Going into Austin, all I knew about it was that it was not like the rest of Texas. Going into Texas, most of what I knew was that it was a deeply-rooted red state where people love their guns more than anything, wear cowboy hats, fashion leather boots and drive large pick-up trucks (a sweeping generalization, I know – there is more to Texas, I’m sure). A lot of this ended up being the case for Austin, too, but still I had to agree that there was something inherently different about this city. When looking at a map visualizing the margin of victory between Republicans and Democrats over the past couple of state and national elections, Austin stands out as a bright blue dot amongst a sea of red. 

Who is Austin?

This city is known as the music city (live music, that is), prides itself for its diversity, values its infamous local breakfast tacos and unique waterholes, and embraces the inherently weird. In Austin, you can be yourself. Like in Portland, Keep Austin Weird is a tagline you can find on mugs, t-shirts, murals, and keychains and so surely, I thought, there must be truth to it. Being a bit different myself, I was curious to find out whether this flamboyant city would embrace someone like me too. And just how different to other major and supposedly unique cities would it truly be? 

In the end, I initially found much of the city to be similar to other places I had visited in the U.S., the linear course of 21st century politics and capitalist economics slowly chipping away at what had once made Austin stand out. An interstate highway now stood where diverse and historically bound neighborhoods had once existed and tech companies had come in to construct large skyscrapers obstructing your view of the sky. Over time, Austin’s natural pools were struggling to keep up from overuse and animals that had once called these places home were crippling in numbers. And a breakfast taco? You’d be hard pressed to find an affordable option. Simultaneously, rent prices continued to soar and the people who made Austin what it is are increasingly pushed away into adjacent neighborhoods – further and further from where the real weird happens.

Austin Weird Lingers On

Despite all this, there continues to be a beating heart in Austin, kept alive by those who stay and by those who are drawn by the story that this city has sold over the years. I was very fortunate to find myself right in the center of the ‘true and authentic’ Austin and during my week there, I almost felt as though I had stepped back in time into a world where hippies and freethinkers continued to thrive, where off the grid living near a wildlife sanctuary was still possible, and communal potlucks were often held.

When finding myself at a local barn dance a few days into my stay in Austin (at the invitation of a friend I had made at a potluck a few days before), I talked to some people about my being in Austin as a Dutch person. We were standing in someone’s gorgeous and spacious backyard, a wooden stage erected in the far left corner from which country music drifted into the cool evening air. Around us, two tables were covered with home-made food, so many options that you could probably go back four times, fill up your plate to the rims, and still leave without having tried everything. I remember them looking at me in surprise, taking in our surroundings, and going “it took us sixteen years to find this place, and you stumbled upon it in a week!”. Ever since that moment, I decided to hold on to the uniqueness of what I had found, and concluded that the city of Austin seemed to carry within itself a multitude of dimensions.

Austin’s character is what makes it so unique, and many people continue to be drawn by this. For a week, I house-sat and looked after two half-feral but loving cats at an eclectic campsite in a beautiful green enclave right off the South Congress Avenue (only in Austin, I thought to myself as I cycled from my forested homebase onto the busy road every afternoon). In the morning, I would be awoken by the sound of squirrels running amok from tree to tree, dropping nuts on my trailer’s roof, and I was even lucky enough to cross eyes with multiple deer. At night, I could hear the coyotes howling into the darkness as I feared for the life of my two cat-children who still hadn’t come inside (they’re okay). This campsite was engulfed with art and individuality. Here, old bed frames were constructed into lucious garden beds, the chicken coop built on the remains of an old shed, trailers and broken down cars turned into comfortable living conditions, and the one winding path running down the campsite paved with different colored orbs of glass that would glitter in the sunlight. 

One of my neighbors was a young man, a philosophy major originally from Utah but with Greek descent, who hoped to one day permanently migrate to Austin. Every time I saw him, he wore a white cowboy hat, adjourned a pair of beautiful boots, fashioned plain jeans and a white t-shirt, and I found out that each morning he could be found balancing an old-fashioned cigar between his lips. The only thing that was still missing was a horse, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if he would one day add it to his collection. Most nights, he and other community members congregated around the campfire to play acoustic guitar and I swear I even heard someone play the fiddle. Austin weird still existed, and was alive and kicking it.

White Austin vs. Black Austin 

While white Austin seems to have managed to maintain its identity fairly well, there is a part of Austin that is slowly wasting away too. Although it is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States, predominantly because it is a relatively nice city to live in (to be fair, there aren’t that many great options…), it is also the only growing city with a declining Black population. This was fairly noticeable and even in my perfect looking enclave I couldn’t help but notice just how white everyone was. Up until that point I hadn’t been surrounded by exclusively white people since partaking in a Trump rally in Phoenix, Arizona, and in a way, this experience had begun to feel offly un-American to me.

