History of KEEP AUSTIN Weird Then the phrase transitioned to a rally cry. According to Joshua Long’s book Weird City: Sense of Place and Creative Resistance in Austin Texas, in the late 1990s city hall supported the development of a Borders Books and Music by “entitling the project to more than $2.1 million in public subsidies.” “I got wind that there was going to be a Borders brought in across the street at Bowie and 6th Street and that would have a pretty negative impact on BookPeople and Waterloo (Records),” Bercu said. “I tried to figure out something we could do about it.”
Bercu said that then, in November 2002, “I went over across the street to John Kunz at Waterloo and said, ‘Hey John, why don’t we make a bumper sticker that say’s Keep Austin Weird and put both our logos on it.” “Somthing Weird” About Austin By Tara Nishimura taranishimura@gmail.com In Austin we celebrate bats and a morose character from Winnie the Pooh, we dress in costume even when it’s not Halloween and sometimes we dress our dogs in costumes, we honor musicians with statues and we call our city weird. “Keep Austin Weird” became a tagline for our city and has changed the way many people view Austin. Although Dalton Dellsperger, senior at Anderson High School, was unsure of the history of the phrase he said, “Whenever you see someone with one of those tee shirts on you know that they are kind of on your level, if you have that free spirit attitude.” “Keep Austin Weird” originated from Austin Community College librarian, Red Wassenich who coined the phrase in 2000 when calling local radio station co-op KOOP to make a donation to a favorite show. “The person taking the money said, ‘Why are you donating to The Lounge Show?’ and I said, ‘Well, it helps keep Austin weird’ and the
phrase just kind of clicked in my head.” He the mentioned it to his wife, Karen Pavelka, and she suggested making and distributing bumper stickers. “The thing that I really like about Austin is that it’s fun,” Wassenich said. “I mean you look at the stuff that’s going on every weekend, especially in the spring. It’s incredible. There’s just kind of a sense of play which I equate with weirdness.” Wassenich also created a website, keepaustinweird.com, and wrote a book published in 2007 called Keep Austin Weird: A Guide to the Odd Side of Town. “When I wrote the book that came out in ‘07, so it’s been a while, I was kind of thinking, gosh, my bluff has been called, is Austin really that weird? So over the course of the book, I’d get out every weekend and go see stuff and photograph it and yeah, it was still weird. I didn’t have trouble finding enough stuff really.” On Wassenich’s website he has a “cemetery of weirdness past” and said that in five years since writing the book “it’s sad how many things have disappeared”. One of the most recent additions to the website
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is the rest in peace for Leslie Cochran, the cross-dressing Austin icon. “He was irreplaceable. I loved the tribute they had at Jo’s coffee where they had ‘Dress Your Dog Up Like Leslie’ as a memorial. I thought it was perfect. That’s the sort of stuff that Austin would do.” Wassenich is an Austin native and remembers several Austin traditions. “I went to Eeyore’s when it was a little English Department party over in Eastwood Park. It had 200 people,” he said. The tradition continues in 2012. “We’re out here for Eeyore’s birthday party it kind of like we had Marley Fest last weekend and this is our next weekend to be whoever we want to be out in public,” Dellsperger said. Wassenich said that he believes Austin has lost some of its weirdness due to an increase in the cost of living and population. Angie Walker, who has lived in Austin since 1983 and also attended Eeyore’s Birthday, said “I think that it’s grown so rapidly so fast that it has a very different flavor than it used to but it’s still weird. It
was weird then, it’s still weird now.” BookPeople sold Wassenich’s “Keep Austin Weird” bumper stickers. Steve Bercu, owner of BookPeople and president of Austin Independent Business Alliance, said, “He (Wassenich) actually made a few bumper stickers and we sold those bumper stickers around here but it wasn’t a big deal particularly. It was just something in the background that was going on.”
Since Bercu is the owner of BookPeople and Kunz owns Waterloo Records, two separate businesses, they added the tagline “support local business”. They each left out 2,500 bumper stickers in their stores and in ten days customers picked up all the stickers. “Ten years later we have given out about 300,000 between us,” said Bercu.