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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.

Dump Your Iced TeaBack when blogging was fun, and before I worked for Texas Monthly, I had a blog called Full Custom Gospel BBQ. A group of guys in Austin ran another blog that was similarly dedicated to Texas barbecue, called Man Up Texas BBQ. One of the founders, Drew Thornley, was just as passionate about iced tea as he was about smoked meat, and he shared his reviews via a Twitter account called @IcedTeaSnob. His last review was posted nine years ago, but I thought of him recently when sipping from a Styrofoam cup full of beige water. A Texas barbecue joint called it iced tea, but it tasted more like the former than the latter. I wondered if Thornley, now an associate professor of legal studies…

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Why Did Houston Public Media Kill an HISD PodcastThe anticipation was building. For four months, Houston Public Media had been working on an eagerly awaited podcast about the state’s takeover of the Houston Independent School District and its controversial installation of Mike Miles as superintendent. Called The Takeover, the four-part series would be hosted by Dominic Walsh, an award-winning public-education reporter who had spent the past year covering Miles’s ambitious overhaul of the state’s largest school district. He’d broken stories and won awards for his coverage of the intervention. Now he would bring it all together for a national audience. “We’re super-excited,” wrote the podcast editor in an internal email obtained by Texas Monthly. “I don’t think a lot of people understand the significance of what’s happening” in Houston, wrote another employee. “Can’t…

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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 tech hockey club tortilla jerseysWHO: The Texas Tech club hockey teamWHAT: The squad’s new flour tortilla–themed jerseysWHY IT’S SO GREAT: The tortillas were flying early and often Saturday in Lubbock after Texas Tech took a 14–0 lead against Arizona State in its—wait for it—Big 12 football season opener. But the top tortilla story in Red Raiders sports last week was, believe it or not, hockey. On Thursday, the school’s club team unveiled an alternate jersey that splits the difference between quirky novelty and Red Raiders tradition. Behold, the tortilla jersey! View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Hockey House (@hockeyhousepod) As Lubbock sports radio host Rob Breux wrote, it’s “a sports uniform that honor[s] the greatest thing a human can make with flour.”The jersey was the…

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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.

spanish drinkin' problem midlandThe air conditioner struggled to cool the crowd crammed into Billy Bob’s Texas to see Midland, one of country music’s unlikely success stories, play a sold-out summer show. But a rapid trade in Shiner and Dos Equis kept the fans chilled until the members of the Dripping Springs–based trio, generally considered too traditional for country radio stations and a little too slick for their Americana counterparts, swaggered onstage in their signature retro-rhinestone, cowboy-chic attire. After admitting to partying until 5 a.m. following a performance the night before, Mark Wystrach, Jess Carson, and Cameron Duddy forged ahead with a slew of classic-sounding, dance floor–ready honky-tonk tunes.One song, though, stood out from the rest: a now-iconic arpeggio was all it took to get the crowd to scream,…

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Driving through the Hill Country’s back roads, you want to keep your eyes peeled. Maybe you’ll spot a flash of bright wildflowers, or a coyote slinking into the brush. But one day a few months ago, something entirely different caught the eyes of park staff at Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, about twenty minutes north of Fredericksburg. A For Sale sign had been posted outside a neighboring ranch. Some 630 acres dotted with colossal live oaks, granite ridges, and trickling springs were on the market. The natural area—home to a massive pink granite dome for which it’s named—draws hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, and it frequently reaches capacity by 9 or 10 a.m. on the weekends, forcing staff to turn away droves of unhappy…

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Cross Texas TrailThe Pacific Crest Trail winds for 2,650 miles through deserts, mountain passes, and canyons on the West Coast. The Appalachian Trail, its counterpart to the east, traverses dappled forests and river gorges for 2,200 miles. Somewhere in the middle, the Continental Divide Trail follows the spine of the Rocky Mountains for 3,100 miles.Along those three trails, dubbed the Triple Crown of Hiking, long-distance hikers blister their toes, wear clothing to a frazzle, whip their bodies into shape, and learn all about themselves. As anyone who’s read the books Wild or A Walk in the Woods, or seen their movie adaptations, can attest, finding yourself and pushing your limits on a through hike has become a time-honored American tradition. And now, trail advocates say, it’s time…

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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.

Cross Texas TrailThe Pacific Crest Trail winds for 2,650 miles through deserts, mountain passes, and canyons on the West Coast. The Appalachian Trail, its counterpart to the east, traverses dappled forests and river gorges for 2,200 miles. Somewhere in the middle, the Continental Divide Trail follows the spine of the Rocky Mountains for 3,100 miles.Along those three trails, dubbed the Triple Crown of Hiking, long-distance hikers blister their toes, wear clothing to a frazzle, whip their bodies into shape, and learn all about themselves. As anyone who’s read the books Wild or A Walk in the Woods, or seen their movie adaptations, can attest, finding yourself and pushing your limits on a through hike has become a time-honored American tradition. And now, trail advocates say, it’s time…

The post Texas’s Answer to the Pacific Crest Trail? A Proposed 1,500 Mile Cross-State Hike appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Can Professional Bull Riding Become the UFC of Rodeo?Back in the day, grizzled cowboys showed off their prowess by wrestling steers, roping calves, and clinging, for as long as possible, to the backs of snot-slinging bulls while their peers watched from the rails of an outdoor corral.There were no pyrotechnics as the riders walked to the ring, no thumping jock jams. No tiny, prize-filled parachutes dropped from the rafters during intermission, sending fans crawling over each other in pursuit. And not even a single audience member watched the proceedings from inside a metal cage on the arena floor. Also, bull riding was an individual sport back then, not a team game.That, my friends, has changed.With the inception of Professional Bull Riders Camping World Team Series in 2022, the league created what now feels like…

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Roy’s Taco Hut owner Rashid AssadRashid Assad, owner of Roy’s Taco Hut, on San Antonio’s West Side, likes to talk about the variety of flour tortillas. A former tortilleria owner and Monterrey, Mexico, native, he waxes poetic about their brown spots, as unique as a tiger’s stripes; their distinctive, flaky layers; and the merits of different sizes and thicknesses. Roy’s excels at its flour tortillas—a smidge thinner than the typical mattress-thick San Antonio–style ones—which are the perfect vehicles for the taqueria’s traditional and offbeat tacos. Despite the fact that Roy’s is on its third owner (Roy Avila, who opened the shop in 1978, retired in 2010), the menu and decor haven’t changed much over the last forty-some years. Classic rock and folk tunes by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Jimi Hendrix…

The post This San Antonio Taqueria Has Had a Tough Year, but Its Quirky Tacos Have Sustained It for Four Decades appeared first on Texas Monthly.

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Shopping Column: Jess Pryles of Hardcore CarnivoreIn our series Stuff Texans Love, our state’s most stylish celebrities share their shopping lists. “No matter what I do, meat is involved,” says five-foot-three meatheart Jess Pryles, in a drawl from latitudes far more southern than Texas. Eight years after founding her babe-who-barbecues lifestyle brand, in 2016, the Aussie turned Texan is starring in a television series exploring the glory of meat, from hunting to carving to grilling. Hardcore Carnivore—the show’s title comes from the name of Pryles’s barbecue seasonings–and–gear line—premiered on Outdoor Channel this week.Pryles’s love for meat led her to leave her hometown of Melbourne in 2015 for a new address in Austin. She had already become a “barbecue missionary” to Australia, cofounding the Australian Barbecue Alliance after repeated vacations to Texas for…

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