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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.

The BBQ World’s Fair, in Lockhart.The highly anticipated Texas Monthly BBQ Fest returns to Lockhart, the Barbecue Capital of Texas, on November 2 and 3 for its fifteenth annual celebration.BBQ Fest kicks off on Saturday, November 2, with the third annual BBQ World’s Fair—a free, event-filled street festival in Lockhart’s historic downtown. Festivalgoers will get to enjoy live-fire cooking demos, live music, and a bustling marketplace with a variety of artisan and apparel vendors. Attendees can also try delicious food from some of the state’s top barbecue and taco vendors, several of which have been recognized by the James Beard Foundation. Some of the restaurants that will be at the fair include Blu Lacy Smokehouse, Ana Liz Taqueria, and Lockhart’s own Barbs B Q and the Original Black’s BBQ. Another…

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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.

bowling for soup band photoOn a late summer evening, 1,100 fans crammed into New York City’s Irving Plaza for a sold-out stop on pop-punk icon band Bowling for Soup’s A Hangover You Don’t Deserve tour. Under the diffused glow of purple and yellow stage lights, fans swayed and sang along, some lifting children onto their shoulders. Twenty years after the album’s release, the Wichita Falls–born, Denton-based band is somehow still adding new listeners alongside a base of devotees who’ve grown up with the band’s endearingly zany anthems. Bowling for Soup (BFS) is also celebrating three decades as a band this year. From the stage, front man Jaret Reddick reflected on the band’s sustainability: “Here we are thirty years in and more people come to our shows than ever, and I…

The post At Thirty, Bowling for Soup’s “Punk Rock Nursery Rhymes” Endure 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.

Albert the Alligator Is Living the Good Life in BeaumontIn the heart of southeast Texas, where alligators roam freely through swamps and waterways, Albert, an eleven-foot-long, 750-pound alligator, has found a new home at Gator Country Adventure Park, in Beaumont. His journey from an indoor pool in Hamburg, New York, to the largest alligator sanctuary in southeast Texas has sparked discussions about exotic pet ownership and wildlife conservation.Founded in 2005 by Gary Saurage, with Arlie Hammonds joining later as a copartner, Gator Country is a haven for more than 450 American alligators. The park plays a crucial role in alligator conservation and education in a region that’s home to Texas’s largest alligator population. Notable residents include Big Al, believed to be around 93 years old, and Big Tex, who at nearly fourteen feet long…

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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.

Taylor Day Grace wasn’t quite sure how her now husband Charley Crockett felt about her the first time they hung out. At the White Horse honky-tonk in East Austin, it wasn’t until they rounded “probably hour five” of what would become a fourteen-hour-long conversation that she started to have a feeling. “I was like, ‘Oh, I think he might like me,’ ” she said.  Grace, who works as a musician and stylist, describes her first impression of country singer and songwriter Crockett as “not hide-in-a-corner shy but just a little bit shy” and having a “sweet heart and a deep soul.” The pair previously crossed paths at Austin’s storied blues club Antone’s, in 2018, but all that really came of it was Grace’s asking Crockett if he…

The post A Royal Country Wedding: Charley Crockett and Taylor Grace Say ‘I Do’ at Willie’s Luck Ranch 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.

leroy and lewis ribeye steak photoEvery Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evening, LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue offers what might be the most exclusive meal you can enjoy while wearing shorts and Crocs. Anyone can line up for the restaurant’s menu, but a reservation on a lengthy waiting list is required to try its steak experience. Co-owners Evan LeRoy and Sawyer Lewis created it to showcase Texas-raised beef in their permanent location, which opened in South Austin in February. “It’s fun to be able to offer something that’s a little outside the barbecue box,” Lewis said. The experience commences before the steak is served. LeRoy ushers diners pitside to reveal the thick-cut steak that’s been slow smoking at 225 degrees. He explains the restaurant’s relationship with Lorene Farms, near Schulenburg, a town…

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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.

dealey plaza photo 1I’m sitting in the back seat of a midnight blue Lincoln Continental convertible that looks almost identical to the one that carried John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Two U.S. flags on the hood flutter in the wind as we cruise through downtown Dallas. This meticulously restored 1963 model even features blankets emblazoned with the presidential seal. As we turn left onto Elm Street from Houston Street, my guide, Robin Brown, slows to 14 miles per hour, close to the speed Kennedy’s motorcade traveled along this route. More than sixty years have passed since the assassination, but I still find myself holding my breath as we roll over the first hand-painted X on the pavement marking where the initial shot struck. By the second X,…

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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.

ryan hamilton amanda zurawski abortion rights advocacy illustrationAmanda Zurawski needed to go for a run. It had been a busy day; Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff was in Austin and asked for time with the plaintiffs in Zurawski v. Texas, the 2023 lawsuit alleging that the vagueness of the medical exemption in Texas’s abortion ban was endangering the lives of women. That evening, a documentary based on the case would be screening downtown, and afterward Zurawski would be onstage as part of a panel discussing the film. Her schedule left no time to take out her sheepadoodle, Millie, and the dog was getting antsy. So while talking with me on the phone, the spritely 37-year-old ran the 5k she’d mapped out around her Austin neighborhood. She is a high-profile advocate, but she’s also…

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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.

Texan You Should Know: Maxine Johnston, Activist and Librarian Who Helped Create the Big Thicket National PreserveTexans You Should Know is a series highlighting overlooked figures and events from Texas history. Some forty miles east of Houston, past the confluence of the Old and Lost rivers, Texas begins to lose its grip on the horizon. By the time you reach the visitor center at the Big Thicket National Preserve, in Kountze, dense forests of loblolly pine, beech, magnolia, sweetgum, and cypress occlude any clear view. Eddying among those trees are turbid bayous and baygalls, dark as coffee, that provide a funhouse reflection of the overstory—a biodome of fronds, needles, bark, and algae punctuated by the calls of things wild and unseen. A greater diversity of plant and animal life thrives here than in anywhere else in Texas. The preserve is home to…

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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.

Fans React to Pepsi Purchasing SieteA decade after the Garza family started selling almond-flour tortillas out of their CrossFit gym in Laredo, the Siete Foods founders are getting a pretty sweet deal.PepsiCo announced earlier this month that it’s buying the Austin-based brand for $1.2 billion and expects to close the deal by the first half of 2025. But some fans are suspicious about what changes the soda corporation might make to the grain-free and dairy-free products. The Garza family launched the grain-free tortilla business in 2014 after Veronica, one of the five kids, was diagnosed with autoimmune diseases but still wanted to enjoy the staples of her Mexican American heritage.Since then, the brand has grown nationally, selling tortillas, salsas, seasonings, sauces, cookies, and chips in thousands of stores, from H-E-B to…

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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.

This past July, cardiac surgeon O. H. “Bud” Frazier helped achieve the near culmination of his life’s work: the implantation in a patient’s chest of an artificial heart that, theoretically, will last decades. Now 84, Frazier, the codirector of the Center for Preclinical Surgical & Interventional Research at Houston’s Texas Heart Institute, has performed more than 1,200 transplant operations in his long career. Yet he came to believe such procedures were inadequate; they bought many patients years, not decades, of life. Frazier concluded, to the derision of many of his colleagues, that an artificial heart could be a better alternative. Just as air travel wasn’t possible until inventors stopped trying to imitate birds in flight, Frazier thought researchers could create a permanent artificial heart only when they…

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