Austin's heinous new logo.

Reminds me of when NYC spent millions on bringing arts and culture back to the city after Covid. It was hard to believe it wasn’t an SNL skit pic.twitter.com/0dYhP2bWna

— King Francis the Turd (@YourTurdliness) September 5, 2025

"If you say 'Keep Austin Weird' to somebody under the age of 40, they would think of that as an antique-y slogan, like Ye Old Shoppe."

"It doesn’t have any resonance for their lived experience of Austin."

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.

"Mr. Musk has told people close to him in recent months that he envisions his children (of which there are at least 11) and two of their three mothers occupying adjoining properties."

"That way, his younger children could be a part of one another’s lives, and Mr. Musk could schedule time among them. Directly behind the villa is a six-bedroom mansion.... When in Austin, he often stays at a third mansion about a 10-minute walk away.... One of the mothers, Shivon Zilis, an executive at Neuralink... has moved into one of the homes with her children. But Claire Boucher, the musician better known as Grimes, who is the mother to three of his children, is in a protracted legal fight with Mr. Musk and has so far steered clear. The third mother is Mr. Musk’s first wife, Justine Musk, with whom he has five living children, all in their late teens or older. There is room in the Austin compound if they were to visit, though he is estranged from at least one of those children.... Mr. Musk has said that I.V.F. is a more efficient way of having children because it allows parents to control parts of the process, according to a person who understands his thinking.... In 2021, without Ms. Boucher’s knowledge, Mr. Musk donated sperm to Ms. Zilis, who became pregnant with twins through I.V.F.... That same year, the billionaire and Ms. Boucher were expecting a second child also conceived via I.V.F. but carried by a surrogate.... Further complicating matters, Mr. Musk took a name that he and Ms. Boucher had chosen for their daughter — Valkyrie — and gave it to one of Ms. Zilis’s twins...."

From "Elon Musk Wants Big Families. He Bought a Secret Compound for His. As the billionaire warns of population collapse and the moral obligation to have children, he’s navigating his own complicated family" (NYT)(free-access link).

I wonder what kind of "control" he is doing with IVF.

"Of the many recent failures of the American left, one of the greatest is making entry-level battle-of-the-sexes humor seem avant-garde."

"(Did you know that women often run relationship decisions past their female friends? Bitches be crazy! That sort of thing.) As Rogan himself says after he emerges in stonewashed jeans, clutching a glass of something amber on ice: 'Fox News called this an anti-woke comedy club. That’s just a comedy club!'... Rogan now lives in Austin, which has recently become known for its transformation from chilled-out live-music paradise to a miniature version of the Bay Area—similarly full of tech workers, but with fewer IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE… signs.... It is... the center of the Roganverse, an intellectual firmament of manosphere influencers, productivity optimizers, stand-ups, and male-wellness gurus. Austin is at the nexus of a Venn diagram of 'has culture,' 'has gun ranges,' 'has low taxes,' and 'has kombucha.'"

Writes Helen Lewis, in "How Joe Rogan Remade Austin/The podcaster and comedian has turned the city into a haven for manosphere influencers, just-asking-questions tech bros, and other 'free thinkers' who happen to all think alike" (The Atlantic).

That's a free-access link, because there's a lot going on in that article, beyond what I chose to excerpt.

"Around 55 residents, including 15 children, live in the village as 'missionals'..."

"... unpaid neighbors generally motivated by their Christian faith to be part of the community. All missionals undergo a monthslong 'discernment process' before they can move in. They pay to live in R.V.s and manufactured homes distinguished by an 'M' in the front window. Their presence in the community is meant to guard against the pitfalls of concentrated poverty and trauma.... Though the village is open to people of any religious background, it is run by Christians, and public spaces are adorned with paintings of Jesus on the cross and other biblical scenes. The application to live in the community outlines a set of 'core values' that refer to God and the Bible. But Mr. Graham said there is no proselytizing and people do not have to be sober or seek treatment to live there.... 'This is absolutely not nirvana,' Mr. Graham said. 'And we want people to understand the beauty and the complexity of what we do. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else on the face of the planet than right here in the middle of this, but you’re not fixing these things.'"

From "Can a Big Village Full of Tiny Homes Ease Homelessness in Austin? One of the nation’s largest experiments in affordable housing to address chronic homelessness is taking shape outside the city limits" (NYT).

