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"Beyond the Beach," June 2024 spreadWasting Away Again, Texas Monthly?What a disappointment to see a cover with the title “Beyond the Beach,” only to be subjected to an article about the Margaritaville Beach Resort [“Where It’s Always Five O’Clock,” June 2024]. I can’t think of a more plastic and inauthentic beach setting on South Padre Island. I’ve travelled there for more than thirty years and could give you dozens of authentic places to stay and eat. I can even give you a review of Margaritaville. Last fall, when my family made our annual trip, we gave it a try. The food was canned and tasteless, the drinks were overpriced, and I felt like I was being conned to feed Jimmy Buffett’s legacy of success. It is truly wasting away in…

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UT swim coach Bob Bowman at the OlympicsThe University of Texas’s appeal as a destination for world-class swimmers was enhanced in the final push to the Paris Olympics. It was early June, 53 days before the start of the Summer Games, and lanes two, three, and four at the outdoor pool at the Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center were occupied, respectively, by reigning Olympic champion Chase Kalisz, from outside Baltimore; world champion Hubert Kós, of Hungary; and Frenchman Leon Marchand, who eclipsed the last of Michael Phelps’s world records in 2023.In the outside lanes were Regan Smith, weeks away from reclaiming a world record in the 100-meter backstroke at the U.S. trials, and two others who would qualify for Paris. Erik Posegay, the new associate head coach of the UT men’s swim…

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Restroom at Stillwell'sOn the twentieth floor of Hôtel Swexan, a few steps from an infinity pool overlooking downtown Dallas, stands a hand-hewn wood door. Behind it is a powder room that’s barely bigger than a broom closet but brimming with style. Tiny, multicolor tiles cover the walls and a Moorish mirror hangs above the real showstopper: an engraved antique brass pedestal sink imported from Morocco. This pool bathroom is the smallest of 24 restrooms (not counting the in-room bathrooms) that visitors can experience at Hôtel Swexan. The 134-room boutique property opened last summer and belongs to Harwood International, a family-operated, Dallas-based development group that owns the 19-block Hardwood District. The family favored one-of-a-kind designs, resulting in more than a hundred different marbles, a hundred different stones, and a…

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Review of "The Ballad of Roy Benavidez: The Life and Times of America’s Most Famous Hispanic War Hero."As a high school student in the mid-1980s, I became fascinated with the Vietnam War. Perhaps this was because at the time I was not much younger than many of the troops had been when they were drafted. Or maybe I was beguiled by movies like Apocalypse Now, the Deer Hunter, Full Metal Jacket, and Platoon, which had kept the war roiling in the public consciousness. I read books by Michael Herr, Tim O’Brien, and Neil Sheehan, and even had a map of Southeast Asia taped to my closet door.But until picking up William Sturkey’s The Ballad of Roy Benavidez: The Life and Times of America’s Most Famous Hispanic War Hero (Basic Books), I had never heard of the book’s subject, which I found surprising…

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Late last month, Abrams announced it would be publishing a new cookbook entitled New School Barbecue by Evan LeRoy of Austin’s LeRoy and Lewis Barbecue in early 2026. LeRoy and Lewis was named the No. 5 barbecue joint in the latest Texas Monthly Top 50 list. It got me thinking about a conversation I had two years ago about a cookbook in the works for Goldee’s Barbecue (our No. 1 spot), for which I hadn’t heard a recent update. Well, great news! Goldee’s cookbook will be published by University of Texas Press late next year, meaning we’ll have new books sharing the secrets from two of our top five barbecue joints coming out within about six months of each other.Both LeRoy and the Goldee’s crew…

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The Checklist: It Ends With UsFILMIt Ends With UsIn theaters August 9Sulphur Springs native Colleen Hoover, whom Texas Monthly profiled in the June issue, is one of the best-selling novelists of the twenty-first century. Her sixteenth book, It Ends With Us, is a huge part of that success, helping the former social worker outsell Dr. Seuss and John Grisham in 2022. Now comes the movie adaptation, which Hoover cowrote, starring Gossip Girl alum Blake Lively as a florist named Lily who grew up in an abusive home but hopes to build a better life in Boston. When she falls for mercurial neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, of Jane the Virgin fame, who also directs the film), her happily-ever-after darkens as his behavior begins to echo that of her late father. Overcoming childhood…

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Princeton ISD Voucher SchemeTwo years after a Central Texas school district abruptly scotched plans to set up an unprecedented voucher program, another public school system in North Texas is considering the same scheme. In August 2022, despite an aggressive push by Republican operatives and the apparent tacit backing of Texas Education Agency commissioner Mike Morath, a majority on the Wimberley school board decided the academic, financial, and legal risks of a proposal to divert public dollars to fund private school educations were too great. They heeded the recommendation of their new superintendent, who complained to the trustees about an “overt and covert” intimidation campaign and warned that the funding stream would mostly flow to the middlemen.But the backers of the plan—a politically connected charter chain called Responsive Education…

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The Cowboy Cheerleaders' Hair Stylist Shares How to Get (and Keep) Big Texas HairSince its introduction in 1972, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders’ look has been iconic: short shorts, fringed vest, knotted top.  Equally iconic: the cheerleaders’ hair. The squad’s dance routines, including Thunderstruck, which has gone viral in the wake of the Netflix docuseries America’s Sweethearts, involve hair flips and shoulder shimmies that send the sweethearts’ curls bouncing. Hair is so imperative to the cheerleaders’ overall aesthetic that salon makeovers are a required part of the squad audition process. As featured in the Netflix series, hairstylist Kevin Ozowski, of North Texas’s Tangerine Salon, oversees DCC hopefuls as they have their locks transformed to “better suit” their skin tones and face shapes. On the show, he and his colleagues notably deepen the sole redhead’s scarlet locks and take New Jersey blonde…

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Abner Haynes's Death is Reminder that Leon King Should be in the Texas Football Hall of Fame With HimWhen football great Abner Haynes died last Thursday, at age 86 (his cause of death has not been reported), the news prompted loving reflections on the Texas Sports Hall of Fame inductee’s storied athletic career. Haynes was the most valuable player of the American Football League as a rookie in 1960, when he suited up for his hometown Dallas Texans. He helped Dallas win the 1962 AFL championship, before the franchise up and left to become the Kansas City Chiefs.Before beginning his eight-season pro career, Haynes helped break the football color barrier for Texas’s four-year colleges in 1956, when he joined the team at North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas), in Denton. That was eight years before Warren McVea signed with…

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Lloyd Doggett Q&ALloyd Doggett has had a storied career. The Democratic congressman has served in the House of Representatives since 1995, holding on to a seat that’s represented, through various redistricting processes across three decades, Austin, San Antonio, and portions of the Rio Grande Valley. Before serving in Congress, where he’s a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, he spent eleven years in the Texas Senate, where he was a member of the famed “Killer Bee” quorum breakers, then served on the Texas Supreme Court from 1989 to 1994. But he became the answer to a trivia question a little less than three weeks ago, when he became the first Democrat in Congress to call on President Joe Biden to end his 2024 campaign, expressing concern over Biden’s…

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