Keeping it Weird in Austin, Texas

Aren't the residents of the proudly hip city of Austin, Texas, just traditionalists at heart?

  • By ZZ Packer
  • Photographs by Darren Carroll
  • Smithsonian magazine, January 2012, Subscribe
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Cathedral of Junk
The rusted three-story hubcap- and bicycle-based Cathedral of Junk was created by Vince Hannemann, a South Austin guy who decided his backyard was as good a place as any to build a cathedral. (Darren Carroll)

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Hipsters of all stripes trek to Austin, Texas. By hipsters, I mean people who love irony but are suspicious of symbolism, who are laid-back without being lazy, who groom their music collections the way Wall Streeters monitor their stock portfolios, people whose relentlessly casual dress is constructed as painstakingly as stanzas in a pantoum.

Hippie or hipster, liberal or libertarian, salaried professional or hourly wageworker, people of all stripes here often refer to their work as their “day jobs,” rather than their careers. You’ll find coffee shop baristas, retail shop clerks, bookstore cashiers as well as doctors, lawyers and computer programmers who view their real work as something else entirely—music, art, an unpublished novel or collecting Popeye mugs.

My first time living in Austin felt more like a layover. I was teaching at the University of Texas and living in the leafy collegiate Hyde Park area, but I was in town only for the semester. I had a full teaching load and was the mother of two toddlers; I was on autopilot. Still, I dug the Austin parenting ethos: Kids cavorted on the outdoor play structures at Phil’s Icehouse or at Amy’s Ice Creams while parents watched from the sidelines, nursing bottles of Lone Star beer, comparing preschools and body piercings.

I was an instant fan of this brand of parenting, as it seemed an extension of Austin’s patio culture. Almost every restaurant, bar and music club has a patio annex as big—if not bigger—than its indoor space, since so much of Austin life is lived outside—pushing kids in a stroller, biking around town, or hiking to the coffee shop or watering hole. All of this is pleasant enough in March, April or May, but in summer, with 100-degree heat, it’s “Survivor” in flip-flops and a straw cowboy hat.

It was during this first grown-up foray in Austin that I became a breakfast taco fanatic, a complete surprise since the only breakfast tacos I’d ever seen were in ads for Taco Bell, where the tortillas were filled with gray florets of ground beef that appeared to be doused in WD-40 and topped with Cheez Whiz. Real breakfast tacos are something else. There’s the migas taco with egg, cheese and fried tortilla chips; the tinga de pollo with chipotle tomato salsa; the enfrijolada with tortillas dipped in black bean sauce and topped with cilantro.

I loved that Austin had strong Chicano roots, was Southern, friendly and even neighborly: the perfect combination of Southern heart, Western spirit and Yankee intellect.

The city’s unofficial motto is “Keep Austin Weird.” It’s a clarion call for residents to support local businesses and everything indie, to say no to big corporations or whomever Austinites suspect of attempting to package their scruffy “slacker-factor” authenticity. Many other cities—Portland, Madison, Santa Cruz and Asheville, North Carolina—have promoted similar campaigns, but it all began in Austin with Red Wassenich, an Austin Community College librarian, who was frustrated that “Austin had been moving away from its funkier roots.”

Wassenich’s 2007 book Keep Austin Weird is a tribute to personal expression, ranging from a mosquito collection to “art cars” (imagine vehicles decorated by Pippi Longstocking or Hulk Hogan). Then there’s Austin’s “yard art,” which can be as simple as showing off a hundred or so of your best pink flamingos, cast-off statuary and upcycled furniture pieces on your front lawn, to more complex projects that give a sculptural middle finger to city ordinances. The rusted three-story hubcap- and bicycle-based Cathedral of Junk was created by Vince Hannemann, a South Austin guy who decided his backyard was as good a place as any to build a cathedral. Now the “weird” rallying cry has expanded to include food trailers where you can buy your heart’s delight—from plate-size doughnuts at Gourdough’s to paper-plated gourmet food at Odd Duck.