Turns out, in 1928, the city of Austin quite literally cemented segregation into its urban planning. Within two years, 80 percent of Austin’s African Americans were moved to the East Side. This wasn’t a natural trend and instead it was stimulated (forced) by moving institutions upon which Black Austonites depended towards the east, along with closing down schools and public facilities in other parts. In 1950, the city even built the I-35, a 3,500km highway that runs from Minnesota to Texas, right through the heart of Austin – physically separating the east from the rest of the city.

At that same time, other parts of the city underwent transformative changes and priority was granted to preserve natural spaces in order to market the city as a beacon for green progress and growth. Meanwhile, polluting institutions like petroleum storage tanks and power plants were moved to the east side, of course. Whereas people on the western side of the highway lavishly enjoyed Austin’s unique natural water pools, people on the east developed acute and chronic health issues, cancers and diseases caused by pollution. 

Visit Austin in 2024, and you’ll be told to explore the East side if you’re in search of a more alternative and off the beaten path experience. Sixth street, known for rollicking bars and trendy nightclubs hosting live music, is supposedly more eclectic, unique and authentically Austin once you cross that same, dividing highway. By now, East Austin has become one of the most gentrified neighborhoods in the city as the rising cost of living has pushed out the Black and Latino residents who have long called it home. As a result, trendy businesses and new developments have replaced long standing community establishments, ripping away at what made the east side so unique in the first place. At the same time, the west side is just a shell of once it once was, offering a commercialized bar experience worlds away from what used to make Austin’s Sixth street so special.

The Future of Austin’s Youth

Like most American cities, Austin struggles with increasing homelessness and rising levels of drug use. At the same time, big tech money is dominating the city’s changing landscape and steering much of the city’s economic growth. This trend gives shape to a certain disconnect between what the city experience can be like if you have money, and what it will realistically be like if you don’t.

Outside of a gas station on one of my last evenings in this city I met Josh, a twenty-one year old born and raised Austonite. Josh and I ended up talking for well over an hour and if I wasn’t for the fact that I had somewhere to be, we probably would have stood there well into the night. He was wearing a white shirt with more holes than I could count, a pair of black jogging shorts and some slippers. From under his right eyebrow, a deep scar ran across his face toward his ear. “Car accident”, he told me later, rubbing his finger across his eyebrow. 

He struck up conversation with me as I was fumbling with my bike lock and asked whether I had ever gotten my bike stolen, a question that initially caught me off guard (and one I couldn’t quite answer on account of never having properly owned a bike in the U.S. at that point). He told me he simply asked because there are many people on the prowl for nice-looking bikes, to sell and buy drugs with. While telling me this, Josh pointed towards a pawn shop not much further from us, a decent enough looking business throughout the day that turned sketchy in the darker hours of the night. “Places like that, they’ll buy anything, even if they know it’s stolen”. We watched the flickering red pawn sign from afar and thought of all the stolen trinkets that could be on display right at this moment.

We were standing in South Austin, right off South Congress and a few minutes down from US-260, an east-west highway that runs from Houston through Austin, miles apart from the barn dance I would be attending less than an hour later and the farm that I had just left.

What followed was a conversation on Austin’s police presence, the cold stint in 2021 that sent Texas in a pure chaos, climate change, drug use in the U.S. (“Is fentanyl as big a deal in the Netherlands as it is here?” he asked), trash-lined highways, and the 24/7 economy that dominated much of American life. Despite being just twenty-one, he spoke with such an awareness of the world and the unfortunate reality in which he found himself that I genuinely would have sworn (or perhaps, wished) that he must have been older. I generally make this mistake more often, as youthfulness seems to be rushed in America.

He told me that he worked night shifts up at USPS (“Thankfully a labor union job”, he said, a fact he would have to hide when applying at future jobs as they are not generally keen on hiring individuals with labor standards) and slept through much of the day time. This alienated him from the Austin that existed throughout the day and the one that I had grown to know. Instead, his day to day consisted of continuously catching up on enough sleep to push himself through the night. “All that because it pays slightly more,” he confessed. And even then, he was just barely scraping by.

I would have loved to know more about his version of Austin – his go-to spots and his group of friends – but unfortunately it was time for me to move on. I did ask him if he felt like the city has changed over the years, although I realised later that he probably never even experienced the city prior to the tech-boom, the soaring housing prices, and the processes of gentrification taking over historically marginalised neighbourhoods. His answer? He simply told me that Austin would always be Austin, regardless of the changes taking place, as Austin is within the people who call it home.

I hope that he was right, and I also hope that those who have shaped and continue to shape this quirky and weird city can keep living in it, especially now that its future is becoming more uncertain due to the rising cost of living for all. And let’s not forget that with as un-Texan as this city might feel at times, it still lies within the heart of a big and dry Southern state, which also happens to be one of the U.S.’ fastest-warming states. Climate catastrophes like lasting droughts and extensive heats will affect all people evenly, regardless of your type of weird. But if there is a city best equipped with the identity markers needed to construct bridges between different types of people, it ought to be Austin. It has to be.