The current roster would make quite the dance card at a digital county fair: Dell has since been joined by other computer companies like IBM and Intel hyperscalers like Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon and colocation providers like Data Foundry, Switch, Stream, and Digital Realty. And while many ended up in Miami, the overwhelming majority took direct flights on Southwest Airlines to the weirdest city in the nation. Musk’s pandemic-era relocation represented something else that was quietly taking place, which was an all-out second migration of technical talent from Silicon Valley and San Francisco. (Not a native, mind you because he wasn’t born here, but a Texan nonetheless.) Texas is seemingly the anti-state to California, in terms of business climate and economic opportunity. And there may be no two republics more alien to each other in terms of taxation, cost of living, or government regulation.Īnyway, back to the topic at hand. The reasons that brought Michael Dell and his company to south central Texas two decades ago are the same ones that recently made Elon Musk a naturalized resident of the state.
And for the record, they did not technically come to Austin, but rather lassoed the quiet city of Round Rock and pulled it into the pen, making it a de facto Austin suburb. Dell came to town, and it was pretty much downhill after that, at least in terms of weirdness. Austin is where you went to misspend your youth-before you moved out, moved on, and found a real job somewhere reputable like Houston or Dallas.īut then.
But even the squarest of squares will find elements of Austin that delight and dazzle them. Little did she know that Texas is my home state, the place where I spent my wonder years, and inarguably the greatest republic in the Union.Īny native Texan above a certain age will chuckle, at least in their minds, at the notion that Austin could do anything you might consider “grown-up.” Austin’s city motto is “Keep Austin Weird,” and until only recently was best known for Longhorns, Hippy Hollow, and some serious music festivals like South by Southwest. THE LEGEND OF KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD goes something like this: In the spring of 2000, a local Austin Community College librarian by the name of Red Wassenich was. The unofficial motto of the Texas state capital is Keep Austin Weird, and the citys thriving and zany counterculture proves that the locals are doing their best to live up to the saying. The city houses the HOPE Outdoor Gallery on Baylor Street ( soon to relocate to East Austin) Chicken Shit Bingo at Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon the Cathedral of Junk constructed in a South Austin yard Museum of the Weird turtle racing at Little Woodrow's a reverence - if not outright devotion- for Leslie, a former homeless cross-dresser who earned a cult following the spectacle witnessing 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats emerge from Ann Richards Congress Avenue Bridge at dusk and hidden speakeasies like Floppy Disk Repair (also known as the Red Headed Stepchild).Faster than you can say Lucchese boots or Shiner Bock beer, the Lone Star State has become a contender for the title of “data-center capital of the United States.” In recent years, we’ve been shipping a lot of equipment to Texas, to Austin in particular. And when my editor mentioned a blog on the topic, I jumped at the chance to take a closer look at this trending phenomenon. The use of bumper sticker slogans to market nearby suburbs ("Keep Round Rock Mildly Unusual" or "Pflugerville: Between a Rock and a Weird Place") can be seen on cars navigating up and down I-35.Ĭurrently, the list of keeping Austin weird attractions is only limited by one's imagination. Despite the city's growth and the near-constant debate about whether Austin is truly "weird," the mantra - and shop local mentality - has remained for nearly two decades and spread to other Central Texas towns.
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