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Pegasus Dallas RodeoQ: Austin, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio each have big annual rodeos. So why doesn’t Dallas have a big to-do, too? A: Texas is rodeo country. In fact, as was so declared by the 75th state legislature in 1997, rodeo is our official sport. “Whereas, Texas is blessed with a rich and colorful history, and no event captures the unique spirit of the Lone Star State better than rodeo,” the resolution  reads. The document then goes on to give a capsule history of the sport, which, of course, dates back to the introduction of horses and cattle—two of rodeo’s main ingredients—by the Spanish at the turn of the eighteenth century, when conquistadores and vaqueros honed their equestrian skills out on the Texas range. The Lone Star…

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Heider Garcia ProfileDallas County elections administrator Heider Garcia stared at a massive projection screen showing a map speckled with 64 green dots, one for each of the county’s polling centers. It was the afternoon of February 20, the first day of early voting for next week’s primary election. Garcia had been in a windowless conference room since 6:40 a.m., overseeing his team of some fifty employees. A handful of polling centers had opened late because of minor snafus; at one center, the Republican and Democratic election judges had gotten into an argument. Otherwise, everything appeared to be going smoothly. Around 5,700 voters had cast ballots so far, with the highest turnout in the 65-to-74 age group.Suddenly, the dot representing the South Garland Branch Library turned from green…

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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.

“Life-changing” is an overused adjective, especially when it comes to food. Though there are some restaurants where the experience can truly alter one’s professional trajectory. Louie Mueller Barbecue in Taylor was that place for me, and for many others. A bite of brisket there in 2006 changed my perspective on how good barbecue could be. It was the same year that Louie Mueller received the America’s Classics award from the James Beard Foundation, making it the second Texas barbecue joint to earn the distinction (the Original Sonny Bryan’s in Dallas was honored in 2000). This year’s James Beard awards are littered with a half dozen pitmaster semifinalists, none of whom had restaurants when Louie Mueller was awarded. That bodes well for the future of barbecue,…

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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.

Have you heard the good news? Beyoncé is releasing a country album.The Houston native’s announcement this month cemented the fact that the Western country lifestyle—and the look that goes with it—has finally reached its mainstream zenith. If you need a clue that we’ve hit peak country, just take inventory of the A-listers caught cosplaying cowboys in recent months: everyone from Elon Musk to Kim Kardashian has been spotted in a brimmed hat. In Bey’s hometown, though, on opening night of the city’s largest Western event of the year—the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo—attendees demonstrated an understanding and appreciation for authentic Texas fashions. The crowd largely adhered to an understated dress code—sundresses and boots will remain the official Texan uniform until the state ceases to exist. Pearl-snaps and…

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Claude Buddy Young, star halfback for the Dallas Texans, National Professional Football League entry, signs his 1952 contract, as Texans Head Coach Jim Phelan looks on, May 7, 1952, Dallas, Texas.It’s no coincidence that professional football and baseball in Texas both integrated in 1952—and the breakthrough started on the gridiron.Three Black players—Sherman Howard, George Taliaferro, and Claude “Buddy” Young—were on the 1951 roster of the NFL’s financially strapped New York Yanks when Dallas businessmen Giles and Connell Miller bought the franchise in January ’52 and moved it to the Cotton Bowl.The Millers didn’t think twice about bringing Black athletes to Jim Crow Texas, according to author Mike Cobern, whose book about the Dallas Texans’ 1952 season, Wards of the League, is scheduled for release by TCU Press this summer. Similarly, the team’s general manager, Frank Fitzgerald, was quoted in the New York Daily News saying the players were prepared to make the move.Then, just days…

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Cigarettes After Sex Returns to El PasoThe front man of Cigarettes After Sex roams along the edge of an El Paso stage, doing the rock star box step: take a few steps forward to tease the fans reaching for him, sway the neck of his guitar toward the crowd, take two steps back, retreat to center stage. Dressed in an AllSaints leather jacket and his signature black Tecovas, 41-year-old Greg Gonzalez seems comfortable in front of a crowd made up largely of teenagers. The fans, who have heard fifteen-second clips of his songs via viral TikToks or followed him here from Tumblr, adore Greg for his lover boy persona. They know that he favors old black and white films and that his favorite musician is French singer-songwriter Françoise Hardy. They know,…

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A black footed kitten born at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center.Rhaegal and Morgan have been on a date for a few weeks now. Morgan seems sleepy. He yawns; his eyes become glassy slits. Rhae, on the other hand, is all energy. She prowls around the yard, vocalizing, crouching, puffing outward, almost spherical—all two and a half pounds of her. “She’s running around like a little madwoman,” says Amanda Collins, the carnivore curator at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center, in Glen Rose, an hour southwest of Fort Worth.Nine-year-old Rhae and twelve-year-old Morgan, two black-footed cats, recently matched on a dating app—at least that’s how Collins explains it to me. In reality it’s a genetics database, also known as a studbook, used by breeding programs like this one. “They don’t get to pick who they want to mate…

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Crypto miners fight transparencyLawyers for Texas cryptocurrency miners will appear in a Waco courtroom today with a request: Please don’t let everyone know how much electricity we use.“Mining” is a misleading term. There’s no drilling into rock involved. Crypto miners dedicate thousands of computers to solving math problems of increasing complexity in order to reap Bitcoin—or some other virtual currency—as their reward. These machines often occupy enormous buildings and draw massive amounts of electricity to operate their processors and keep them from overheating.We don’t know exactly how much power gets used for this purpose, but in January, the federal government announced it would soon begin to require miners to report their energy usage every month. The Texas Blockchain Council, an industry trade association, sued to stop this, arguing…

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Bruce Robison One By WillieTexas singer-songwriter Bruce Robison is famous for writing highly intelligent, richly detailed country songs—that happen also to be incredibly sad, like “Angry All the Time,” which was a number one hit for Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, and “Travelin’ Soldier,” which scaled the same heights for the Chicks. He has always given credit for that tendency in his taste to his early immersion in Willie’s music, and one of the key records in that evolution was Willie’s 1974 concept album about the dissolution of a marriage, Phases and Stages.Bruce was an eight-year-old growing up in the rural, Hill Country town of Bandera when his parents brought Phases home, and the album—or specifically, the eight-track—quickly went into heavy rotation. For Bruce, whose mom and dad would…

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Former President Donald Trump talks with Governor Greg Abbott in Eagle Pass during a visit to the U.S.-Mexico border on February 29, 2024.Mere months ago, Governor Greg Abbott suffered one of the biggest face-plants of his long career. Even after commanding the Texas Legislature to meet in two special sessions, vetoing the bills of unyielding lawmakers, and threatening to campaign against any legislator who crossed him, Abbott failed to convince the Republican-controlled House to pass a voucher plan that would use taxpayer funds to subsidize private school tuition. Rarely, if ever, had the governor risked so much political capital for so little return. Then came the first major test of Abbott’s promised revenge tour. In a January special election, the Abbott-backed pro-voucher candidate, Brent Money, lost. Abbott should be reeling from a humiliating defeat on his biggest policy priority. Instead, he’s at the height of his power. That’s…

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