Red Wassenich, who coined the term "Keep Austin Weird," dies
"'Keep Austin Weird' Originator Remembered for Choosing Community Over Capital," Austin Chronicle-- Keep Austin Weird
In"First Weird Austin now "Slow Architecture"" (2006) I made the point that one problem with such "campaigns" as the slogan has been commandeered in places like Portland Oregon and Louisville Kentucky is that "independent retail" shouldn't be seen as weird but as normal and essential.
It was never Red Wassenich's intention for the slogan to become "a brand." But it did.
-- "
The history of how 'Keep Austin Weird' became synonymous with the Capital City," Culture Map Austin
-- "Keeping Austin Weird: Graffiti and Urban Branding," The End of Austin blog
-- "Keeping it Weird in Austin, Texas," Smithsonian Magazine
-- "Why Place Branding Is Becoming Place Doing (Consider Austin)," Forbes
-- "Owners of Keep Austin Weird slogan are suing festival of same name," Austin American-Statesman
Labels: branding, branding-identity, city-regional branding
posted by Richard Layman @ 1:18 PM&Permanent Link
9 Comments:
I haven't seen much adoption of "DMV" in the area although it is a good name. I do see Cleveland trying to use "CLE". My personal favorite is Cafe Cafe tu-o-tu in Georgetown which took me about 10 years to see - I am mildly austic?
Various private enterprises using "Burning River".
Hope you are doing well and not freaking out.
CLE I have seen. DO AC is another. tu oh tu, maybe a little to subtle, but yep, I sometimes miss "obvious" stuff like that.
DMV isn't bad, except the cross-border stuff. I doubt the multi state region can come together and accept one brand, given how within each there is so much competition for business location.
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Things are starting to shut down, schools, libraries, the senior center. I am almost 60 but not too worried, although an "OK boomer" article said I should be.
I wish I had gone to the library on Thursday to check out more books...
The issue is Suzanne's parents. her father seems to be susceptible to lung conditions. (He was hospitalized briefly in January, it turned out to be RSV, which is carried by kids. On New Year's Eve we were at a house party where there was a small child.)
We grocery shop and stuff (the Smith's was out of rice and beans and bottled water--I did want a couple bags of beans, but not water--tap is fine).
At least it's starting to get warmer, so we can walk outside.
I used to say I lived in suburban within DC but where we live is more like T3 in the New Urban Transect, whereas before we were T4. Very car centric although we can walk to a couple places, and I can bike the same way I did in DC, to the core.
But it means, fortunately, we have less interaction with people. If we were in DC with them, it'd be tougher. For a time, I used to jokingly call Marina, "MarinaGF" for Germ Factory. S especially seemed to get sick from them. It'd be an issue with her parents (S's mother didn't want to move to DC, although it's still an option in the future I suppose).
WRT freaking out, that's not my way. It's "bad" but by volume. It happens there was a period when I read a lot of John O'Hara and he had a bunch of stories relating to the Spanish Flu, which is probably why I know a bit about it.
This isn't like that. But because there aren't slack resources in the health system, it has the likelihood of overwhelming it.
There are a few cases in Utah, and now at least one in Salt Lake County. But not so far, from people in the places we frequent.
The man next door works for the U basketball team... Fortunately, not for the Jazz!
If we were into Pro Basketball, I might be freaking out then!
How about you? DC? I see the schools and so much else is closing. Metro is cutting back. Etc.
The reason I can't tell if it is a ghost town here is because there is so little people on the street by comparison here anyway.
Yes, I'd be very worried about the in-laws.
DC, I'd say bars are fairly active. Clearly a drop off in activity but not like it is over Thanksgiving/Christmas. My gym is deserted. Nice day yesterday and lots of people in Rock Creek park. Bad idea to close schools.
Yes also missed out on library books incredibly pissed about that. Zero thinking as they basically could have let 15-20 people a time into the library.
