Letter From the Editor: Goodbye Leslie

Leslie died last night.

I’ll miss seeing him around the neighborhood. I’ll miss our conversations at the corner store, which I always enjoyed.  I’ll miss Leslie because he was a part of Austin that’s getting harder and harder to find.

If you stand on Doug Sahm Hill, overlooking Lady Bird Lake, up towards Willie Nelson Boulevard, over the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue, you can see how much this town has changed. Just ten years ago this view was more sky than skyline, but not anymore. 

As Austin continues its long boom, even the Frost Bank building seems old. The city's celebrated weirdness was rebranded into a T-shirt; the natural features are named after rockers. Even skeevy South Congress became SoCo. (Visitors: nobody really calls it that). 

Austin becomes less weird even as its reputation grows. But you couldn’t brand Leslie.

Leslie died last night and I’ll miss him because was real, and true to himself. And, yes, I’ll miss him because he really, truly kept it weird.

Here's a nice writeup by Wells Dunbar at KUT: http://kut.org/2012/03/austin-icon-leslie-cochran-dies/