Austin

Keeping It Weird: Leslie as Austin’s Icon

A dog dressed up as Leslie Cochran, wearing a hot pink bra, a hot pink feather boa, and a brown curly wig

Image Credit: Austin Culture Map

H/T: Noel Radley

Austin’s Thirteenth Annual East Pet Parade, held just last Saturday, not only celebrated “family, friends, and of course our furry friends,” but also Austin resident Leslie Cochran, who passed away a month before.  The organizers encouraged owners to dress their dogs in drag in Cochran’s honor, so Chris Perez dressed her dog Leslie in traditional Leslie garb: a pink bra and a feather boa.

(NSFW after the jump.)

Protesting What?

UT Co-Op

(Image Credit: Jay Voss)

“Here we go again, same old rat again…” Students and staff at UT Austin have undoubtedly noticed the protesters outside of the University Co-Op this semester. Every weekday, 15 to 20 determined workers gather on the sidewalk just south of Guadalupe and 23rd Street, and picket all morning until noon. The spot is especially smart given that all major southbound bus routes let out at the exact spot. Thousands of UT students and staff pass by these protestors every morning during the final stages of their commutes. The group’s chants echo eastward through one of the campus’ main pedestrian thoroughfares, all the way up to the revered UT-Austin bell tower. So I was surprised when a polling of my students revealed that none of them knew what the group stood for.

Texas Wildfires and Nonlinear Disaster Narratives

Image Credit: Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN

Since this past Sunday the local wildfires have been a dominant force in the Texas media. Over 1,000 homes and 35,000 acres were destroyed in the Bastrop area alone, and while the Bastrop fire has been contained there are more and more reports of fires springing up north of Houston and throughout East Texas.  It would be a mistake, though, to consider this rash of wildfires an isolated event. As the months long drought has continued wildfires have been nervously anticipated alongside cracked foundations and the flooding a serious rain could bring. The images that surround this disaster carry with them that sense of inevitability. The standard series of disaster photos, though, cast confusion around the event—by forcing the fires into a basic linear narrative we are given the impression that things have settled down even as dozens of blazes continue to advance. <--break->

The Impermanent Art of Graffiti

Banksy - Lascaux cave art

Graffiti by Banksy, Image via Holy Taco

As many of Banksy's works show, graffiti can convey social commentary. For example, the painting above, which shows a city worker sandblasting the famous Lascaux cave paintings just as he would modern day graffiti, wittily laments the blindness of local governments to public art.

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