Though I could eat my way through Austin 365 days a year, most Austinites would say it’s music, not food, that fuels the city. You can’t throw a cowboy boot without hitting a guitarist, music club or someone hawking playbills for an open-mike night. Austin is the self-styled Live Music Capital of the World, and thanks in part to University of Texas students, up-and-coming alt-country, alt-rock, alt-blues musicians flock to venues like the Broken Spoke, the Mohawk or Antone’s. “The Broken Spoke started out as a honky-tonk, and eventually you had [acts like] Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson,” says Texas native and UT English professor Michael Adams. “It made being weird normal.” Now, the once-tiny music conference and festival South by Southwest has become one of the country’s largest.


Hipsters of all stripes trek to Austin, Texas. By hipsters, I mean people who love irony but are suspicious of symbolism, who are laid-back without being lazy, who groom their music collections the way Wall Streeters monitor their stock portfolios, people whose relentlessly casual dress is constructed as painstakingly as stanzas in a pantoum.

Hippie or hipster, liberal or libertarian, salaried professional or hourly wageworker, people of all stripes here often refer to their work as their “day jobs,” rather than their careers. You’ll find coffee shop baristas, retail shop clerks, bookstore cashiers as well as doctors, lawyers and computer programmers who view their real work as something else entirely—music, art, an unpublished novel or collecting Popeye mugs.

My first time living in Austin felt more like a layover. I was teaching at the University of Texas and living in the leafy collegiate Hyde Park area, but I was in town only for the semester. I had a full teaching load and was the mother of two toddlers; I was on autopilot. Still, I dug the Austin parenting ethos: Kids cavorted on the outdoor play structures at Phil’s Icehouse or at Amy’s Ice Creams while parents watched from the sidelines, nursing bottles of Lone Star beer, comparing preschools and body piercings.

I was an instant fan of this brand of parenting, as it seemed an extension of Austin’s patio culture. Almost every restaurant, bar and music club has a patio annex as big—if not bigger—than its indoor space, since so much of Austin life is lived outside—pushing kids in a stroller, biking around town, or hiking to the coffee shop or watering hole. All of this is pleasant enough in March, April or May, but in summer, with 100-degree heat, it’s “Survivor” in flip-flops and a straw cowboy hat.

It was during this first grown-up foray in Austin that I became a breakfast taco fanatic, a complete surprise since the only breakfast tacos I’d ever seen were in ads for Taco Bell, where the tortillas were filled with gray florets of ground beef that appeared to be doused in WD-40 and topped with Cheez Whiz. Real breakfast tacos are something else. There’s the migas taco with egg, cheese and fried tortilla chips; the tinga de pollo with chipotle tomato salsa; the enfrijolada with tortillas dipped in black bean sauce and topped with cilantro.

I loved that Austin had strong Chicano roots, was Southern, friendly and even neighborly: the perfect combination of Southern heart, Western spirit and Yankee intellect.

The city’s unofficial motto is “Keep Austin Weird.” It’s a clarion call for residents to support local businesses and everything indie, to say no to big corporations or whomever Austinites suspect of attempting to package their scruffy “slacker-factor” authenticity. Many other cities—Portland, Madison, Santa Cruz and Asheville, North Carolina—have promoted similar campaigns, but it all began in Austin with Red Wassenich, an Austin Community College librarian, who was frustrated that “Austin had been moving away from its funkier roots.”

Wassenich’s 2007 book Keep Austin Weird is a tribute to personal expression, ranging from a mosquito collection to “art cars” (imagine vehicles decorated by Pippi Longstocking or Hulk Hogan). Then there’s Austin’s “yard art,” which can be as simple as showing off a hundred or so of your best pink flamingos, cast-off statuary and upcycled furniture pieces on your front lawn, to more complex projects that give a sculptural middle finger to city ordinances. The rusted three-story hubcap- and bicycle-based Cathedral of Junk was created by Vince Hannemann, a South Austin guy who decided his backyard was as good a place as any to build a cathedral. Now the “weird” rallying cry has expanded to include food trailers where you can buy your heart’s delight—from plate-size doughnuts at Gourdough’s to paper-plated gourmet food at Odd Duck.

