Hey down there, AUSTIN! Just wanted to give y’all a friendly hello from waaayyy up north here in Round Rock. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say that we’re waaayyy up here, ’cause it’s really just a few miles up the highway from downtown. Sure, lots of folks think we Rockers just stay up here and “Keep It Normal,” but that’s just plain crazy! I, Karen Rosenthal, am here to say that YOU people are the ones who are missin’ out on all the real weirdness. Check out what you’re missing, Austin!
The new outlet mall
Okay, so maybe it’s not so brand new anymore, but it’s still worth mentioning. Before, you had to pack up the Excursion and head to San Marcos to get the hottest deals on out-of-style clothes with manufacturing irregularities. Most of the time, it just wasn’t worth it to even go there. That’s all changed now that Round Rock is home to the Premium Outlets, an outdoor shopping center with discount stores from Burberry, J. Crew, and even Calvin Klein. And with three restaurants, it’s like you never need to leave!
IKEA
Talk about culture in our city — this store sells Swedish furniture. If you’re like me and you were smart enough to camp outside the store for three days before its grand opening, you might still be trying to decide what to buy with the $2 gift card you got for being among the first inside.
Round Rock Express at the Dell Diamond
These 2006 Pacific Coast League American Conference champions are so much fun to watch, and the kiddos just love going to games. It’s a wonderful event that the whole family can enjoy. Amazing fact: The Dell Diamond has a capacity for 10,000 people. It’s no wonder that Round Rock is the Sports Capital of Texas!
Chili’s
Yep, we have plenty of great restaurants up here, too. Ever since this eatery started allowing customers to pick ’n’ choose whatever trio of tastiness they’d like in their Triple Dipper appetizer, this evening and weekend hotspot has had quite a wait to get in. Spicealicious!
As you can see, things up here in the RR are just as cool and totally weird as they are in Austin. Maybe even weirder.
Comments
You’re kidding right?
That’s too funny.
I only wish you people could have lived here during the days of old the Armadillo, and knew the real meaning of keep Austin wierd. Round Rock woo hoo!!! You have no idea. Go home all of you.
Round Rock is insanely weird because it is filled with people who choose to live outside of a functioning urban center. It is one thing to live in a suburb if the central city is completely disfuntional(think Detroit), but to live outside of Austin by choice is weird to me. You get cheap new McMansions, new minimalls with generic big box retail and chain restaurants, new civic infrastructure, and cheaper living. You are also surrounded by people who choose to live this way; they allow their minds to be shaped by this psychogeographical landscape.
I work part time for a vendor in bigbox retail outlets and I get scheduled in Round Rock from time to time. The people out there are so weird. They are all stuck in this nightmarish generic American consumer reality. It is all about driving big cars with athletic stickers on freeways with government toll road propaganda and watching television. They are completely devo.
There really isn’t too much that is weird in Austin these days. The real weirdness in central Texas can easily be found north of Austin via I-35.
Austin was wierd when a hippie pad’s couch-littered front porch was visually indistinguishable from a redneck’s place (only clue would be guitar vs. sitar music in background, and rebel flag vs. beads in the window.)
Austin was wierd when hippie chicks drove 1972 VW Bugs that were worth less than towing fees (1) to keep them from being impounded (not worth the trouble) and (2) because you so often forgot where you parked it when you’d get stoned.
Now ‘hippie chick’ is a sandwich, and you have clean, 30-yr-old+ womyn driving brand new $30,000 VW ‘bugs’ listening to yoko on itunes with a “Keep Austin Wierd” plastic bumper sticker made in China.
Smart growth and all that livable city BS created Round Rock and sprawl-to-driftwood, and drove the land value downtown so high that plywood Liberty Lunch etal was destroyed for the City Taj Mahal and CSC type plastic boxes.
Brigid Shea murdered Austin Wierd. RIP Dred Zeppelin..
DOES EVERYONE IN AUSTIN TAKE THEMSELVES THIS SERIOUSLY? How about this, I’ll get over Austin, you get over yourself.
I wish you people would stop calling people “you people.” Thats all I wish, actually.. well, that and I wish for some friends. But that’s really it.