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Dancing at Robert’s Lafitte, in Galveston, on April 20, 2024.I walk into Robert’s Lafitte just after 8 p.m. on a Thursday in March. Early, I know, but now that I’m in my thirties, “nightlife” is no longer synonymous with “late nights.” Just a few other customers, mostly men, sit under the rainbow-colored string lights inside Galveston’s oldest continuously running gay bar (and reportedly the oldest in the state), two blocks from the island’s Historic Pleasure Pier. It’s so quiet that I pull out the novel I’ve brought with me and begin to read as the bartender makes my gin and tonic. It won’t stay that way. I’m returning to Galveston for the first time as an openly queer woman. I recently moved back to my hometown of Houston after a few years of living in New…

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Q&A-Texas-Coast-Clean-Swimming-ContaminationOutside of an incoming hurricane, few threats discourage Texans from plunging into the Gulf of Mexico more than the dangerous fecal contamination frequently reported along our coastline. Last year a widely publicized study from Environment America, an advocacy group that focuses on pollution, revealed that 90 percent of Texas beaches exposed swimmers to at least one day of potentially unsafe fecal contamination—well above the national average of 55 percent. Does that mean you should burn your swim trunks and cancel vacation plans? Thankfully, no. Outdated testing methods, for starters, can yield unreliable results. They may fail to detect when unsafe levels of pollution are present, but they may also create an outsized sense of danger.  The waters consistently deemed potentially unsafe are still a relatively small…

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The pool at Margaritaville Beach Resort South Padre Island, on Wednesday, April 17, 2024.My impressions of resort life have been informed chiefly by HBO’s dark comedy The White Lotus, filmed at luxury resorts around the world. Unfortunately, our HBOverlords have not yet given us the White Lotus season we deserve: one set at the Margaritaville on South Padre Island. The romances and tensions would grow around the crystalline turquoise waters of the hotel’s pool, with its swim-up bar, and unspool beneath the thirteen-foot-high yellow flip-flop sculpture in the lobby. The characters would be extraordinary.The season would begin much like my visit in mid-March does, with Daniel Haughan, the general manager, watching guests pass through the lobby with coolers and occasionally canines in tow. (The hotel allows pets for a $200 fee per visit.) “Compression season,” his fabulously militaristic…

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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.

Dabney ColemanDabney Coleman may have left the Lone Star State for Hollywood (by way of New York) early in his career. But his Texas twang was a part of almost every role.The Austin-born actor who played the “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” boss in 1980’s 9 to 5, died at his home in California on May 16 at the age of 92. With a career that spanned six decades and included almost two hundred movie and television appearances, Coleman often brought an authentic Texas twang to his mostly comedic roles—even if it was overshadowed in the iconic office caper 9 to 5 by the thick drawl of Dolly Parton’s secretary character, Doralee Rhodes, as she and her colleagues, played by Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, sought…

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Runoffs are not as sexy as general elections, but that doesn’t mean they’re not consequential. Who will control the state House? Who is steering legislative priorities? In the second episode of Answer Me This, senior editor Alex Samuels explains how the 2024 primary runoffs can have a lasting impact.

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Daniel Perry pardonBefore we get to the substance of what happened on Thursday, when Governor Greg Abbott pardoned Daniel Perry for murder, it’s important to be specific and clear about what happened to Perry on the night of July 25, 2020. The state leaders celebrating the pardon—most prominently Attorney General Ken Paxton—are effectively telling us the specifics of the case are not important. When someone in power tells us that, it’s a good idea to look more closely.In the summer of 2020, protests against police violence erupted across the United States. Most of these protests were peaceful, and some, like the one I witnessed in Vidor, a former “sundown town,” were downright wholesome. Others, though, turned violent, and rioters destroyed property in cities such as Minneapolis and…

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meanwhile in texas baby mandrillThe Fort Worth Zoo welcomed the first baby mandrill—a female named Ruby—born there in more than three decades. A mother and daughter from Conroe were arrested during an undercover sting operation after allegedly giving illegal butt-enhancing injections to clients for $6,000 a pop. The story of Cinder, a porcupine recovering from burns sustained in the Panhandle wildfires, inspired a fundraiser that collected more than $24,000 to help other afflicted animals. Three boys ages eleven to sixteen were accused of robbing a bank in Harris County and referred to as the “little rascals” on an FBI social media account. A Dallas man legally changed his name to Literally Anybody Else and announced his intent to run in the 2024 presidential election. A Houston man pleaded guilty…

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Joey Victorian outside Victorian's Barbecue in Mart.The first time Joey Victorian really noticed anything about Mart, it was a “for sale” sign on one of its historic downtown buildings. He was driving from his home in northwest Houston into Waco to visit the Magnolia Market, aka the Silos, and drove through the tiny town of fewer than two thousand residents. (One of its native sons is actor Jesse Plemons.) Victorian called the number on the sign, but the building had just sold. Three months later, in early 2022, the sellers reached out after the original deal fell through. Victorian bought it and another empty building the next block over, and he finally had a home for his barbecue joint.I first tried Victorian’s barbecue when he set up a food truck in…

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Daniel Perry pardonedMore than a year after a Travis County jury convicted Daniel Perry of murdering a protester in Austin, Governor Greg Abbott pardoned the former U.S. Army sergeant on Thursday shortly after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended a full pardon.A Texas state district court judge sentenced Perry in May 2023 to 25 years in prison for shooting and killing U.S. Air Force veteran Garrett Foster during a 2020 demonstration protesting police brutality against people of color.One day after a jury convicted Perry, Abbott directed the parole board to review the former U.S. Army sergeant’s case.“Among the voluminous files reviewed by the Board, they considered information provided by the Travis County District Attorney, the full investigative report on Daniel Perry, plus a review of all the testimony…

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Russell "Texas" Bentley in front of the painting "Donbass" dating from 2016 by Russian painter Aleksandr Novosyolov at the Donetsk Art Museum on Wednesday, April 12, 2017 in Donetsk, Ukraine.Russell Bonner Bentley III intended to devote the afternoon of April 8 to the banal task of picking up some new health insurance documents. The 63-year-old Texan and his wife, Lyudmila, had driven to the shabby, four-story Soviet-era municipal building flanked by spruce trees in the Petrovsky District on the western outskirts of Donetsk, a city in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas that has been a war zone for the past ten years. At the top of the building’s façade hung a black, blue, and red flag and the white double-headed eagle of the Donetsk People’s Republic, an unrecognized breakaway statelet of Ukraine that was formally annexed by Russia in 2022. Bentley had moved to the Donbas from Round Rock, just north of Austin, nine…

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