Dean Kakridas

An open letter, and more detailed response to my X conversation with @ErinToTheNth & @Jason_A_Scharf Dear newly arrived dreamers, fresh faces, and young creatives, You’ve just unpacked your bags in our weird little corner of Texas: Welcome. You felt the magnetic pull of this city, and we are glad you are here. But as you settle into the heat and the rhythm of the Hill Country, there is a fundamental truth about this place you need to understand right away: 👉 You don’t move here to bring the rest of the world with you; you move here to let the spirit of Austin transform you like Grandmother on an ayahuasca journey in the middle of a rain forest. Lately, there’s been a temptation to import the shiny, established cultural monuments of other cities and paste them over our own. Attempts to recreate things like the Met Gala, to dress up our local spaces in the borrowed glamour of New York or Los Angeles is just wrong. Let’s be incredibly clear about this: trying to replicate things like the Met Gala here isn’t just missing the point, it simply isn’t weird enough to fit into our whole "Keep Austin Weird" ethos. Why? Well for starters it’s derivative, and Austin has never been about copying what someone else has already perfected. This city is not a blank canvas for you to project someone else's masterpiece onto. This is the place you come to connect with your inner innovator. It is a sanctuary where you are supposed to listen to the strange, beautiful whispers of your own creative spirit guides and make something completely, unapologetically original. Do you want to throw an incredible, mind-bending costume party? Do it. Rent out a warehouse, string up the neon, build out a wild theme, and invite the whole town. We’d all love to come. But you don’t have to base it on a famous red carpet, an elite guest list, or a tired coastal tradition. You don't have to base it on anything other than the wild, boundless freedom of imagination that a city like Austin affords every single one of us. Austin thrives on the grassroots, the gritty, the bizarre, and the brilliant ideas born on the back of a napkin at a late-night taco stand on the East side. The magic of this town isn't in how well we can mimic the exclusive gatherings and events of the East or West Coast. It’s in our ability to build our own cultural gravity from the ground up, inviting everyone to participate in the spectacle. So, unpack your bags, but leave your preconceived notions of what a "cultural event" looks like in whatever city you abandons to be here. Dive into the weirdness. Trust your own strangeness. We don’t need another Met Gala. We need whatever incredible, entirely original thing is currently hiding inside your imagination. Welcome home. Now go make something weird.