News
 
Gravatar

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

A pair of code compliance officers from the City of Dallas approached Jamie Sosa on a Sunday afternoon in February. A line of customers looked on as the officers told him to shut down his barbecue trailer for the day. He was operating without a permit, and received a $250 ticket. Sosa took the ticket and kept serving. “I have hundreds of dollars’ worth of barbecue in my smoker, and I have a crowd that I need to feed,” he told the officers. They promised another ticket for every two additional people he served. He got five more tickets before they left. “I’m not mad at them,” Sosa said. “They’re just doing their job.” Such is the life of an underground barbecue slinger. Sosa has…

The post An Underground Joint in Dallas Goes Legit, and Its Barbecue Has Never Been Better 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.

Henry Cuellar Doesn't Want to Talk Azerbaijan But He Shared With Us a PlaylistHenry Cuellar has never been shy with the D.C. Capitol press. The ten-term congressman from Laredo is known to be a great source to reporters, both on the record and off. That is, until he was indicted last week on fourteen charges alleging political corruption involving the Azerbaijani government and a bank in Mexico. Cuellar skipped votes at the Capitol on Monday, returning Tuesday, when he slipped past the TV news crews waiting for him in and around the U.S. House of Representatives. The glad-handing centrist Democrat typically walks to votes alone, often holding court or taking phone calls in the Speaker’s Lobby just loud enough for reporters to hear. Not anymore. On Wednesday, Cuellar walked to the Capitol from his office in the Rayburn House…

The post Henry Cuellar Wouldn’t Answer Questions About His Indictment. He Offered Us a Playlist Instead.  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.

'We Were the Universe' by Kimberly King ParsonsIf you do an image search for Wink, Texas, you’ll find pictures of a wee Roy Orbison Museum, aerial photos of two massive sinkholes, and not much else. The small West Texas hamlet, about eight miles south of Kermit, is the setting for part of fifth-generation Texan Kimberly King Parsons’s debut novel, We Were the Universe. Kit, the main character and narrator, grew up in Wink and is living in a fictional Dallas suburb named Pivot. She’s a young stay-at-home mom reeling from the loss of her sister Julie to alcoholism, searching for a way to process her emotions. Her old comforts of casual sex and psychedelics don’t mesh with her desire to be a dependable, loving mom to her daughter, Gilda, so Kit starts…

The post Horny Moms and Lost Souls: How Kimberly King Parsons Crafted a Modern, Hallucinatory Texas Novel 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.

Paxton Watch: Ken vs. Annunciation HouseIt’s Ken Paxton versus Catholics, round two. Back in February, the Texas attorney general targeted the migrant shelter Annunciation House, in El Paso, on his stated suspicions of “alien harboring” and “operating a stash house.” He cited no evidence for the latter claim, but demanded that Annunciation House turn over a host of records, including its clients’ names and medical records. Annunciation House, which receives migrants from the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other government agencies and feeds and houses them, refused to turn over all the documents. It argued that Paxton was violating several constitutional protections, including the Catholic organization’s right to free exercise of religion. Instead of waiting for a final ruling on the document request, the attorney general filed for…

The post Ken Paxton Mistakes Catholic Teachings for “Bohemian Commandments” 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.

William Beckmann short profileWith all the earnestness of a love letter, country singer William Beckmann sings classic country tales of pining—for the one that got away, for the red-dressed women from the bar. Over the sounds of his staple bluesy harmonica, he swings from raucous boot-stomping music to ballads with the relaxed feel of a sunlit drive through the Texas towns he sings about. The common denominator is honest storytelling, and an undeniable energy that’s propelled him from his home in Del Rio to venues such as the Corona Club in Acuña, Mexico, which hadn’t seen a country act in almost two decades before Beckmann walked in.Inspired by the likes of Elvis, Frank Sinatra, and Johnny Cash, the 28-year-old sings in a deep bass, with a smooth cadence…

The post Del Rio’s William Beckmann Proves That Even Twentysomethings Can Be Cowboy Crooners 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.

