“Keep Georgetown Normal”

Georgetown is a suburb north of the city of Austin, but it’s not nearly as quirky as the capital city is. “Keep Georgetown Normal” is a 2005 imitation/parody of the popular 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 Denton Chido,” “Keep Abilene Boring,” “Keep College Station Normal,” “Keep Round Rock Mildly Unusual,” “Keep Wimberley Weirder,” “Keep Lubbock Flat” and “Keep Waco Wacko.” 
     
 
postconditional (Livejournal)
Post Conditional (postconditional) wrote,
@ 2005-05-29 03:34:00
(...)
Austin may be weird. It may be liberal. It may have been in one of the few Texas counties to have voted Kerry. If Texas is a whole ‘nother country, then Austin is a whole ‘nother country inside of that, but the truth is that the rest of Texas culture is encroaching on Austin just as Austin expands and encroaches upon once unconnected towns. There’s a t-shirt that has been spotted up here in Georgetown, thirty minutes North of Austin. It reads, “Keep Georgetown normal.”
     
This is a Blog. It is only a Blog.
Jul. 15th, 2007 03:35 pm
The Strange Undercurrents of a Small Town
(...)
There aren’t many seriously strange people in Georgetown. We’re talking about a town where “Keep Georgetown Normal” was an official slogan endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce.
       
chikuru (Livejournal)
Chikuru (chikuru) wrote,
@ 2007-08-14 19:11:00
 
Keep Austin Weird
For several years now, Austin has had the slogan, “Keep Austin Weird.” This was adopted by local small businesses in an effort to encourage people to buy their goods and services locally. The phrase even made it onto A Prairie Home Companion when the show visited Austin. There, Keillor’s character Lefty speculated that Dusty had read the bumper sticker wrong—that it was “Keep Austin Wired” and referred to an initiative to encourage the use of WiFi.
 
More recently, I saw this bumper sticker: “Keep Georgetown Normal.” Georgetown, for you out-of-towners, is the county seat of Williamson County which is politically as red as Austin’s Travis County is blue. More recently still, I saw “Keep Round Rock Mildly Unusual.” As you might guess (unless you live here, in which case you’d know), Round Rock is halfway between Austin and Georgetown.
   
Wanderground
Title: So *that’s* where those t-shirts come from!
Date: 2007-09-12 @ 13:03
 
The office crew went to Duke’s barbecue for a farewell lunch for the summer intern. Duke’s was selling t-shirts that said “Keep Georgetown Normal”. I asked “Would someone here mind defining what’s normal?”
 
Almost the whole table stated that it was everything that Austin is not.
 
Oh silly me!
 
I wanted to say “So diversity and tolerance of others is “weird”? Then I’d like an order of “weird” with a side order of “queer”, please!”
 
But I didn’t. I kept it to myself. No sense rocking the boat a week into a new job!
 
I like my friend Sarah’s take on the Georgetown/Austin relationship. Austin is the kid with the cool music and clothes and night life and Georgetown is the cranky neighbor that keeps yelling “turn down that @#%^&! devil music, you freak!”