"Mr. Graham" = Alan Graham, a real estate developer who raised $20 million to build a village to house the homeless on land near Austin, Texas where there are no zoning laws.

None of this matters....

It ain't over 'til it's over....

One day you're here...

And the next day you're gone...

Austin faces.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

Traipsing around Austin.

At the Austin Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

Views of Austin.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"Do you like The Zombies" — a random text from my younger son at 6:31 today.

Too many Republicans "is precisely why he is moving out of what Rick Perry once described as the 'blueberry in the tomato soup,' a predominantly Democratic city full of liberal expats..."

"... like himself seeking progressive politics and an urban lifestyle at a red-state cost-of-living discount. 'It was easy to just be in Never Neverland, floating with a bunch of other transplants having a good time,' said [somebody named John] Stettin, who relocated from Dallas to Austin five years ago.... [He's moving to] Massachusetts.... What was once seen as an affordable, creative haven is now a runaway boomtown, pricing out most of whatever was left of Austin’s proclaimed weirdness.... In the past year, rent soared more than 20 percent, and the median home price rose almost as much over the same period (before home prices dropped thanks to interest-rate hikes). The airport has new direct flights to Vail, Colorado, and Texas’s first Soho House opened there last year. Elon Musk has built a $1.1 billion 'gigafactory' nearby, turning 'Tesla' into shorthand among some to describe the city’s bougification. 'There’s nothing weird about Austin,' said one Soho House patron, who recently flew home to California for an abortion...."

From "Austin Has Been Invaded by Texas/The progressive paradise is over for some, and they’re fleeing to bluer pastures" (Intelligencer).

I like this owl sculpture.

Video'd by my son Chris (in Austin, Texas): 

 

Background: "Inspired by the 18th-century robotics of Wolfgang Von Kempelen, Kempelen’s Owls... is an interactive sculpture that fosters curiosity. Two Texan great horned owls, each standing ten feet tall and constructed of layered metal and composite materials, perch atop dodecahedrons and silently observe their surroundings. The interactive features of the work are hidden, awaiting discovery by visitors who can activate them to trigger movement in the owls."

The protest scene in Austin, Texas.

ADDED: Here's Governor Abbott's order limiting freedom of movement in Texas. Key paragraph:

Is protesting a "physical activity like jogging and bicycling"? Are the protesters on the state capitol grounds "visiting a park"? Are they maintaining "necessary precautions"?

ALSO: "We must be outside!"



Note: I've clipped out a few seconds (not 6 minutes, as the video title has it).

No, not Austin. The real city that deserves the name Shed Legacy is my own city, Madison, Wisconsin!

On July 29th, you may remember, we saw the crazy fake news on Drudge:



"AUSTIN, TX CONSIDERS NAME CHANGE TO SHED LEGACY."

It was just an accidental ambiguity, of course. The proposed new name for Austin was not Shed Legacy, though it was funny to think about that. The idea was just that Austin should want to shed any names that are the legacy of slavery, such as the name of the city's found Stephen F. Austin. The article Drudge linked to didn't highlight any suggested new name, but I carried on about the silly idea of a town called Shed Legacy. What could possibly have happened to make Shed Legacy the right name for a town?

Lo and behold, I stumble across an article in my local alternative newspaper Isthmus: "Save a shed/Trachte buildings are a piece of Madison history. And they’re disappearing fast." This was published on July 26th, so it's certainly not a response to my musings. But check this out. Madison, Wisconsin has a shed legacy!

San Francisco has its Queen Anne Victorians, Portland its bungalows, Baltimore its rowhouses. And Madison has its Trachte buildings.

“They are uniquely Madison,” says Jim Draeger, architectural historian and state historic preservation officer of the Wisconsin Historical Society. “You see them outside of the city, but you see most of them right here in Madison.”

These steel-paneled, barrel-roofed sheds and work buildings have been a big part of defining Madison’s look, particularly on the near east side, for more than a century. They can be spotted across the city — in backyards as garages, along East Main Street and East Washington Avenues as businesses and factories, off Sycamore and Walsh streets and along Lexington and Fair Oaks Avenues as warehouses. They are a part of almost every Madison Gas and Electric substation....