Though I could eat my way through Austin 365 days a year, most Austinites would say it’s music, not food, that fuels the city. You can’t throw a cowboy boot without hitting a guitarist, music club or someone hawking playbills for an open-mike night. Austin is the self-styled Live Music Capital of the World, and thanks in part to University of Texas students, up-and-coming alt-country, alt-rock, alt-blues musicians flock to venues like the Broken Spoke, the Mohawk or Antone’s. “The Broken Spoke started out as a honky-tonk, and eventually you had [acts like] Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson,” says Texas native and UT English professor Michael Adams. “It made being weird normal.” Now, the once-tiny music conference and festival South by Southwest has become one of the country’s largest.

Texans tend to be traditionalists, and though Austinites might seem to head in the opposite direction, they can be just as traditional as anyone from Waco. Austin’s embrace of all things kitsch, camp and retro is little more than a way of preserving the old under a veneer of novelty. Thus the Popeye mugs and the red-rose tattoos with “Mom” in gothic lettering favored by fake sailors everywhere. Name an institution threatened with extinction and you’ll find Austinites of all ages and creeds intent on saving it.

But even Austinites can’t hold onto the past forever. Austin’s ’90s technological boom, spearheaded by Michael Dell, founder of Dell computers, is what brought me to Austin the second time around. I moved to Austin with my then-husband when he got hired at the computer company. We promptly separated, and while my ex contemplated a move to the northern burbs, the kids and I settled in Austin’s largely African-American East Side, where the homes are modest, some so small they’d be garages in posh Hyde Park. You might even swear you were in Antigua or Trinidad: turquoise-blue and tangerine-orange bungalows predominate for a few blocks, centered around a community garden, guarded by towering eight-foot-high sunflowers. Black and Latino kids shimmy down the playground slides and pedal their bikes, knowing they’ve got family on every block, whether related to them or not. I immediately fell in love with edgy and bucolic East Austin, which has its own version of yard art: bottle trees, similar to those on the Gullah islands, and makeshift sculptures that seem half Yoruba-inspired, half homage to Parliament-Funkadelic.

Along with Austin’s new affluence came expansion of the monstrous I-35 and MoPac expressways that displaced many African-Americans. Yet East Austin black folk uphold traditions such as the Juneteeth Day parade, which commemorates the end of slavery in Texas, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

What makes Austin a cultural powerhouse are its Latino roots, Tex-Mex vibe and expressions of pachanga—synonymous with “fiesta” but to the tenth power, as exemplified by Pachanga Fest, the premier Austin Latino music festival. Latinos make up more than 35 percent of Austin’s population. Dagoberto Gilb, an Austin essayist and novelist, says that Austin had a ways to go in terms of integration when he arrived from Los Angeles and El Paso 15 years ago: “When I came here, it was like going to Sweden.”

But if there is any city in Texas that strives to bridge divides, it’s Austin. East Austin and South Austin have undergone a renaissance that is half gentrification, half sustainable communities, with a strong locavore movement, community gardens and a new Mexican American Cultural Center.

When my mom comes to town, we eat at Hoover’s, one of the few places you’ll find blacks and whites chowing down in equal numbers, or we’ll head to a Cajun restaurant called Nubian Queen Lola’s. Then there’s El Chilito, where you can get Mexican Coca-Cola, paletas de crema (creamsicles) and tacos. Texas has an abundance of taco joints, but where else but Austin would my mother—probably the only 60-plus African-American vegetarian in all of Kentucky—be able to get a soy chorizo breakfast taco?

My visiting professorship at UT ended a while ago, and I now teach at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Yet I still live in Austin, commuting 1,700 miles a week for the privilege. And that seems fitting. Austin links worlds, whether it’s vegans who chain-smoke, twenty-somethings in cutoffs and flip-flops who eat pork belly sliders and do the two-step, or octogenarians who ride Harleys down South Congress.

“I think the BBQ/vegan contradiction is the essence of Austin,” local novelist Sarah Bird tells me when I mention my mom’s soy chorizo habit. “We seem to have cherry-picked and claimed what we like about Texas—dream big/fail big, don’t judge, but do dance. Maybe,” says Bird, hitting upon what may well be the perfect metaphor for the city’s composite, amalgamous nature, “Austin is all about the soy chorizo.”

