News
 
Gravatar

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

A 2010s photo of Cooke on a wellpad near the North Texas town of Bowie.I first encountered Claude Cooke on the internet, when he and his wife, Joyce, briefly became viral sensations. In a YouTube clip viewed more than three million times since it was posted, in 2007, they dance down a suburban Houston street to a rap song while their canary-yellow car slowly glides—driverless—between them. “Ghost Ridin’ Grandma” would have been a classic of its genre, if there were a genre of such videos. Cooke was 77 years old at the time and danced with youthful enthusiasm.The second time I encountered Cooke, he called out of the blue to talk to me about fracking. This was a few years later, amid growing concerns about whether the use of hydraulic fracturing would lead to widespread water contamination. When something went wrong…

The post Farewell to One of the Fathers of Fracking 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.

What a Texan Looks Like, According to A.I.Quick: imagine a Texan. If you thought of a rugged white guy in a cowboy hat, artificial intelligence agrees with you—almost.Inspired by a Rest of World story that examined cultural stereotypes in the popular AI image generator Midjourney, we asked the program to create one hundred images in response to various Texas-related prompts, such as “a Texan,” “a house in Texas,” and “a plate of Texan food.” Of the 100 individuals Midjourney spat out in response to “a Texan,” 92 wore cowboy hats. Five sported other types of hats (three of which looked merely like cowboy hats gone wrong), and only 3 were hatless. Surprisingly, women were the majority­—the prompt returned images of 63 women, 36 men, and one cow (wearing, of course, a cowboy…

The post What a Texan Looks Like, According to AI 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.

Pallbearers carrying Josh Rivera’s casket out of St. Julia Catholic Church in East Austin on November 2, 2023.When Arleen Juarez was designing a memorial T-shirt for her son, Dio-mani, to wear to his father’s funeral, she decided quickly on the image that would go on the front: a photo of father and son, taken from behind as they squatted together on an empty baseball diamond. For the back of the shirt, though, she struggled to find a quote that felt right. Searching the internet, she came across a line from a journal entry by the American poet Anne Sexton: “It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.”Who Josh Rivera was is complicated, but it could probably best be summed up by what his cousin Alexia Aleman told me at the wake: “Josh loved feeling loved.” It…

The post The Life and Death of a Former East Austin Gang Member 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 March 2021, Stephen Janak, a program specialist for Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service, which provides research and training to growers across the state, drove across Texas, crisscrossing farm-to-market roads from Madisonville to Bandera. The previous year had seen a bumper crop of olives—the largest production year to date, the culmination of a decade-long boom in the Texas olive oil industry.But as Janak visited growers—as he did regularly to check on variety trials—he saw fields full of dead trees. Instead of the shiny, green, feather-shaped leaves that had filled orchards only a month before, he saw acres and acres of brown. Winter Storm Uri had just gripped the state in a brutal and unrelenting cold, breaking records for the longest below-freezing streak in the state’s…

The post Texas Hasn’t Had an Olive Harvest in Three Years. Why Do Growers Keep Trying?  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.

REALLY wirelessAdam Lyons sits at a picnic table in the courtyard of his company’s East Austin offices, a cluster of rustic bungalows on a cliff overlooking the Colorado River. He’s trying to explain why he chose to name his telecommunications company Really, its logo rendered in all capital letters. Should it be pronounced with outraged incredulity, like the old Seth Meyers/Amy Poehler “Weekend Update” routine on Saturday Night Live? Or with affirmative certainty? With question marks, exclamation points, or some combination of the two?As Lyons, age 36 and scraggly handsome, formulates his answer, the company’s two resident goats forage nearby. “When we’d talk about building this company, ending the digital divide, and creating this new, modern telco—a telco that has the sharing economy as part of…

The post An Austin Startup Will Pay You to Share Your Home Internet 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.

Wilder climbing the Project, overlooking the Pecos River.The November day had dawned chilly and damp, the sun bundled in gray cloud banks. Now, in the early afternoon, the air has warmed only a few degrees, and a persistent mist slicks the limestone—horrid conditions for rock climbing. But I must try. I’ve spent three months training hard in the gym, torturing myself on a finger-strengthening device called a hangboard and doing weighted pull-ups like a maniac. I’ve gathered two friends to assist, and a drone will soon be sent aloft to capture what I have imagined, in my daydreams, as a triumphant romp to the top after nearly four years of trying to conquer this route and falling, falling, falling.The goal seems straightforward: I must scale a vertical rock face for about seventy…

The post Rock On, Texas! 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.

Inks Ranch.With the proliferation of state-of-the-art indoor climbing gyms, the sport has taken off across the state. Ready to go climbing on real rock? Here are some of our favorite crags, on public and private land, from West Texas to North Texas. If you’re new to climbing outdoors, consider hiring a professional guide for your first outing.Continental Ranch offers prime limestone climbs.Photograph by Forrest WilderContinental RanchComstockIf you’re looking for pristine rock in a rugged wilderness setting, then the drive to this border town, about three hours west of San Antonio, and the cost of admission to this 29,000-acre private ranch on the Pecos River are worth it. Over several weekends, the ranch opens its gates to climbers for a fee. Sit around a campfire at night.…

The post Where to Rock Climb Around Texas 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.

Luke Coffee January 6 RiotMore than 1,200 Americans have been charged with federal crimes for their roles in the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, but among the marauding hordes, a few faces have left an indelible impression on the American psyche. There is, of course, Jacob Chansley, the bare-chested, bison horn–wearing Arizonan who is better known as the “QAnon Shaman.” Kevin Seefried, a 53-year-old Delaware drywall mechanic, will forever be remembered for marching a Confederate flag through the Capitol. And how could we forget Richard Barnett, the Arkansas window salesman  photographed propping his foot up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk? Then there’s 44-year-old Dallas filmmaker and actor Luke Coffee, a.k.a. the #HighFiveCowboy. Nicknamed for a viral photo of him in which he stretches his hand skyward during the…

The post He Stormed the Capitol and Hid From the Law at a Hill Country Resort. Now He Has a Day in Court. 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.

ERCOT: why this time was differentIn February 2021, Jordan Cooper was living at her dad’s loft in the Cedars, an area south of downtown Dallas, when Winter Storm Uri wiped out power for them and millions more across the state. Her dad’s neighborhood was without heat or electricity for a day and then had several subsequent days of intermittent power—about an hour on for every eight hours off, Cooper recalled. They made do by keeping their perishables outside in the snow. In those dark hours, they managed to warm their food using tea lights.Meanwhile in Austin, Stu Taylor’s wife, Megan Mead, was nine months pregnant when they lost power and were told their water was unsafe to drink, so they camped out for five days at their friend’s upstairs loft…

The post The Freeze Has Thawed. The Grid Survived. What Was Different This Time? 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.

Texans Are Conquering the Summer Music Festival CircuitFor the past several years, the names of the biggest stars in Texas music have been familiar. There’s Beyoncé, of course, plus Miranda Lambert, Post Malone, Kacey Musgraves, and Travis Scott. Willie Nelson and George Strait, if you’re looking at legacy acts. All of them are still at the top of any list, but take a look through the lineups of this year’s spring and summer music festivals, and something else becomes clear: There’s a new guard coming in. An updated crop of Texas musicians are being set up for stardom, emerging from the bottom of the bill to the names in big fonts right near the top. A good number of the ever-expanding circuit of American music festivals have now released their lineups. The pools…

The post Texans Are Conquering the Summer Music Festival Circuit appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!