... [T]he strong verticals with multiple horizontals paired with the softness of the rounded roof line... contrast[] beautifully with nature, from weeds to blossoming trees to blue skies with angelic white clouds. Rust, rips, the buildup of many years of paint — Trachte buildings, as they decay, are catnip for the sort of photographer who likes to capture urban decay, the kind of photos known as “ruin porn.”

They are “ephemeral architecture,” says [Jason Tish, former executive director of the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation.] “They’re not made to last for long periods of time, though many of them have proved to be remarkably durable.”

So we have what it takes to make Shed Legacy a proper name for this city. And, as with Austin, our city's current name carries the legacy of slavery:

By the early 1780s, the Madison family possessed well over one hundred slaves, and the Montpelier plantation had more slaves than any other in the county. Madison depended on slave labor to earn his income and admittedly felt financially “unable” to free the human beings he had legal title to. Thus both Madison and his neighbor Jefferson indicated that they could not afford to emancipate their black slave captives. Following the emergence of the anti-colonial movement for American independence and the democratic republican wave of humanist ideology, Madison professed to have developed a distaste for slavery. Like Jefferson and Washington, Madison indicated that he was searching for an alternative means of income that would allow him and his family to continue to enjoy a wealthy and privileged lifestyle. Madison contended, as did Jefferson, that slavery was on the road to gradual extinction on its own. Left alone it would eventually die.

Shed Legacy!

Wait. "Shed Legacy" is a terrible name for a city.

Here's the article Drudge links to, "City report on Confederate monuments raises idea of renaming Austin."

I'm just laughing because Meade read the Drudge line to me out loud and I couldn't understand the last 2 words, which I assumed were the new city name people wanted. When he said it more clearly "Shed Legacy," I had a genuinely hilarious fraction of a second of thinking of "Shed Legacy" as the name for a city.

ADDED: My willingness to see Shed Legacy as the name for a town comes in part from just recently having read this, in Bill Bryson's "Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States":

There is almost nothing, it would appear, that hasn’t inspired an American place name at some time or other. In addition to breakfast foods and Shakespearean plays, we have had towns named for radio programs (Truth or Consequences, New Mexico), towns named for cowboy stars (Gene Autry, Oklahoma), towns named for forgotten heroes (Hamtramck, Michigan, named for a Major John Hamtramck), towns that you may give thanks you don’t come from (Toad Suck, Arkansas, and Idiotville, Oregon, spring to mind), at least one town named for a person too modest to leave his name (Modesto, California), and thousands upon thousands of others with more prosaic or boring etymologies (not forgetting Boring, Maryland).

And here's Mental Floss's compilation of "The Funniest Town Name in All 50 States":

3. ARIZONA // WHY... This teeny-tiny community near the U.S.-Mexico border is named after the Y-shaped intersection of two nearby highways. But because of an Arizona law requiring place names have at least three letters, "Y" became... "Why."...

8. DELAWARE // CORNER KETCH... from a rough-and-tumble local bar, whose patrons were so quarrelsome that townspeople would warn strangers, "They'll ketch ye at the corner."...

17. KENTUCKY // BUGTUSSLE... when workers helped out during the harvest, they would sleep in barns—on hay that was infested with doodlebugs... the workers stayed so long that the bugs grew big enough to “tussle” for the prime napping spots....

22. MICHIGAN // HELL...  In the 1830s, the town settler, George Reeves, made a deal with local farmers to trade his homemade whiskey for the grain they grew. When the farmer’s wives knew their husbands were off dealing with Reeves, they were known to remark, “He’s gone to hell again.”...

35. OHIO // KNOCKEMSTIFF...  When approached by a woman asking him how to keep her cheating husband home and faithful, the preacher responded simply: “Knock ‘em stiff.”...

Imagine the origin story for the town of Shed Legacy. There was a shed, a popular trysting spot, and many of the town's original residents were born of mothers who got pregnant there. People got to pointing to that shed and joking that the entire population of the town had come from that shed. The town was the Shed Legacy. And the name stuck.

Howdy Donut.

On South Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas — April 11th.

At the Sidewalk Café...

... we can hang out all night.

(And don't forget the Althouse Portal to Amazon.)

At Amy's Café...

... it's time to talk about anything (and to buy anything through the Althouse Portal to Amazon).

At the Inappropriate President Café...

... talk about what you like and buy what you want through the Althouse Portal to Amazon.