Austin's flag features a white field with the city's arms at the center: a red, white and blue shield bearing a lamp, topped by a winged ornament, and the city's name in blue letters beneath.
The design is classic and understated, but Austin's identity is anything but conventional. The unofficial slogan "Keep Austin Weird" captures the spirit: progressive in a conservative state, artistic in a country of business, ecological in the land of oil.
But its cultural influence exceeds its size. South by Southwest (SXSW), the annual music, film and tech festival, draws hundreds of thousands of visitors. Austin City Limits, the longest-running live-music show on American television, has recorded here since 1974.
Austin has transformed into "Silicon Hills", a tech hub rivaling Silicon Valley. Apple, Google, Tesla, Oracle have massive campuses. Growth is explosive. Rents have skyrocketed. Gentrification threatens the "weird" character.
The plain white flag shows nothing of this strangeness. Perhaps that is intentional: Austin hides its true nature behind Texan conformity.