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

Dallas Love Field Legend AirlinesAllan McArtor won’t ever forget the day Legend Airlines ran out of gas—literally. He was CEO of the Dallas-based carrier when it went broke in December 2000, after having waged a $20 million legal battle against American Airlines and the City of Fort Worth to secure the right to get off the ground in the first place.“We had a fuel-purchase contract that we needed to pay,” McArtor, now 81 years old, told me recently from his Virginia home. “Our supplier was fully expecting me to say, ‘Look, we’re going to make it. We’ll get you paid.’ But I wasn’t going to lie to them. So we had to shut things down.”Legend may have lost its business war, but its legacy lives on. Had the airline…

The post The Short-Lived Dallas Carrier That American Airlines Drove Out of Business appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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

Travis Clardy Exit InterviewWhen state representative Travis Clardy, of Nacogdoches, first heard rumblings of a potential Republican primary challenger early last summer, he was surprised. The woman who was considering challenging him, Joanne Shofner, was someone who Clardy said he knew “socially” for years. Shofner’s late father, Welcome Wilson, a longtime Houston real estate developer and a former chairman of the University of Houston System Board of Regents, had previously donated to Clardy’s campaign. Clardy figured she’d at least set up a meeting to talk before entering the race—but that never happened, he said. “Before I know it, she’s out campaigning, filing treasury paperwork, and setting up booths at our downtown events,” Clardy said.An eleven-year veteran of the Texas House, Clardy had seen his fair share of primary…

The post “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished”: A Veteran East Texas Legislator Reflects on Getting Rolled Over by Greg Abbott’s School-Voucher Crusade appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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

Willie Nelson and John LeventhalJohn Leventhal is one of the most important record producers working in Americana music today. But the eloquent New Yorker, who’s also a hit songwriter and virtuoso guitarist, readily acknowledges that placing his collaborations in that catch-all genre doesn’t tell you much about how they actually sound. To make that determination, you’ve just got to listen. You could start with the rootsy groove of his wife Rosanne Cash’s 2014 album The River and the Thread, which earned the two of them three Grammys. Or the Southern soul of his 2016 album with Stax legend William Bell, This Is Where I Live, which also won a Grammy. Or go all the way back to his first big splash, Shawn Colvin’s 1997 album A Few Small Repairs…

The post John Leventhal on Willie Nelson’s Tight Grip on Timelessness appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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

Keesey Canyon Overlook in Fort DavisWest Texas boasts no shortage of peaks from which to look out and be humbled by the Trans-Pecos volcanic field unfolding before you. Davis Mountains State Park contains dozens of vistas, but a particularly hypnotic one can be found at the Keesey Canyon Overlook. The highest point along the park’s Skyline Drive Trail, it offers a rustic wooden bench that serves as an ideal resting spot for hikers who’ve conquered the formidable switchbacks along the climb to get here. From 5,500 feet above sea level, the view stretches toward the town of Fort Davis, to the southeast, over a sea of  agarita, catclaw acacia, cholla, and trompillo covering the remnants of a volcanic eruption that transformed the landscape some 35 million years ago. Turn your…

The post From Here You Can Take In the Splendor of West Texas appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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

Muleshoe Bend.Fresh off a ninety-minute hike that led me down a rocky hillside, past the crumbling remains of an old stone chimney, and onto a sandy beach along Lake Travis, just east of Marble Falls, I ease myself into a steamy outdoor tub and tip back my head. Dang, I think. Parks have gotten fancy.As I recall, Texans once visited parks simply to do typical outdoorsy stuff: hike, pitch a tent, jump in a river, and maybe grill up a few burgers. But at a string of Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) parks, including Shaffer Bend Recreation Area, where I lolled like a dumpling in a soup pot, that’s just the starting point.The LCRA produces and delivers electric power and manages roughly six hundred miles of…

The post Tired of Crowds at Texas State Parks? Try an LCRA Park. appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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

Ren Faire documentary sxswAlmost every year since 2016, my friends and I pack our cars with booze, bustles, corsets, and camping equipment and head east for the Texas Renaissance Festival, the largest ren faire event in the country. I grew up in Grimes County, fifteen minutes outside the fairgrounds in Todd Mission, and have attended the festival intermittently my whole life. My annual return is akin to a homecoming; I almost always see at least a few folks from my past, slinging turkey legs or driving horse carriages. And so it was with eager anticipation, and just a tad territorialism, that I shuffled into the Saturday evening South by Southwest screening of the first episode of Ren Faire, a three-part HBO docuseries coming this summer. Ren Faire centers…

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

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Dressing Like a CowgirlI think it was the snow-white standard poodle with the matching fuchsia collar and leash that caused my first symptoms of cosmic dissonance. It was February, and I was at Tootsies, forever one of Houston’s most fashionable stores, and arguably the most Houston of Houston’s fashionable stores, to check out a rodeo wear party, an act that was already causing me some mental disturbance. That was partly because the marquee lights spelling out the word “RODEO” were blinding, the countryish music was blaring, and the racks and racks of clothes in the designated stomping grounds were adorned with enough denim, fringe, and studs to gussy up the entire female population of San Angelo. Even more disorienting was finding myself surrounded by super glam twenty-, thirty-,…

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Whooping Cranes Are Back From the Brink. A Port Aransas Festival Celebrates North America’s Tallest Bird.I’m leaning on the rail of the Scat Cat, a red-and-white, 78-person fishing boat in Aransas Bay, when two bottlenose dolphins leap majestically out of the water alongside our wake. The midday sun gleams on their fins as the pair chases us, jumping and diving in what looks like a playful game of leapfrog. “Look!” I shout, unable to contain my excitement at seeing them so close. A few of my sixty or so fellow passengers turn to watch, but only for a moment. Our guide for the day, Isidro Montemayor Jr., has just spotted something that this crowd finds far more compelling. “Reddish egret at two o’clock,” he proclaims, lifting his binoculars. “And we’ve got another Forster’s tern flying by, too.” Dolphins forgotten, we…

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

pizza hut classic hempsteadPizza Hut nostalgia is a powerful force. Depending on how old you are and where you come from, the role the iconic Plano-based chain played in your childhood could well be outsized. For me, it’s forever tied to high school theater; after opening night of any production, the tech crew would celebrate by going to Pizza Hut. As a sit-down restaurant with servers and real plates and silverware, it made us feel grown-up; as an affordable, comfortable space where you could play Ms. Pac-Man, it was also perfect for a bunch of teenagers. Decades later, I still can’t pass a hat-shaped building with a shingled roof and trapezoid windows (even if it’s currently a martial arts academy or a funeral home) without thinking about the…

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Reverend John Whiteford at St. Jonah Orthodox Church, in Spring, on December 10, 2023.On a recent Sunday morning, parishioners shuffled into St. Jonah Orthodox Church, a beige clapboard building topped by a blue onion dome. Tucked down a wooded lane far from road noise in the Houston suburb of Spring, the house of worship drew a crowd of congregants, many of them sporting floral headscarves, chest-length beards, and cotton or gingham dresses that fell past the knee. Beeswax candles flickered in a blast of air-conditioningthat dispersed an invisible cloud of incense. As the Reverend John Whiteford, wearing a ceremonial cape, stood with his back to the congregation, a small choir chanted three times, “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us.” Parishioners crossed their foreheads, shoulders, and chests with three fingers and then bent down to touch…

The post Inspired by the Confederacy and Czarist Russia, “Ortho Bros” Are on the Rise appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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