Austin got a tad weirder after YouTuber’s stunt inspired by iconic ‘Hollywood’ sign
Blake Messick had a vision for his beloved city of Austin, Texas. It was about 8 feet tall, white and difficult to get up a cliff in the middle of the night — but that didn’t stop him and his friends.
Messick is known on YouTube for stunts and social challenges, and his latest inspiration came from Los Angeles’ “Hollywood” sign.
“We gave Austin its own Hollywood sign, since Austin ‘is the new LA,’” Messick wrote in his video description.
Using sheer determination and limited knowledge from his high school engineering classes, Messick drafted out the process: Buy the wooden materials, spend the next few days crafting a hardy sign with his friends, and then carry the sign up a steep trail above the Pennybacker 360 bridge to hang up for all to see.
“I am afraid of heights. But when you’re up there, it’s definitely not that bad. It’s not as steep as it looks from here,” Messick told Spectrum News 1. “We saw a lot of potential in Austin and the creative scene could just explode. … We just wanted to do a big stunt to kind of show that to the public.”
The group of friends tied up the letters with cables in the middle of the night at the overhang, using their phone flashlights to illuminate the rocky outcrop.
“We were out there about three hours longer than expected. We were all drenched in sweat, and by the time we were finished, the sun was almost coming up but it was complete,” Messick said in the video.
The group put the sign up over the Fourth of July weekend, Messick told Spectrum News 1, and took it down after a few days.
The idea was supposed to help bolster appreciation for Austin, which has the motto “Keep Austin weird,” but Messick told his viewers he also wanted it to be a message to greet outsiders into the city.
California transplants in Texas can receive mixed responses from locals, which can be found in social media hashtags, bumper stickers and songs like “Don’t California My Texas” by Creed Fisher.
But Messick told his audience that Austin locals should embrace unique and quirky traits of other areas.
“I say we take the coolest things from every city and start building it here in Austin,” he said in his video. ”We shouldn’t be scared of people moving here. We should see it as an opportunity. Yes, our rents are going up, yes, everything is getting really expensive and it’s really hard to live here, but we might as well make the most of it.”
This story was originally published July 19, 2022 at 1:26 PM with the headline "Austin got a tad weirder after YouTuber’s stunt inspired by iconic ‘Hollywood’ sign."
