Louisville, KY, has started hosting billboards around town with the tagline: “Keep Louisville Weird”. The concept is familiar to Santa Cruz, CA, residents, whose city has been running a “Keep Santa Cruz Weird” campaign since 2002. But Santa Cruz, apparently, is not the source of the movement; the first city to flaunt its weirdness was Austin, TX. The point?
“The point is to bring into the conversation how things are being homogenized,” Bolduc said.
The homogenization happens when a big-box retail store or mall moves near a popular stretch of local businesses, where there are plenty of potential customers, said David Kaseman, co-founder of the Santa Fe, N.M., Independent Business and Community Alliance.
The small businesses can’t keep pace with the larger stores’ prices, hours and advertising, Kaseman said.