institution of higher learning looking to compete with the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Austin. Weird, perhaps, but not in the way of the old bumper-sticker mantra....
Can weirdness fans complain when weirdness gets weirder? Yes, they can and they do. They may prefer a softer, quirkier form of weird. And they may think weirdness is inherently left-wing. But the left got so censorious and repressive... and yet, the left is often weird... in specific, prescribed ways.
Hey, remember when "weird" was the dominant insult deployed by the Democratic Party? It seemed that they chose their Vice Presidential candidate because he said it just so at the perfect time.
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“When The Going Gets Weird, the Weird Turn Pro” — Hunter S. Thompson
By "weird," old-time Austinites meant "unbendingly conformist to their form of weird."
Everything’s bigger in Texas.
It's a '70s era word that has lost its cachet. Language evolves, especially American English, which is the most lively of the living languages. If you want your slogan to retain its meaning for decades or centuries, use Latin. All the great slogans are using it!
I guess modern people don't want to say virtuous and vicious, so they say normal and weird. So junior high school.
It's nicely serendipitous that the first post quotes Hunter Thompson from a 1971 book, thus reinforcing my initial comment and making me wonder if the heyday of weird might have been the '60s, which by my estimation lasted roughly from 1964 to 1973.
When Austin says it wants to be weird as a city in Texas, it means it wants to be the one progressive enclave there. Sadly though, I don’t think they’re weird in that sense anymore.
Tampon Tim’s insult of JD Vance was a failure. At its core, it was based on the fact that JD is conservative. The Left fails to understand that most of America rejects their liberal values of letting in 10m plus illegals and mutilating mentally ill children.
We are watching - in real time - the most successful presidency in decades. But now Trump is about to commit an unforced error over a stupid plane.
It’s got to be weird for them in their island of leftie surrounded by and governed by the normal. Musk shares their front yard but they can’t torch his cars or his dealerships while being backstopped by the local government the way their political peers can. I mean a Hawaiian judge will be along eventually but life will be unpleasant until then, being treated like the criminal you are and all…
“Picked up on my phone in Houston
Everybody answered, everybody answered but they won't say why
Then this dancer grabbed me down by the bus stop
And she said I'm takin' you with me to the Texas Rose cafe
I got a fast car, it's a jaguar, and I'll get you to the plane on time
Drinkin' Lone Star, play guitar, we'll have a real good time
I said love to be found in Austin,
Love to be found in Austin town,
I replied that I would try, but you see my time is not my own
'Cause when I was just a big time low ball fool
My friend Leroy came to me
He said look out your window
Does the first man you see look like me?
I'm sooooore displeased
Since that time I changed my mind
About the things I'm up to
Yet the things around me stay just the same
'Cause outside my hotel window is a sign that turns from red to green
It says chop suey and join the U.S. Marines”
—— Lowell George, “Texas Rose Cafe”
"he said it just so at the perfect time" . . . to accelerate the implosion of the cackler and the knucklehead. Weird indeed. Even weirder is that Walz seemed to believe his own BS, having been selected to "code talk" to white dudes.
The Progressives in Austin are lamenting that society is imposing precisely the same sense of unease and discomfort that they used to revel in seeing, from the normies, reacting to their 'edgy' part hippie, part cowboy, part biker culture. Oh No ! The weirdness is a little Conservative now ! Danger Danger !
Let’s be honest - the people who made Austin weird are all dead or not feeling very well.
Only Leftist thoughts allowed.
Is queerness weird or is weirdness queer? That is the question.
self-described freethinkers (like the podcasters Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman),
Did Rogan ever call himself a "freethinker," or is "self-described" vague enough to give the writer cover?
Grok says the closest Rogan gets to calling himself a "freethinker" is that he just wants to "figure things out."
But now Trump is about to commit an unforced error over a stupid plane
How so? It's not the first time we've purchased used Boeing planes from other countries.
Even weirder is that Walz seemed to believe his own BS, having been selected to "code talk" to white dudes.
That has to go down as one of the most bizarre intentional public statements ever made by a major party candidate for the Whitehouse. Absolutely bat-shit crazy talk from a guy who had already established himself as the strangest veep pick ever.
Most (not all) old fashioned liberals have turned into obedient rage-filled MSNBC watching scowls - brains filled with lies.
I saw an old white women driving her old Subaru around Boulder the other day - with all sorts of Rage and Anger bumper stickers plastered over her car - targeting Musk.
As we all know, Progressive women are the most susceptible to the hive-mind virus.
So, this is the same ol' thing we've seen before. If one person or one institution doesn't toe the party the line it gets labeled "Far-right" and if viewed as a threat. Because 99 percent of everything has to be "Left" or "Progressive" or its bad.
Musk supported Trump, so unlike Ellison or Mark Cuban, he's a BAD billionaire, and his appearance is an "Invasion of bad think".
