lone star weird

Thus Spake Daniel Kalder No.30

The theme of this latest installment of TSDK is the stranger side of my adopted home, Texas. The impetus was a piece I did for UnHerd on the transformation of Austin from the laid back college town featured in the cult classic Slacker into Silicon Valley 2.0. But then I thought I would take advantage of my completely redesigned website danielkalder.com to design a little trip through Texas via a few pieces from my archive. So without further ado, let’s get started:

• The Death of the Weird

• Waco: What Happened Next?

• My President is a Robot

• The Good Life starring William Burroughs

The Death of the Weird

When I first moved to Austin 17 years ago I was somewhat surprised to find that the city’s slogan was “Keep Austin Weird”. Having just come from Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, where the local dictator had installed a rotating golden statue of himself with arms upheld as if he were holding the sun in place, it just didn’t seem that weird. But the city grew on me and after a couple of years I was willing to concede that it was at least quite quirky. Now a lot of those quirks are vanishing, as I explain in this piece with the harrowing title Tech bros are destroying weird Austin.