Around you spreads the neighborhood that gave a city its unofficial motto, coined in 2000 when local librarian Red Wassenich pleaded for independent businesses over chains, eccentricity over conformity. The slogan was coined in 2000 by local librarian Red Wassenich as a plea for independent businesses over chains, eccentricity over conformity. It resonated because South Austin embodied everything that phrase meant.
While North Austin was being colonized by tech campuses and corporate parks, South Austin held onto its food trailers, its vintage shops, its muralists, its astrologers and accordion repairmen and used bookstores. Willie Nelson has long claimed South Austin as his spiritual territory — the cosmic cowboy who blended country music with rock rebellion and Texas mythology found his people here. The 'Keep Austin Weird' movement was explicitly a defense of small, local, independent businesses against the encroachment of franchise culture.
It worked, for a while. South Congress Avenue became a destination precisely because it was weird. And then the weirdness became an attraction for exactly the kinds of visitors and transplants whose arrival drives up rents and drives out the weirdness that attracted them.
South Austin is still fighting. But the city it was fighting to protect has already changed.