So, when Austin was Leftwing, it was "good weird". But if Musk and non-leftists show up to the party that's "Bad weird".
Walz 'n Kamala.
I’ve developed a theory about weirdness: those who think they’re weird are usually pretty normal. It’s those who think they’re normal that tend to be the weirdest.
Austin is just as leftie as it always was, but it is now so in same conformist way of most of the left - believe these specific things and do not dissent. So no, not weird anymore because it's not at all unique or interesting. Or maybe that's me and I'm getting old, and haven't lived there in over 25 years.
Weird Austin would be: hey, we know these 3 men at the law school graduation last weekend are men, even though they're wearing white dresses and heels. But hey man, be yourself, wear what you want. Austin today is: those are WOMEN and you must call them Maeve, Jill and Kate (or whatever their names were) or be shunned. Yawn.
Y'know if you told the NYT's writers they couldn't use labels and words that end in "-ism" or "ist", they'd be unable to express a thought. The whole point of the labels is make sure the dumb libtards can understood the "Good Guys" and the "Bad Guys". For example, there's nothing "far right" about alex jones. But he gets the label slapped on him, so Libtards can understand he's a "bad guy".
I'm eccentric.
You're different.
They're weird.
One truly "weird" concepts is the idea of Walz and Hogg representing men (as in masculine?) and the universal reaction is not laughter.
But Walz was dead on on one statement. He is a knucklehead.
Keep Santa Cruz Weird bumper stickers abounded at least in the 90s if not earlier. Also very popular back in the early 90s was the we Believe you, Anita bumper sticker usually on a 1976 242 two-door baby puke yellow Volvo with a broken tail light. Since Austin is the Santa Cruz of Texas, it's fitting
Anyone who has driven around Austin in the last 20 years knows that weird Austin is long gone.
“That’s some wild, weird stuff.”
- Johnny Carson
Speaking of weird, why are the Democrats trying to get rid of David Hogg? He was about to rescue their party because he figured out they need to code talk to horny little Beta males.
Forcing the labels is what doesn't work anymore. Few of these people are "right wing". They just aren't stupid and rudderless, and they prefer things that work, merit, and responsibility.
Howard it was likely the Banana-slug yellow Volvo. Which is weird, for sure.
While all things are tolerable... liberalism is a philosophy of divergence, and progress, in war and abortion, is a queer and weird quandary of the sisters. Keep Austin viable.
Peachy: Out on the road today, I saw a Fuck Musk sticker on a Subaru/ A little voice inside my head said boo boo hoo, Trump's owning you...
JSM
"the left is often weird... in specific, prescribed ways."
You can only be spontaneous in ways approved by the Department of Spontaneity. Submit your application.
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
“If you want your slogan to retain its meaning for decades or centuries, use Latin. All the great slogans are using it!”
The Addams family motto: "Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc!"
Of course, some contest as to how accurate the Latin is.
Musk is a participant in the change, not leading it. It is in the air. Mask up, folks, and wash your hands.
"The famously liberal bastion of Austin is grappling uneasily with Elon Musk’s rightward turn, which has begun transforming his adopted home into an unlikely hub of right-of-center thinkers" (NYT)."
Awww, poor babies. They have encountered a difference of opinion.
It is amusing how the left's self-proclaimed virtue of tolerance has been completely unmasked.
Rage and Anger bumper stickers plastered over her car
They call it love.
Austin weirdness died the day the city passed an ordinance permitting homeless to camp on and near businesses. BUT explicitly excepting and protecting government facilities.
*sigh*
"Quando omni flunkus moritatii"
A softer kind of weird? I remember visiting Austin friends at Halloween in the GWB era. So many houses with violent BusHitler decorations in the front yard... Kathy Griffin thought she was being edgy, but these Austin residents were beheading Republicans a decade and a half earlier.
The tenure of Weird in Austin became endangered as the Weird became tenured. The bumper sticker itself was a sign that "Weird" was nothing more than Austin's brand, like cowboy boots and a ten gallon hat for an executive transferred to Dallas.
Sure they’ve always been kinda ‘left’, but mostly ‘weird’ meant stuff like ‘naked bicycle riding’. They have a whole club for that in Austin. That’s what ‘weird’ meant back in the 70s and 80s. And cool stores with tie-die shirts and Amy’s Ice Cream, which was the earliest I ever saw ‘mix ins’ you could get with your ice cream.
Awww, poor babies. They have encountered a difference of opinion.
It's a "burden"... uh, burden of liberal deviency, that they must carry to term.
Absolutely bat-shit crazy talk from a guy who had already established himself as the strangest veep pick ever.
Apparently he was a sacrificial lamb. I read that dozens of prominent white male Democrats were offered the chance to play second fiddle to Harris, but declined due to internal polling that showed the inevitability of the ensuing shipwreck. This nincompoop Walz was the only one willing to abase himself.
