“Keep Denton Chido”
“Keep Denton Chido” (“chido” is Spanish for “cool”) is a 2008 entry in another city knockoff of the slogan “Keep Austin Weird.”
The seemingly endless imitation Texas city slogans include “Keep San Antonio Lame,” “Keep Dallas Pretentious,” “Keep Dallas Plastic,” “Keep Dallas Douche,” “Keep Houston Dirty,” “Keep Abilene Boring,” “Keep College Station Normal,” “Keep Georgetown Normal,” “Keep Round Rock Mildly Unusual,” “Keep Wimberley Weirder,” “Keep Lubbock Flat” and “Keep Waco Wacko.”
Wikipedia: Denton, Texas
Denton is the county seat of Denton County, Texas in the United States. According to the 2000 census, the city’s population was 80,537, making it the eleventh largest city in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. The July 2007 United States Census Bureau estimate, however, gave Denton’s population as 115,506, and named the city as the nation’s tenth fastest-growing city among those with over 100,000 people.
Denton is home to two state universities, the University of North Texas, the largest university in North Texas and the third largest in Texas, and Texas Woman’s University, the largest state-supported university for women in the United States.
Both the city and county were named after John B. Denton, a pioneer, preacher, lawyer and Texas Militia Captain. Residents of Denton are known as “Dentonites” and the city has been known as the “Redbud Capital of Texas” since 1993. In 2006, Money magazine named Denton no. 58 out of the “Top 100 Best Places to Live in America.”
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KEEPDENTONCHIDO
North Texas Daily
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
UNT students vying to “Keep Denton Chido”
By Addley Fannin of North Texas Daily
DENTON — What started out as a casual idea between two NT seniors turned into a citywide campaign in support of small businesses.
The “Keep Denton Chido” slogan, which can be seen on T-shirts and stickers throughout Denton, was created by interdisciplinary studies senior Mickey Moreno and geography senior David Sisuentes in an effort to promote the independent groups they feel make Denton special.
“Denton is a cool little town,” Sisuentes said. “We need to keep people aware of how the whole space that Denton was known for is gone. It’s to keep awareness and not let small businesses die, keep the ‘mom-and-pop’ shops around.”
The campaign started while Moreno and Sisuentes were both attending summer classes and living in their Sigma Lambda Beta fraternity house.
Though both are natives of Fort Worth, Moreno had been coming to Denton with family for half a decade and told Sisuentes about what the city was like before the historic Fry Street area was torn down in June 2007.
“I remember what Fry Street used to be like really well,” Moreno said. “I told David about what happened, and he was like, ‘Man, someone should do something about that.’”
After some discussion, the pair created a slogan inspired by the “Keep Austin Weird” campaign, which promotes a similar pro-small business stance in the state capital.
The word “chido,” a Spanish slang term that means “cool” in a very broad sense, was chosen because the term can be used to describe many things that are unusual.
“It’s a real versatile word,” Sisuentes said. “You can use it for basically anything, but its main purpose is cool or unique. It’s just a unique word that really describes a certain state of mind.”
Moreno and Sisuentes had the message printed on an order of T-shirts, which they then began selling to friends and associates.
“We started with 20 T-shirts, and we ended up selling them within a week just our friends,” Moreno said. “So we made 20 more, and they were gone in two days. Next thing we knew, people we didn’t know were wearing them because people were buying them and handing them out.”
The message quickly spread in ways the creators did not expect.
“When people started wanting stickers as much as the shirts, they started making them themselves and sticking them up,” Moreno said. “It was a form of graffiti, and I didn’t really support it because of that, but it was really cool to see my stickers around.”