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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.

How to Thrift Cowboy Boots“What we believe first and foremost with a cowboy boot is that it [must] follow the traditional standards for construction,” Will Ormes tells me, with an accent so strong he has to be a born-and-bred Texan. A few minutes ago, he tipped his black Stetson in greeting and sat down across from me at the hat-room bar at Allens Boots in Austin. The first sign that you’re in a solid boot-shopping establishment: chivalry is alive and well.Ormes, a manager at Allens, has agreed to give me a history lesson on a cowboy or cowgirl’s most prized possession: a pair of trusty, worn-in leather boots. He explains how stacked leather and a stainless steel shank, a thin bar most often found in work boots that adds…

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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.

Before Murphy Bailey ever set foot in Henry’s Hideout, an 87-year-old honky-tonk just up the road from his hometown of Magnolia, 45 miles northwest of Houston, he had heard stories about it and Henry Phillips, who founded the joint and ran it until he died, in 1992.“I heard he had a pet bear, Henry did,” Bailey, who is 38 and the proprietor of the newly renovated Hideout, said. “And you could go in there, pay a fee, and wrestle it. If you beat it, you won the pot that had accumulated from past losers. I’ve heard that one so many times, I mean, it’s got to have some truth.” The veracity of such tall tales was ultimately, for Bailey and the townsfolk, of little import.…

The post The Horniest Bar in Texas Is on the Rebound 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.

Greg Abbott with serious expressionThe social media site formerly known as Twitter, and currently known as X, has long been a cesspool of social ills. But ever since Elon Musk took the reins in 2022, two years after he officially moved to Texas, it has gotten a lot of attention for tolerating a surge in antisemitism, racism, misogyny, all manner of hate speech, and misinformation. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that on Monday morning, our very magazine got dragged into Musk’s gutter, via a bizarre, doctored image of Texas Monthly’s October 2013 cover. The real cover featured a portrait Texas Monthly commissioned of Greg Abbott sitting in his wheelchair in a clearing, a gun propped over his shoulder, under the headline “The Gov,” with an asterisk next to…

The post No, a Magazine Called ‘Israel Monthly’ Did Not Put Greg Abbott on Its Cover 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.

Green lawns in the suburbs.If you’re a native Texan, or if you’ve lived here awhile, you’ve probably had it drilled into your head: don’t waste water. And you’ve likely noticed how our ever-hotter, ever-drier summers are wreaking havoc on our aquifers, reservoirs, rivers, trees, and landscapes. Thanks to our old pal climate change, we are now even contending with a new type of drought! For those who didn’t get the message, however, water utilities across much of the state have been increasing rates for heavy users, cracking down on rule breakers, and imposing stringent measures such as once-a-week watering rules. Changing consciousness, and conservation-focused policy tools, have made a difference. Cities have cut their per-capita consumption—the average amount of water used per resident—by more than 20 percent in the…

The post Texas Developers Love Big Thirsty Lawns. That’s a Huge Problem for the State’s Water Supply. 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.

Ceviche tacos at El Botanero Mariscos.After finishing a construction job in Jarrell, Abel Palacios was looking for a different way to make money. His older brother, Josh Palacios, co-owner of El Remedio Mariscos y Taqueria in San Antonio, told him he needed to go into the family business built on their Sinaloan grandfather’s seafood recipes. “You need to sell ceviche, bro,” Josh recalls telling Abel in 2019. But the younger Palacios didn’t have any professional food experience, so he was hesitant. It took more encouragement, repeated visits to his grandfather’s house in Los Angeles, and a pandemic to spur Abel into action. He relocated to his hometown of El Paso and started delivering aguachile and ceviche from the trunk of his 2014 Toyota Camry in January 2020. He sold forty to…

The post El Botanero Mariscos Is a Seafood Oasis Along the Texas Border 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.

How One Waco Family Resurrected the Oldest Known Tiffany Stained-glass Window in TexasThe hand-painted face of a sheep peeks out of an assortment of colorful glass fragments on a wooden worktable at Stanton Studios, in Waco. The weathered visage, its details hard to decipher against the scuffed, unlit pane, is the only indication of what this stained-glass window will portray once it is fully assembled. Even the man responsible for the job can’t bear to tally up the exact number of glass pieces it entails. “Thousands,” studio founder Bryant Stanton tells me. Even in an uncountable number of pieces, the window is gorgeous, its deeply hued fragments reflecting light to catch the eye like so many two-dimensional jewels.Waiting to be soldered together in the Waco workshop, the glass shards are 240 miles from their home church, in…

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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.

Pink crepe myrtle treeAn apocryphal quirk of Texas history claims that we have the right to subdivide into five distinct states, and reading the headlines in Texas Monthly may have you thinking that we’re on the verge of such a pentamerous shattering. Troops are at the border. An internal civil war wages among state leadership. A few Republicans have even put a fatwa on on H-E-B Chairman Charles Butt.But whatever lines may divide us, there is one core fact about Texas that should be able to heal any political schism, bridge any cultural divide, and unite us all under a single banner from El Paso to Texarkana: Texas has the absolute best official state flora and fauna.I presume your mind’s eye is already fluttering with visions of roadside…

The post Cut the Crape Myrtle! Texas Deserves a Better State Shrub 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.

Willie Nelson on NBC's "Today" show on November 20, 2012 in New York.When a celebrity’s name starts trending on social media, there’s a question fans have to ask: Is this for a good reason, or a bad one? When that celebrity is elderly, the fear that folks might be talking about them because there’s bad news is heightened. So we are here to tell you, if you’ve seen Willie Nelson trending today, April 29, everything is fine. It’s just his birthday! Happy birthday, Willie!Today is Willie’s ninety-first birthday, putting him in the ranks of the estimated 2.8 million Americans who have entered their tenth decade of experiencing life on this planet of ours. Last year, the Red Headed Stranger celebrated his ninetieth in high-profile fashion, performing as part of a star-studded tribute concert at the Hollywood Bowl…

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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 Sunny Daze cocktail.The shiny copper top of a bottle of Tito’s Handmade Vodka is instantly recognizable at any bar across the country. The brand may have humble roots as the oldest legal distillery in Texas, but these days, imbibers from Los Angeles to New York City commonly order the vodka by name, advancing it into the echelon of Jack, Crown, and Grey Goose. But Tito’s was not an overnight success, says Taylor Berry, the vice president of brand marketing, but rather a “25-year overnight success.”When Tito’s celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2022, the Austin-based company considered it the right time to document its history alongside dozens of cocktail recipes. The brand’s debut book, Spirit in a Bottle: Tales and Drinks from Tito’s Handmade Vodka, out May 7…

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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.

Alice McConnell co-founded biopharmaceutical company Speragen after both her children were diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder.“Imagine you’re five years old, you’ve just had five margaritas, and your parents send you off to school,” says Alice McConnell, sipping hot tea at her kitchen table in northwest Austin. She isn’t setting up a joke, but explaining what it feels like for someone to have succinic semialdehyde dehydrogenase deficiency, a debilitating genetic disorder that is estimated to affect 1 in 460,000 people worldwide. That would suggest there are more than 17,000 active cases today, yet only 450 patients have ever been diagnosed. Two of those are McConnell’s own children.“If I only had one [kid with it], I might not have answered the call,” she says. “But I got two. The universe hit me upside the head and said, ‘Hey, pay attention.’ ”“The call” led…

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