Brands is usually good; his book "Founding Partisans" is brilliant.
I had a friend who fell in love with Austin back in the 90s, but in my few visits I wasn't that impressed. Other than the UT campus and environs, there was nothing there that interested me, weird or not.
Too hot, dusty, and sprawling for my tastes.
Does it mean goofy and not "Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic" ?
"Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
...If you want your slogan to retain its meaning for decades or centuries, use Latin. All the great slogans are using it!"
How 'bout: Custodi Austin Nŏvus
"Keep Austin Weird" was supposed to keep the squares and the bourgeois out. It probably attracted them. It was a great selling point. Bourgeois bohemians liked the quirky, strange atmosphere of the place, and they turned out to be more bourgeois than bohemian. Democrat "refugees" from the rest of Texas turned out not to be as hip as they pretended to be. Out-of-staters who came to Austin looking for work created a different environment from Austinians who stayed there trying to avoid work. That's all inevitable, though, isn't it? Every picturesque or quaint place artists and bohemians discover eventually gets taken over by people with money.
Kids, just keep saying
"The most successful planet-saving inventor."
"The most successful...etc etc"
Austin is as weird and to the left as always, particularly when compared with the rest of the state. Voters there still believe the state is the solution rather than individuals. What the NYT laments is that Austin is not the vehicle to turn the state blue again. But it hasn’t been and never was. Texas hasn’t been blue since Ann Richards, and no amount of pushing the pathetic grifter O’Rourke has changed Texas. Texas was blue before because the entire state was blue.
BLM did change Austin, and it made it worse. The people of Austin realized what happened and are fixing those mistakes.
The closest thing to weird I see in my infrequent forays into Moscow on the Colorado are funky, overpriced resale clothing stores.
Lived in Austin mostly from '88 to '05. Never going back.
Nothing will establish your normie bona fides better than being called "weird" by one of the weirdest national politicians.
I clicked through to the article to see if I could figure out if the history professor knows that "Ye" is "Þe" and that the "ye" on stores is fake old-timey. (Printers substituted a "y" for a thorn because they didn't have "Þ", but there wouldn't be any need for a sign painter to do so.) I thought that maybe he meant to imply some fakeness about the original slogan, not just its current conception by the under-40 crowd. The article did not enlighten me.
I wouldn't call "Ye Old Shoppe" a slogan anyway. I'm glad he was never my professor.
I also wondered if Mike was Jim Ignatowski's less logical brother?
Tim Walz shakes his wife's hand.
Calls other people wierd.
Leland said...
Austin is as weird and to the left as always, particularly when compared with the rest of the state. Voters there still believe the state is the solution rather than individuals.
They don't believe the State is the solution.
They believe They are the solution.
The State is just the vehicle they use to take stuff from other people and tell other people what to do.
Please take note that all of the tings they do with the State make themselves rich and everyone else poor.
They believe They are the solution.
@Achilles, you broke the code! Liberals are liberal and Progs are what they are* because they believe in their hearts that they will be part of the Nomenklatura. Convince them that they will be part of the peasantry and watch them change. (But it’s pretty tough to convince them — they’re pretty used to thinking of themselves as special.)
__________________
* Their Progressive ideas are throwbacks to the rightly discredited ideals of the 1930s, so they seek to “progress” us into the distant past.
It seemed that [the Democrats] chose their Vice Presidential candidate because he said it just so at the perfect time.
And then came the Vice Presidential debates, where bug-eyed, posturing, Tim Walz was the obvious weirdo standing next to an alpha male JD Vance.
Achilles said...
“Tim Walz shakes his wife's hand.”
He’s just trying to show that he’s not a Muslim.
Austin is a regional maximum for weird, but it's minorly left-of-center versus many blue state cities. In visiting famously "weird" Austin from California long ago, and was surprised by how mundane and suburban and orderly the place was. I'd seen San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Hollywood, etc. I'd seen a guy wearing white clothes and covered in white paint standing in a parking garage staircase. I'd seen the Bearded Clam cafe. I could not avoid seeing Gay Pride parades and coverage on the news. I'd seen ANTIFA long ago.
Austin came across the product of the kids of farmers, ranchers, and oil workers reading about strange, exotic places, and then imagining what weird was. "As seen on TV weird." They then tried to imitate it, but stayed in black-and-white Kansas and never made it to Oz.
Austin need only take a tiny, tiny step to become right of center. But, "Keep Austin Weird" brings in regional tourist money.
They still fail to grasp it wasn't Musk who made a rightward turn. Or Joe Rogan. Or any of the other Democrats who've had enough of the left's insanity.
And that's fine by me. Keep doubling down, leftists.
Well Tim Walz was "weird" in a special way. He'd fit right in with liberal Austin and Travis County from sayi 2 to 20 years ago. Earlier than that--not so much.
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