ZZ Packer, author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, is writing a novel about Buffalo Soldiers.


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Comments (12)

Hey I am the beach chick who lived in Austin Texas and moved to the South Texas Coast and loving it....i am literally living on the beach. Love it. Flip Flops, ocean, bay etc. sand for my front yard and sand for back yard....love it.....You guys in Austin stay there except for my clique whom I hung out with. LOL.......Love the South Texas Coast.

Posted by Vicki Trusselli on February 7,2013 | 11:22 AM

Kids keep me from being a total night owl and getting out to hear/see as much live music as I would like, but the Alamo Theatre makes up for it. My fave is the South Lamar location--will spoil you for any other type of movie experience...you can get ACTUAL FOOD (as opposeed to processed popcorn) WHILE you watch a movie, and libations, if that's your speed. And if you get there 20 or 30 minutes ahead of time, they show clips and short-shorts and documentaries related to whatever film you're about to see. And in addition, they have great events--like showing all 80's films, or Korean Westerns, or Master Pancake Theatre. And during the summer you can take the kids to see free movies, as long as you shell out $5 for food. The Alamo Drafthouse is abetted in no small part by Austin’s film scene, which includes Richard Linklater, who put Austin on the cinematic map with films like Slacker and Dazed and Confused, Robert Rodriguez and his super low-budget El Mariachi, and Andrew Bujalski’s Funny Ha Ha. The Austin film scene helped institute a whole new film style known as “mumblecore,” which deliberately eschews the standard cloying super-score soundtracks, and uses in their stead psychologically rich films deliberately devoid of soap-opera style plotlines, often done on low budgets with hyper-realistic acting to give the films an un-scripted documentary-like feel. So when you're tired of the same old Hollywood stuff, check out some some Austin filmmakers… Anyway. Thanks for reading, and thanks for the comments. I couldn't mention everything--I'll leave that up to you… ZZ

Posted by zz packer on April 24,2012 | 06:02 PM

Thanks for all the great comments on the article! As you can imagine, space prohibitions kept me from mentioning all I would have liked to have mentioned. Yes, Mr. Eckert--the Mexican Freetailed bats swooping en masse from the South Congress bridge is a must-see! My sons and I sometimes go to check them out--the first time my eldest saw them, he twirled around and declared, "It's a miracle!" He was four at the time, and everyone (a crowd of maybe a hundred or more) fell out in laughter. Also, I wanted to include a shout-out to Franklin Barbecue, which started in an airstream trailer, then moved to a brick-and-mortar building. At first I thought it was a fluke that the bbq was so good--and the brisket just nothing short of amazing. But then the Yelpers got on the scene and the lines became outrageous. It's still great bbq, and now Aaron Franklin has been featured in every magazine around, but if you have an hour or two to wait in line, you'll taste some of the best bbq EVER. Rarely do you think of sushi when you think of Texas, but Uchi (home, in Japanese) is one of the best sushiyas in the nation. Then Uchiko came afterward (helmed by current Texas Top Chef winner Paul Qui) and I must say, the child outdoes the parent in this one...HINT: though Uchiko is expensive, there is a great "Social Hour" menu that goes from 5PM until 6:30, and you can get some selected dishes any only pay half or a third of the price, with sake starting at $3. Then there's Justine's Brasserie, which serves urban French food with an Austin-style outdoor courtyard vibe with a pétanque court thrown in for fun. It’s owned by Justine Gilcrease and Pierre Pellegrin , a musician who says he opened the place because he “just wanted to be able to play old blues and Billie Holiday records all night long.”

