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TCU Women's Basketball Weathers a Season from HellWhen it was over, TCU women’s basketball coach Mark Campbell gathered his players on the court in Fort Worth Tuesday night to savor a victory so improbable they’re likely to remember it for the rest of their lives. In normal times, a 66–60 defeat of a University of Central Florida team that has yet to win a Big 12 game this season would be just another brick in the wall on the journey to March Madness. That would be especially true for a TCU team that entered 2024 with a 14–0 record and a number 23 ranking in the Associated Press Top 25. That fast start was all the more remarkable considering the Horned Frogs had been 14–45 over the previous two seasons, before Campbell arrived…

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Meats, sides, and the Big Red tres leches from Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin.Texas racked up an impressive 39 semifinalists, including 20 for Best Chef: Texas, in the first of three rounds of voting in the 2024 Restaurant and Chef Awards competition, announced today by the James Beard Foundation. The awards—typically described as the Oscars of the restaurant industry—will have two more rounds of voting. Nominees will be named on April 3. On June 10, winners will be announced at the annual awards ceremony and gala in Chicago.This year will be the third to reflect massive changes in the foundation’s awards procedure. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, most restaurants that received nods were fine-dining establishments from large cities. But since 2022, following a massive overhaul of the competition rules designed to improve both inclusivity and geographic scope, lesser-known…

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Senior editor Forrest Wilder above the Pecos River, near Langtry, on November 11, 2023.Most journalists develop a specialty or two, accumulating knowledge of particular topics through their reporting and cultivating of expert sources. At Texas Monthly, for instance, executive editor Mike Hall, a law school dropout and rock-and-roll singer and guitarist who plays weekend gigs in Austin, writes often about both criminal justice and music. Executive editor Courtney Bond enthusiastically covers food and drink as well as Texas travel. But few writers anywhere display the range of senior editor Forrest Wilder, the author of this month’s cover story on the fast-growing sport of rock climbing.Forrest has closely followed Texas politics for decades, both as a writer and an editor. He knows the character of the state’s gerrymandered federal and state legislative districts and the personalities who shape our electoral…

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Texas Medicaid lossIt wasn’t unusual for Harper to fall suddenly. “She’s a toe walker,” said her mother, Brooke Wilson, referring to a condition associated with her daughter’s autism. “She’ll literally just be standing there, and she’ll tip over.” But this time was different.One morning last fall, Wilson was getting ready to go to her job as a special education teacher when her husband called out from the kitchen. She rushed in to find nine-year-old Harper slumped over, with her head on the counter. When Wilson lifted Harper’s face, the girl’s eyes rolled back, and her body crumpled downward. “Thank God I was right there, so her head didn’t hit the floor,” Wilson said. “It was the scariest thing. My whole body was shaking.”As the family rushed to…

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Marfa Invitational DramaMichael Phelan is beaming like a kid playing with a gargantuan erector set. The far West Texas sun is starting its drop into the Western sky, illuminating the face of the controversial Marfa art maven as he stands under a construction crane that holds an eight-thousand-pound shipping container. The crane operator lifts one end and positions it at an angle atop another container. It’s a leg, or at least it’s going to be, once all twelve steel rectangles are placed into the form of someone reclining in the middle of a big field. Together, they form Sleeping Figure, a massive sculpture designed by Los Angeles artist Matt Johnson and now on permanent display in Marfa. Phelan is here mainly to watch, since Johnson and engineers already…

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Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) is seen on Capitol Hill Sept. 13, 2023.In May, Meebs Aslam gave a $10 donation to a political campaign promising to oust one of the nation’s most loathed senators. Colin Allred, then a Democratic congressman from Dallas, had just announced a bid against incumbent Ted Cruz. Aslam, a precinct chair for the Travis County Democratic Party, was initially so enamored by the relatively green House member—“Allred was in the NFL; he’s this really exciting, physically fit, well-spoken, kind person”—that he volunteered to help with invitations for one of Allred’s November fundraisers. There, Aslam said he watched a who’s who of deep-pocketed Democrats and big party figures, including U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg’s husband, Chasten, schmooze and ultimately donate around $12,000 in total to Allred’s campaign. Allred quickly caught fire and emerged as…

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bbq fest announcementIt’s official: TM BBQ Fest will return November 2–3, 2024. After a successful second year in the barbecue capital of Texas in 2023, Texas Monthly is thrilled to return to Lockhart for the fifteenth annual event. Thanks to Jim Beam for sponsoring our 2023 recap video. Videography by Resolute Media.We’re excited to be celebrating fifteen years of TM BBQ Fest in November, so get ready to take your meat sweats to the next level. Guests can expect another two-day celebration of smoked meat with music, live fire, and good times to be had throughout the entire weekend. Last year we were fortunate to partner with a number of local business owners and tastemakers who helped make the weekend a success. Thanks to the City of…

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The new Randy sandwich at Sunbird BBQ.David Segovia and Bryan and Kimmy Bingham, the trio of owners at Sunbird Barbecue in Longview, spent a long two and a half years in a food truck. They thought their plan for a brick-and-mortar would materialize quickly, but after moving eight miles west to White Oak and serving under a pseudonym in Shreveport, Louisiana, they finally opened a permanent spot in December.In 2021, the three hatched a plan to open their own place while working at the original Bodacious Bar-B-Q on Mobberly Avenue in Longview. Three years earlier, Segovia was working for a document shredding company and answered a job ad Bryan posted for the pit room. “I didn’t even tell my wife what I was doing,” Segovia said of the brief interview process.…

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Inside Via Triozzi.Chef Leigh Hutchinson remembers the moment her future came into focus. It was nearly two decades ago, and the then twenty-year-old college student was standing on the Piazza della Repubblica, in Florence. “I even remember what I was wearing,” she told me with a laugh. At that moment, the third-generation Italian American knew she wanted to open a restaurant in her hometown of Dallas, the kind of place that was intimate and warm, where the owner knew customers by name.  Her dream took a while and then some. She had gone to Italy on a semester abroad, immersing herself in its culture and foodways. (She would also eventually visit all but one of the country’s twenty regions.) But she didn’t return to Italy until 2015,…

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Helium Auction AmarilloAfter driving nine miles, over four cattle guards, along a private road just northwest of Amarillo, I worried that I might have made a wrong turn as I saw an entry gate on the horizon bearing the name “Mack Dick Ranch.” But soon enough I came upon what could be mistaken for a standard methane gas plant, complete with a skunk-like odor.The facility’s collection of Cold War–era stainless steel pipes and office buildings create a mood of drab utilitarianism, in muted tones of green, gray, and mustard yellow. I’d come here to see for myself where the federal government stores enough helium to fill about 13,000 Goodyear blimps—each big enough to carry ten tons of cargo—or more than 4 billion mylar party balloons.Known as the…

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