Austin Strip Clubs: The manly (and less so) men of the Texas Testosterone Festival
It’s probably not a huge shock, then, that here in progressive Austin, Texas Testosterone Festival creator Paul Phelps found himself turned down by sponsors that he assumed would be an easy sell. Apparently, not everyone wanted to be associated with an event that—based on the title alone—sounds like it may have squirmed its way into existence from one of Joe Francis’ wet dreams. Those sponsors who didn’t put rubber gloves on and hand him back his offer, however, can rest easy: The Testosterone Festival involves far fewer strippers and fart jokes and way more video games and homebrewing. While some of the fears that the event might be a bit frattish are valid—there is a bikini contest, after all—Phelps delights in tweaking the image of the Testosterone Festival as one pandering to the base stereotypes of manhood. “I wanted to do a wet T-shirt contest,” he explains, “where we’d get a bunch of wet T-shirts in a bucket, and have a contest to see who could throw them the farthest.” Phelps filled The A.V. Club in on the various types of dudes he hopes to attract with those sorts of calculated strategies.