A couple of days after the Starman departed for Mars, the Bowie Street sign crossing Fifth Street in western Downtown Austin was changed to read “David Bowie Street.” Austin’s police and public officials were clueless as to who’d executed the professional-looking vandalism until SXSW Creative Director Roland Swenson came clean later that week. Swenson, a longtime Bowie acolyte, admitted to cooking up the idea and executing it with the help of Austin’s Wicked Signs owner Jason Carter. APD declined to file vandalism charges against Swenson, who continued to push for the two-block-long road to be officially renamed “David Bowie Street.”
