Actually, Our City Is Not Weird

Dear Citizens,

In light of recent political parlance, we are announcing that we are no longer trying to keep our city “weird.” We realize that this statement contradicts the campaign we have spent the past two decades and thousands of taxpayers’ dollars advocating for our city’s weirdness via novelty bumper stickers that look great on the back of a Subaru. But we didn’t mean it like that.

We could never have foreseen that the word we chose to affirm our city’s quirky charm in the battle against corporate gentrification would be lobbied at a convicted felon and his spineless running mate. The early aughts were a much simpler time, when “weird” simply meant putting bacon on everything and not having sex with a sofa. We certainly didn’t have that one on our predictive bingo cards, and we were really into bingo, in a counterculture sort of way.

Again, we can’t state enough how much we would like to distance ourselves from their brand of weirdness, which is so not what we were going for here. Just look at our district’s voting record: we’re a blue bastion in a red state. We have composting bins on every corner. We’re home to one of the highest rates of kooky aunts per capita. Now, the word we’ve used to epitomize our city’s free-spirited values and fight homogenization has made us bedfellows with two guys who are proud of repealing women’s bodily autonomy and speak in Mad Libs. It’s been an absolute SEO nightmare.

Furthermore, in case there is any lingering confusion about what exactly we meant when we called our city “weird” versus what the word has come to mean in the present election zeitgeist, please review the below list:

Good Weird

• Small businesses
• Eccentric mustaches and garb
• Biking everywhere to reduce carbon emissions, or even better, ride a unicycle
• Wind chimes
• Pet lizards
• Weird Al (he’s a national treasure—leave him out of this!)
• Homebrewing
• A literal dog (adorable!) who serves as mayor

Bad Weird

• Leading an insurrection
• Sexually assaulting women
• Banning books
• Awkwardly ordering donuts
• Paying hush money to an adult film actress
• Generalized bigotry and misogyny
• Being convicted of a felony
• A figurative dog (deplorable) who served as president

In any case, it seems the word “weird” is too far gone for us to reclaim. After consulting a cohort of marketing experts and thesaurus.com, we have decided to run in the antonymous direction and rebrand our city as… dull. Yep, that’s us: boring, simple, and humdrum—and we’d like to keep it that way. Don’t let our city’s affordable housing prices and tax breaks fool you otherwise. So please, stop building your tech startups here. They’re weird.