Posted by zz packer on April 24,2012 | 05:52 PM

oh yeah i forgot to mention my 50 pound weight gain......since moving here to Austin from LA. I was tiny and lived a very healthy lifestyle In LA. I now am 50 pounds overweight and back on my almost veggie diet with some meats due to my genetics....i like the dress code here, but do not care for the beer and barbie......and have not met one close girlfriend. they seem to judge by who you are with as a partner not on an individual basis. If we meet someone and they do not like your partner cause they tie their shoelaces the right way and then they do not have anything to do with you or your partner. This includes my family who live here. Then I remember when I lived and worked in Hollywood and they visit my family out in the desert in Cali they never called me or came by cause they did not like my partner and frankly when i got here my weird famly asked me how I knew about video production since I was on drugs in Cali. I was angry at first then realized it was probalby not my fault that they had such a narrow view of my life..I should have turned my car around and drove back to LA. I liked it here for awhile and then ran into more judgemental folks who take their ball and go home if they find something they do not like, instead dealing with differences. After running into my peeps family here who did not even know I was a college graduate I should have left immediately. My family told me when you move you have to a 12 pack of beer and do it right. I did that when they helped me move to north austin. They would not come over til i cleaned my house up..omg. now i live in south austin and they have nothing to do with me... I have met a lot of peeps who I thought were my friends but flaked out. I find Austin to be cool on the facade but for down to earth tell it like it is peeps I prefer LA.....

Posted by Vicki Trusselli on February 8,2012 | 12:10 PM

I moved from Los Angeles(North Hollywood) to Austin in 2003. Great city to visit but I am beach ocean chick and my best girlfriends still live in LA. Guess I moved here when I 53 not 23. I would move back to LA in a heartbeat if I had the money. I have met the good the bad and the ugly here as well as in any other city. I perfer LA.

Posted by Vicki Trusselli on February 8,2012 | 12:00 PM

Eeyore's Birthday!!!! http://www.eeyores.org/photos.shtml A very interesting Austin event :)

Posted by DoWhatNow? on January 17,2012 | 04:54 PM

Austin is a great place! but... unfortunately most tex-mex, or mexican food place here serve "taboo tacos"... the tortillas aren't "home made!" yes, there is a difference! great article otherwise...

Posted by javier lopez cantu on January 3,2012 | 09:59 PM

Austin is best explored through the prism of food. Particularly the taco and barbecue culture. There are over 1500 food trailers in town, 250 brick and mortar Mexican restaurants and just under 100 barbecue houses.

A journey through that world utilizing a camera and a laptop right this way....

http://www.scrumptiouschef.com/food/index.cfm/Austin-Daily-Photo

Posted by rl reeves jr on January 3,2012 | 05:58 PM

Austin is a special place....hip, young at heart, innovative, intellectual, and a pretty big foodie town. Yes, live music is king here, but the restaurants/cafes/trailers/food trucks/yada yada can compete with the best of larger cities. Being a Midwesterner at heart and having lived in NYC and my wife having northern + southern Cal roots, I can truly say that Austin has something for everyone of all stripes. We've been living here now for 15 years and never thought we'd live in Texas. Austin = friendly peeps, cool neighborhoods, laid-back DNA but ambitious, thriving creative scene, and booming entrepreneurial pulse....this all seem to keep Austin weird.

Posted by Roland Galang on January 3,2012 | 01:07 PM

Austin is indeed a wonderful and strange place, and Ms. Packer paints an appealing portrait. But I'm surprised she didn't mention the Congress Avenue Bridge bats. There are 1.5 million Mexican Freetailed bats that live there in the summer (the largest urban bat colony in the world), and viewing their nightly emergence has become a local tradition. These bats eat 10,000 - 20,000 pounds of insects (many of them pests) each night... something worth mentioning!

Posted by Hugh Eckert on December 31,2011 | 12:38 PM

I enjoyed the article written by ZZ Packer about Austin, Texas. I must say that she nailed it right on the head. Austin is a great town.I have been coming back and forth to Austin ever since I was 6 months old. I am now 53 years old. I have seen this city change dramtically year after year. I recently returned to Austin to care for my aging father who has been hospitalized for over a year.The medical facilities are second to none and the care givers are the best.

Austin truely is a treasure.Having relocated from the Washington DC area back to Austin has been a Blessing.
Austin is what you make it.Thanks ZZ I hope to bump into you on the East side one day!

Posted by Grant Coffman on December 27,2011 | 10:19 AM

great article, its a great city for parents too i have seen that with my own eyes. great bookstores and thrift shops, good chicano food, would like to visit again.

Posted by sue berton on December 24,2011 | 01:29 AM




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