News
 
Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

texanist department of public safety lineQ: My driver’s license is about to expire, and I’ve heard horror stories about long waits to schedule an appointment with the Texas Department of Public Safety. Is there a way to navigate a trip to the DPS without losing my ever-loving mind?A: Not to gloat, but the Texanist’s last interaction with the DPS went off without even a hint of a hitch. The matter was a simple class C renewal, and the Texanist learned that he was eligible to take care of this bit of business without an office visit. Thus, he was able to tend to everything online, which is likely the reason for his remarkably unremarkable experience. The Texanist keeps up with current events, though, and his own good fortune notwithstanding, he is…

The post The Texanist: How Do I Navigate the DPS Without Losing My Mind? appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Aaron Bushnell San Antonio connectionsStuart Rowe has found himself revisiting a name tag pasted to a page in his old journal: “Hello my name is: Aaron,” it says. It had belonged to Aaron Bushnell, the young Air Force service member who died last month after setting himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., in an extreme act of protest against Israel’s actions in Gaza, which he called a “genocide” on social media prior to his death. In the journal, Rowe had written beneath the name tag: “Prayer: Figuring things out.”The writing is a memento from the pair’s first meeting, in August 2021 at an Anglican church in San Antonio called the Gathering, where members were encouraged to swap name tags with someone they would…

The post In San Antonio, Friends of Aaron Bushnell Remember a Devoted Helper appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Aaron Bushnell San Antonio connectionsStuart Rowe has found himself revisiting a name tag pasted to a page in his old journal: “Hello my name is: Aaron,” it says. It had belonged to Aaron Bushnell, the young Air Force service member who died last month after setting himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., in an extreme act of protest against Israel’s actions in Gaza, which he called a “genocide” on social media prior to his death. In the journal, Rowe had written beneath the name tag: “Prayer: Figuring things out.”The writing is a memento from the pair’s first meeting, in August 2021 at an Anglican church in San Antonio called the Gathering, where members were encouraged to swap name tags with someone they would…

The post Friends of Aaron Bushnell, Who Self-Immolated to Protest Violence in Gaza, Remember a Devoted Helper appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

In Between documentary Eagle Pass sxswRobie Flores couldn’t get out of Eagle Pass fast enough. Growing up in the border town as the only girl in between her older brother, Paco, and her younger twin brothers, Marcelo and Alejandro, she felt frustrated by the boredom and wanted to escape the confusion of a place that made her feel like she wasn’t American or Mexican enough. “I actually always told people when I went to college, [that] I’m from San Antonio, because it’s the closest notable city,” Robie recalls.When she graduated from high school, Robie left Eagle Pass for wider pastures and a chance to reinvent herself. She earned a master’s degree in news and documentary journalism from New York University and worked for CNN and Bloomberg. Then, in July 2015,…

The post Border Pundits Need to Watch ‘The In Between’ appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

john aielli kutxYou never knew what John Aielli was going to say. Or play. For more than fifty years, the idiosyncratic radio host on the Austin NPR affiliate KUT, and later KUTX, welcomed us into our mornings from the University of Texas campus. He could be poetic; he could be prickly. He took long pauses. He would most certainly go off on tangents that made sense only to him. He would mispronounce name of famous singers and get even the most basic facts about a song wrong. And Austinites loved him, even if they did occasionally have to change the station out of frustration during his show, Eklektikos.There’s a lot of debate over the city’s march toward homogeneousness, but for many of us, Austin stopped being weird…

The post A New Film Says Goodbye to an Austin Legend and the Austin of Legends appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Allen at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, on February 2, 2024.Terry Allen likes to call himself an artist, full stop. The rest of us tend to complicate things. We like to call him a conceptual artist or a multimedia artist—or a singer-songwriter-playwright-sculptor-painter-pianist. We feel we have to, because he has played so many different roles in his life. Considered both a grandfather of alternative country music and a grand master of modern conceptual art, he’s written hundreds of songs and radio plays. His physical work sits in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and a dozen other museums, as well as Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Bush Intercontinental. Allen, who is eighty, grew up in Lubbock and lives in Santa Fe, and no living artist captures the darkness and light…

The post Terry Allen Doesn’t Care What the Smithsonian Wants appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

A deep-fried avocado stuffed with shredded beef and cheese and topped with cilantro.Nowadays, we employ avocados mainly as the creamy base for guacamole, as chunky wedges that sit atop tacos and tostadas, and as artfully fanned slices that adorn combination plates. But back in the seventies and eighties, the buttery green fruit appeared on many home and restaurant tables as the main course or appetizer: stuffed avocado. Lucky for us, the retro delicacy is making a comeback. The dish features fruit that’s been cut in half lengthwise, pitted, then served open-faced or reassembled. The cavity left in the flesh is filled with a sweet or savory mixture; half a century ago, that would have been potato chip–topped tuna salad or crushed pineapple with French dressing. Now it’s more likely to be chilled shrimp salad or barbacoa. The stuffed avocado…

The post Stuffed Avocados Are Back, Baby appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

How Some of Texas's Toughest Species Are Inspiring EngineersAmong the many enduring images of Hurricane Harvey’s 2017 devastation in Houston was the reminder that when faced with floodwaters, fire ants will assemble in groups of up to 100,000 and link their legs together to create nearly watertight rafts that can span several square feet. The venomous red hexapods then collectively float to safety before releasing and continuing their important work as backyard terrorists.Now researchers at Texas A&M have drawn inspiration from the phenomenon and mimicked it to develop synthetic materials that can autonomously assemble, disassemble, and reconfigure in response to different conditions, such as changes in light or heat. Professor Taylor Ware of A&M’s biomedical and materials science engineering programs, one of the authors of the study published in Nature Materials, says he…

The post How Some of Texas’s Most Terrifying Species Are Inspiring Engineers appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

This story was originally published in January 2022 and has been updated.No Texas city has Austin beat for the sheer volume of worthy barbecue destinations. Sure, the Houston area’s widespread suburbs might be richer in excellent barbecue, and the Fort Worth scene is hot and new, but the volume of world-changing barbecue within our Capital City’s limits is staggering. Last year, Texas Monthly released a list of the best new barbecue joints in Texas. In 2021 we published our top fifty barbecue joints list, along with fifty more worthy of honorable mentions, but our barbecue recommendations don’t stop there. You can get a great meal of smoked meats at any one of these barbecue joints in Austin (and in two of its suburbs).In the city of AustinB. Cooper Barbecue This unassuming trailer…

The post Where to Eat Barbecue in Austin appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!

Gravatar

Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

JSX Love Field American Airlines SouthwestMinutes before boarding begins for a flight from Dallas to Houston, it’s library quiet inside the terminal. No testy TSA agents yell out instructions. No overhead announcements drone on endlessly about limited overhead space. The loudest noise is the click-clack of a flight attendant’s heels on the concrete floor as she walks by two dozen passengers reclining on cushy couches and chairs.It’s so serene that even Alex Wilcox, CEO of the airline, seems surprised that a departure is imminent. “Oh, I guess people are checking in,” he says as a couple rolls bags past him. They’ve just dropped off their car keys at the valet outside the private hangar at Love Field.All this calm comes at a cost. The airline, Dallas-based JSX, charges business-class fares…

The post The Upstart JSX Versus the Airline Bullies appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!