Keep Austin Weird

That's the slogan I keep on seeing around Austin, Texas's official state capital. That, and "Hook 'em horns".


"Hook 'em horns" is referring to the longhorn cattles in Texas, the very recognizable "horn" hand sign and the "Texas Longhorn" football team at the University of Texas in Austin.

College football is taken very seriously in the US, the college games get just as much air-play and attention on TV as the professional games. In fact since college football season started a few weeks ago, there is a noticeable drop in traffic around night time on the street - lots of people are either at home watching the game, or with their "footy mates" at sports bar watching the games on the big screens.

Seeing I was right there, I decided to check out the UT myself. It was massive - pretty much it's own suburb! There is a full size football stadium within the grounds, complete with its own merchandise souvenior shop and ticket office.

"Keeping Austin Weird" is originally in reference to places and people that are eccentric in Austin. They even have an official website on this.
http://www.keepingaustinwerid.com

There are weird places like the junk garden and the polka-dot lawn, and wierd people such as a cross-dressing homeless guy and the world's oldest boy band. If only I knew about this earlier!

Polkadot lawn and its owner Beth Thom (pictures from the keepingaustinweird site)

For the more conventional tourists, there are historical buildings such as the governor's mansion and the State Capitol of Texas. The State Capitol of Texas is like our parliament building.

While I was there, the county festival was also on so 6th street in downtown Austin was blocked off and there were food (really weird ones, but always deep fried of course), arts and craft stalls, rides for kids and live music stages dotted along the street and lots of people out. Great fun (if only it wasn't so hot!!)

1. Lone Star arts 2. Ceramic chilli wind charms 3. metal artworks

Check this out - photo shaved into curls then fried!

I had some trouble working out which plate matched up to which menu item!