I think your point about people is the US refusing to learn from anywhere else is going to be seen in spades right now, but I doubt anybody will learn from it.
Yep. I have been torn about writing about it. Other people have already written some great stuff.
Something I read, I can't remember what, said the US doesn't have a health care system, but marketplaces. That sums up the end game of neoliberalism.
I make the point that Detroit is the endgame of what the car companies wanted to have happen to cities.
Where we are with a discoordinated health system, anti-government executive branch in the national government, lack of a robust social welfare network able to be resilient and supportive in time of crisis is the endgame of neoliberalism.
Theoretically, from the standpoint of universal access to healthcare (regardless of what it is called), this is the point of "not letting a crisis go to waste" and demonstrating what is needed, just like WW2 made the British recognize how the lack of universal health care left the nation incredibly vulnerable, and led to the creation of NHS.
the thing about closing schools though is kids as germ vectors. Then again, who can be out if they have to take care of their kids.
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zero interest rate!
Ok if there are going to be loans to businesses that don't have business interruption insurance (which a pandemic may not be eligible for anyway), but when you can't go out and spend money, when demand is minimal, how will that do anything?
It's an illustration of the tax cut and everything else eviscerating the usefulness of fiscal policy tools.
zero interest rate =monetary tools. Tax cuts/stimulus = fiscal tools.
arguably both are useless. But we've got a bigger problem -- world is running out of dollar. I suspect the chinese have run out of dollar and are liquidating everything to raise cash. They alone don't have the ability to borrow from the fed. So this tools have a use.
ON healthcare, we have the best backend (actual care) but the worst front end (customer experience and then getting useful information to patients) and this is a front end crisis.
(not an area I know that much about. Know much more on the pharma side).
The horrible thing is the pandemic people love plans, they are executing it, but may kill the patient before they cure the disease. The US can't afford a 2-3 month commercial shutdown, much less an interim 18 month shutdown which is what they want. What minimal level of disease is needed before you open up business again?
wrt the "minimal disease" question, yep, no one knows. What happens in Hubai province after they start gearing back up? Is there a second bump?
And yes, "the economy stupid" but when have we ever had an economy that was open but not functioning.
Basically people will only buy food and health care.
Neither fiscal nor monetary tools can stimulate demand in an economy where demand is in precipitous decline.
... I don't watch sports on tv (well, we did watch the MLB playoffs and World Series because of the Nationals) and I've been wondering, what will all those channels do for content with league play suspended (of course, they'll probably just replay past games).
Basically we have the Great Depression, and yes, our economy isn't set up to withstand something like that.
ESPN was running plane races.
https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/ac85e106-3dd3-4710-8f28-d01b6b4c307c
(other asiaa countries).
Great article. Thank you. I did read something that linked to the JAMA article, but I admit I didn't read it through.
... today it happened I was thinking about something like what Taiwan has done in terms of dealing with epidemics.
It really hurts the US that the directors of CDC and CMMS are political appointments. Surgeon General too. Ideally, this would be an interlinked system and somewhat independent from interference. (I'm not saying Verma is a hack, but she seems to take a lot of positions that are political more than they are health-oriented.)
The other thing the article gets at is the ability to deal extranormally with extranormal events.
Like S. Korea's separate procedure for the creation of the lab tests in emergency situations.
We don't seem to have that capacity anymore.
Decades ago, reading the book by Lawrence Sanders, _The First Deadly Sin_, about a murder in NYC that happened when the police department was in the midst of a big reorganization, a high up captain (protagonist of the book, Edward X. Delaney) said create an ad hoc committee to deal with this investigation while going forward with the reorganization.
E.g., DK if you read anything on the Seattle Flu Study. (1) there should be those kinds of reconnaissance studies ongoing across the country anyway. (2) that they couldn't get approval to expand the study to look at coronavirus is incredible.
That's an example of needing to be able to adapt, to have different procedural paths and processes in emergency situations.
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