Leslie's Corner

For years the corner of Sixth Street and Congress Avenue belonged, in the public mind, to Albert Leslie Cochran, a homeless man who became the best known face of Keep Austin Weird. Cochran arrived in Austin in January 1996, after a year spent riding a tricycle to the city, and was usually seen around Sixth and Congress during business hours, often in women's clothing. His best remembered outfit was a leopard thong and high heels, and he wore a boa and a tiara to mayoral debates. He always identified as a man, and he was an outspoken critic of how police treated people living on the street. Cochran ran for mayor of Austin three times. In 2000, against Kirk Watson, he finished second with nearly eight percent of the vote. He came to his 2003 campaign interview wearing a women's business suit and talked about a city growing so fast it could become big and bland. If elected, he promised to plant more trees and to wear more conservative dresses out of respect for the office.

Cochran appeared on The Tonight Show, and was sold as a set of dress-up refrigerator magnets from 2006, taking 20 percent of sales. In 2007 he bought a storage shed and lived in it in a South Austin yard. A seizure in 2009 left him hospitalized and in a coma. He died in a hospice on March 8, 2012, at 60, and the Austin City Council proclaimed the date Leslie Day.