No one has embodied the rise of Austin better than Lance Armstrong, who went from a local cycling star to an international super-athlete during roughly the same span of years that Austin went from sleepy to sleek and hip. His foundation, Livestrong, turned him into a global celebrity philanthropist.

Other celebrities, too, began to call Austin home — or at least a second home. It isn’t uncommon to dine at Sandra Bullock’s restaurant or spot Dennis Quaid in a bar. Matthew McConaughey is often on the Longhorn sideline. Natalie Portman was at the University of Texas’s recent home game against Baylor.

But thanks to all that success, Austin is in danger of losing the simple, quirky vibe that made it special in the first place.

Perhaps the harbinger of all this was the death earlier this year of Leslie Cochran, a bearded, 60-year-old man who was usually found at the intersection of Congress Avenue and Sixth Street in high heels and a leopard thong. He ran for mayor three times, usually in a tiara. He was an odd guy, to say the least, and we loved him. Shortly before he died, Leslie warned that Austin risked becoming so big as to be bland.

But Leslie’s popularity was less a driving force than a reflection of a culture that blends not just good times but inventiveness and tolerance: “Slacker,” rowdy cowboys named Tant, hipsters in bands like Ringo Deathstarr, frat kids, talented musical artists like Marcia Ball, old money, sunset margaritas on Lake Travis and, yes, the waft of marijuana atop Mount Bonnell each evening.

Perhaps it was best for Leslie to pass when he did. There may be nowhere for a man like him among the encroaching slickification of Austin’s skyline. In the space of a decade, the sleepy downtown sprouted dozens of soaring skyscrapers filled with expensive condominiums. The simple but gracious four-story stucco Gables West is surrounded on three sides by silver towers named Spring, 360 and Monarch — and soon will be on a fourth.

A few blocks away, Second Street, once home to little more than a children’s museum, has been transformed into a corridor of trendy restaurants, bars and shops, anchored by none other than a W Hotel. Austin’s newly inaugurated Fashion Week takes place along this strip. Bawdy old Sixth Street — Dirty Six, we used to call it — and the slightly more mature Warehouse District now compete for revelers with Second Street, an area some natives derisively call “Little Dallas.”