Henry Cuellar and what Azerbaijan wants in TexasIt’s harder to be a moderate in Washington, D.C., than ever before. Nobody knows that better than the veteran centrist Democrat Henry Cuellar, who faces prosecution from the federal government for his work on one of the few remaining bipartisan causes in Texas politics: the glorious nation of Azerbaijan. On Friday, the Department of Justice indicted Congressman Cuellar, who represents Laredo, on fourteen counts, including bribery, conspiracy, failure to register as a foreign agent, and money laundering. Cuellar and his wife, Imelda, are alleged to have used a network of shell companies to hide $600,000 in payoffs from a Mexican bank and an Azerbaijani oil company. For those payments, the feds allege, Cuellar offered concrete deliverables, the “quid” for the “quo.” Cuellar is supposed to have…

The post What Azerbaijan Wants From Texas Politicians 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.

A plate featuring the different meats at LA23 BBQ.“Texas is the motherland of barbecue, and if somebody says it’s not, they’re just an idiot,” Bobby Monsted III told me. Monsted is co-owner of LA23 BBQ in Belle Chasse, Louisiana. It’s a small place with covered picnic tables for seating along State Highway 23 in Plaquemines Parish. He was raised just upriver in New Orleans, but often sampled barbecue while visiting family in Fort Worth and Texarkana as a kid. When he opened a barbecue shack in 2012, he knew Texas-style was the way to smoke.After graduating from Mississippi College with a business degree in 2002, Monsted didn’t return to New Orleans, where his father ran a successful insurance company. He instead took the unusual step of opening a fishing charter service on the…

The post LA23 BBQ Is Doing Texas Right in Plaquemines Parish 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.

People cool off in the Sundance Square fountain in downtown Fort Worth on July 26, 2015.“No more than ten minutes!” I yelled after my eleven-year-old daughter as she darted out the back door. It was late on an August evening, and the temperature in Houston continued to hover over 100 degrees, refusing to offer even a brief reprieve. Last summer was less of a breaking point and more of a languishing, as persistent triple digits kept our family of four increasingly confined to our home. The sun was so relentless that I often drew the curtains by noon. Right outside our door was a huge yard with a tree swing, a neighborhood park, and miles of bayou trails. Inside was a lethargic mom trying to console two kids with more screen time that none of us wanted.During my own adolescence…

The post Texas Parents Are Terrified for Another Triple-Digit Summer 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.

Caitlin Clark's First Pro Game in DallasWith less than ten seconds left in the game and the score tied at 76, Dallas Wings guard Arike Ogunbowale, dribbled past half-court. She dribbled between her legs a couple times and then nudged forward beyond the three-point line, just enough to put her Indiana Fever defender, Lexie Hull, on her heels. Ogungowale’s juke created just enough space for her to release a step-back three-pointer, which toilet-bowled around the rim before dropping through the net with 4.5 seconds remaining.   NOT HER FIRST TIME. WON'T BE HER LAST. https://t.co/SINX2gAt6x pic.twitter.com/D9WCDCIyMi— Dallas Wings (@DallasWings) May 4, 2024 The 6,251 spectators who gathered for the Wings’ preseason opener erupted. And they erupted again seconds later, after Indiana guard Caitlin Clark—the college hoops phenomenon and top overall pick…

The post Texas Might Be Ready to Fall Back in Love With the WNBA 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.

Maya Hawke in Wildcat.Early in Ethan Hawke’s new film, Wildcat, a young Flannery O’Connor (Maya Hawke, Hawke’s daughter) tells a skeptical editor that she’s “amenable to criticism—but only within the sphere of what [she’s] trying to do.” That editor doesn’t end up publishing the work in question, perhaps illustrating that the gulf between what a piece of art attempts and what it achieves can be hard to bridge, no matter the affection the artist might have for the material.As O’Connor once admitted herself, a biopic about the author is a tall order. An epigraph of one biography quotes her: “There won’t be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.” Indeed, she spent…

The post Ethan Hawke’s ‘Wildcat’ Proves a Good Film Is Hard to Find appeared first on Texas Monthly.

Thank you for reading!