We got back from Utah last night. Brand Austin awaited us at the airport. Twenty steps out of the plane, Lefty's Bar and Grille on Sixth Street and Barton Springs Dry Goods were there for those desperate to buy something of Austin.
Merchants in Austin have evolved an interesting strategy to get people to buy local. "Keep Austin Weird" probably means a lot of things to a lot of people, but the official version means support local stores not national or international chains.
If one of the destructive impulses of capitalism seems to be large scale conglomeration and homogenization, a la Wal-Mart, then this is an interesting corrective. Most people love the small scale commerce of a French market street, so why not the Austin version?
The selection of shops at the airport does include a number of Austin's better known faces, from restaurants to record stores to public or quasi-public entities like Austin City Limits.
So I am a bit ambivalent. I love Austin, but I sometimes wish it was not so self aware of its own loveability. Or that its loveability was not so heavily com- modified.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Brand Austin starts here
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3 comments:
I've very much felt the same way about Salvador--I've loved it whenever we've been there, but I've always felt that I would love it more if everything (especially in the Pelourinho) didn't seem like it should have a little TM by the name.
I just spent a week in Honolulu and I noticed that the stores there were divided into two categories: those that were exactly like the ones we find in all the malls in Los Angeles and presumably the rest of the US, and those that were selling cheap souvenirs, most of which seemed to be made in southeast Asia. This seems to fit with some of your other observations, although the Walmartization was fairly high end.
I agree--I think sometimes obvious self-awareness can become a little frustrating, loosing that...what's the word...innocence? I don't know, that's probably not the best word choice. But I do see your point. TV shows tend to do that, sometimes, when they get pretty popular, no?
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