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San AntonioTexas Monthly recently delivered a backhanded compliment to the community I serve as mayor, calling San Antonio “one of the loveliest, most welcoming—and poorest cities in America.” While I don’t dispute any of her facts, the article’s author, San Antonio native Mimi Swartz, selectively curates those facts to make her argument, blurring the lines of responsibility for various governmental functions and citing challenges for which the potential solutions lie beyond the city government’s full control. That’s a critical mistake if you’re serious about making change, because you need to know who holds the keys to funding, where accountability lies, when the ball is in your court to act alone, and when you must work as part of a coalition. If Swartz’s goal was to stir debate,…

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wahoo illustrationEach month, we get to know one of the state’s many wonderful and quirky critters. Latin name: Acanthocybium solandriSize: 3 to 5.5 feet long and 50–70 poundsTexas habitat: Gulf CoastOver two days last February, the seventeen guests and crew members on board the Dolphin Express charter fishing boat caught 109 wahoo in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, almost two hundred miles from the vessel’s dock, in Port Aransas. Iridescent blue-and-silver scales glinted in the sun as fish piled up on the deck. “It was epic,” recalls Captain Tim Oestreich. “There were seventy-pound wahoo free-jumping” in the waves. Wahoo swim in tropical and subtropical waters worldwide. Texas anglers fondly call the peak season Wahoo Winter, which lasts from late December to mid-March. What’s unusual about them?Wahoo…

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january meanwhile in texas serrano pepper illustrationAn inspection of a tractor trailer at the Pharr International Bridge, in the Rio Grande Valley, revealed $31 million worth of methamphetamine concealed within a shipment of serrano peppers.At an international aerial acrobatics contest in Athens, Greece, a 68-year-old Tyler woman—the oldest competitor—won first- and second-place medals.A Georgetown couple was sentenced to a combined 32 years in federal prison for applying for small-business loans during the pandemic and using the funds to start a marijuana dispensary and buy luxury watches, a motor home, and other items.Hoping to hatch rare Southeast Asian chickens that can sell for as much as $2,000 each, a woman from Aransas Pass pleaded guilty to smuggling sixty eggs into the U.S.The 2025 Guinness World Record for the largest collection of Casper…

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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.

texas chainsaw massacre fragrance photo illustration“Which movie would you want to smell like?” sounds like a prompt for a profile on a dating app for cinephiles. But let’s consider the question. I’d pick Top Gun over, say, Pretty Woman. A James Bond film seems like a safe bet for me—Casino Royale, perhaps, with its seductive smell of money, martinis, and Mayfair. Home Alone might smell of pine, cinnamon-apple potpourri and freshly baked sugar cookies, which would be nice this time of year. Pride and Prejudice might have notes of hyacinth mixed with the earthy aroma of rural England and the incense of a roaring hearth. That sounds promising but there were also a lot of horses involved in English country life during the Regency era.What about The Texas Chain Saw…

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Desalination Plants in CorpusThe dark hump of a bottlenose dolphin’s back cuts through the surface of the Corpus Christi Ship Channel, appearing briefly alongside a docked, Hong Kong–registered bulk-cargo vessel. This industrial canal is an unlikely haven for wildlife, but dolphins are attracted by its cool waters and abundant mullet and appear so regularly that local captains take tour boats to see them.From the observation tower under the downtown Harbor Bridge, a pedestrian can also spy the bend in the channel, a mile and a half away, where the city is placing pipes to feed its planned Inner Harbor desalination plant. Water will be sucked into the facility and stripped of its salt and other minerals by reverse osmosis. The clean water will be routed into the city’s…

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Balmorhea Trip GuideWhen Balmorhea pool threw a party for its grand opening over two days in June 1936, celebrants took part in all kinds of activities. A poster from the event breathlessly lists them: a bathing-girl revue, swimming competitions, something called fancy diving, a free barbecue lunch, a baseball game, speedboat races on nearby Lake Balmorhea, and not one but two big dances.That sounds like a lot of action. Honestly, I prefer my visits to Balmorhea—both the vast, gin-clear pool (which famously ranks among the world’s largest spring-fed pools) and the West Texas town you pass through to get there—on the sleepier side, which is why I like to go in winter. The state park packs people in on sultry summer days, but, like cold-blooded mosquitoes, all…

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made in texas: brand new noise photoThe motto was always “Build it, don’t buy it.” Richard Upchurch heard his dad say this constantly growing up. So when his beloved sixties-era Sony transistor radio broke, a young Upchurch didn’t purchase a new one; instead, he cracked it open and tinkered until it worked again. Decades later, the fifty-year-old Upchurch still has that radio—and it’s still functional. He’s now a professional tinkerer, the Geppetto behind Brand New Noise, a Dallas-based line of wooden musical instrument–toys—or toy-instruments, depending on the customer. He recently sold one of his pieces to a synthesizer enthusiast who planned to use it on a record. But on his way out, the customer added, “My daughter’s gonna love this thing.” She’s nine.Upchurch’s flagship product, Loopy Lou, is essentially a small recording…

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working life shredder photoWorking Life is a monthly column in which Texans talk about their jobs. Thomas Polinard, who is 42, is general manager of Shredco, a company that destroys and recycles documents in San Antonio.I would have preferred to be an astronaut, but shredding is the family business. Even in elementary school, I helped my dad with Shredco. After I graduated high school he kept asking me to work at the company, which he had been running for more than forty years. Eventually I took over. The majority of our customers are lawyers, doctors, and accountants. Insurance companies too. Dentists are fun because a lot of times they’ve got X-rays mixed in with the paper. You’ve got to take those out if you want to be right with the…

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weekends bbq food photoMonte Neil was in fifth grade when his father, Glenn, opened WeekEnds BBQ in 2007 in Plainview, 45 minutes north of Lubbock. “When we started it, we didn’t know the first thing in the world about barbecue,” Neil said. “It was just something to do on the weekends,” he added, hence the name. His father is now semiretired, and Neil runs the joint, which moved to the other side of town in February. He added a unique smoker to the new pit room and tweaked the recipes. Now he has a barbecue gem on his hands.After his college days at Texas A&M University, “I didn’t want to move back to West Texas,” Neil said. He took a sales job in Houston after graduation and thought…

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When I arrive at his Dripping Springs ranch, Theo Rossi informs me that Willie Nelson has died. He’s referring to a goat he and his family named after the beloved Texas icon and who suffered from an unhealthy urethra. Thankfully, Rossi’s four other goats are fine, including Willie’s sister, Bette Davis. An auburn buck named Biggie eyes us suspiciously as he approaches the fence line, while Smalls, his counterpart, lazes near a dirt pit that the 49-year-old actor tells me was once a pond. Rain has been scarce, and Rossi would rather not water a hole. Within eyeshot, Peanut Butter and Jelly, two Great Pyrenees that joined the fold after two of the family’s dozen chickens got plucked off by foxes, stand upon a hill in…

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