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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.

Senior editor Forrest Wilder above the Pecos River, near Langtry, on November 11, 2023.Most journalists develop a specialty or two, accumulating knowledge of particular topics through their reporting and cultivating of expert sources. At Texas Monthly, for instance, executive editor Mike Hall, a law school dropout and rock-and-roll singer and guitarist who plays weekend gigs in Austin, writes often about both criminal justice and music. Executive editor Courtney Bond enthusiastically covers food and drink as well as Texas travel. But few writers anywhere display the range of senior editor Forrest Wilder, the author of this month’s cover story on the fast-growing sport of rock climbing.Forrest has closely followed Texas politics for decades, both as a writer and an editor. He knows the character of the state’s gerrymandered federal and state legislative districts and the personalities who shape our electoral…

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Texas Medicaid lossIt wasn’t unusual for Harper to fall suddenly. “She’s a toe walker,” said her mother, Brooke Wilson, referring to a condition associated with her daughter’s autism. “She’ll literally just be standing there, and she’ll tip over.” But this time was different.One morning last fall, Wilson was getting ready to go to her job as a special education teacher when her husband called out from the kitchen. She rushed in to find nine-year-old Harper slumped over, with her head on the counter. When Wilson lifted Harper’s face, the girl’s eyes rolled back, and her body crumpled downward. “Thank God I was right there, so her head didn’t hit the floor,” Wilson said. “It was the scariest thing. My whole body was shaking.”As the family rushed to…

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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.

Marfa Invitational DramaMichael Phelan is beaming like a kid playing with a gargantuan erector set. The far West Texas sun is starting its drop into the Western sky, illuminating the face of the controversial Marfa art maven as he stands under a construction crane that holds an eight-thousand-pound shipping container. The crane operator lifts one end and positions it at an angle atop another container. It’s a leg, or at least it’s going to be, once all twelve steel rectangles are placed into the form of someone reclining in the middle of a big field. Together, they form Sleeping Figure, a massive sculpture designed by Los Angeles artist Matt Johnson and now on permanent display in Marfa. Phelan is here mainly to watch, since Johnson and engineers already…

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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.

Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas) is seen on Capitol Hill Sept. 13, 2023.In May, Meebs Aslam gave a $10 donation to a political campaign promising to oust one of the nation’s most loathed senators. Colin Allred, then a Democratic congressman from Dallas, had just announced a bid against incumbent Ted Cruz. Aslam, a precinct chair for the Travis County Democratic Party, was initially so enamored by the relatively green House member—“Allred was in the NFL; he’s this really exciting, physically fit, well-spoken, kind person”—that he volunteered to help with invitations for one of Allred’s November fundraisers. There, Aslam said he watched a who’s who of deep-pocketed Democrats and big party figures, including U.S. transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg’s husband, Chasten, schmooze and ultimately donate around $12,000 in total to Allred’s campaign. Allred quickly caught fire and emerged as…

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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.

bbq fest announcementIt’s official: TM BBQ Fest will return November 2–3, 2024. After a successful second year in the barbecue capital of Texas in 2023, Texas Monthly is thrilled to return to Lockhart for the fifteenth annual event. Thanks to Jim Beam for sponsoring our 2023 recap video. Videography by Resolute Media.We’re excited to be celebrating fifteen years of TM BBQ Fest in November, so get ready to take your meat sweats to the next level. Guests can expect another two-day celebration of smoked meat with music, live fire, and good times to be had throughout the entire weekend. Last year we were fortunate to partner with a number of local business owners and tastemakers who helped make the weekend a success. Thanks to the City of…

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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 new Randy sandwich at Sunbird BBQ.David Segovia and Bryan and Kimmy Bingham, the trio of owners at Sunbird Barbecue in Longview, spent a long two and a half years in a food truck. They thought their plan for a brick-and-mortar would materialize quickly, but after moving eight miles west to White Oak and serving under a pseudonym in Shreveport, Louisiana, they finally opened a permanent spot in December.In 2021, the three hatched a plan to open their own place while working at the original Bodacious Bar-B-Q on Mobberly Avenue in Longview. Three years earlier, Segovia was working for a document shredding company and answered a job ad Bryan posted for the pit room. “I didn’t even tell my wife what I was doing,” Segovia said of the brief interview process.…

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Inside Via Triozzi.Chef Leigh Hutchinson remembers the moment her future came into focus. It was nearly two decades ago, and the then twenty-year-old college student was standing on the Piazza della Repubblica, in Florence. “I even remember what I was wearing,” she told me with a laugh. At that moment, the third-generation Italian American knew she wanted to open a restaurant in her hometown of Dallas, the kind of place that was intimate and warm, where the owner knew customers by name.  Her dream took a while and then some. She had gone to Italy on a semester abroad, immersing herself in its culture and foodways. (She would also eventually visit all but one of the country’s twenty regions.) But she didn’t return to Italy until 2015,…

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Helium Auction AmarilloAfter driving nine miles, over four cattle guards, along a private road just northwest of Amarillo, I worried that I might have made a wrong turn as I saw an entry gate on the horizon bearing the name “Mack Dick Ranch.” But soon enough I came upon what could be mistaken for a standard methane gas plant, complete with a skunk-like odor.The facility’s collection of Cold War–era stainless steel pipes and office buildings create a mood of drab utilitarianism, in muted tones of green, gray, and mustard yellow. I’d come here to see for myself where the federal government stores enough helium to fill about 13,000 Goodyear blimps—each big enough to carry ten tons of cargo—or more than 4 billion mylar party balloons.Known as the…

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Lionel Messi of Inter Miami CF in DallasWhen tickets went on sale two weeks before FC Dallas played Inter Miami at the Cotton Bowl, social media was full of skeptics.Pay $40 for parking just to see Messi play for five minutes? No thanks.Skip Obsiye asked his friends about going, but none wanted to join, so four days before the match, he bought one ticket.On Monday morning, the day of the match, rain came down in buckets. Temperatures hovered around 40 degrees. Tom Leatherbury’s wife looked out the window and asked, “You’re really going?”American soccer fans are well acquainted with the uphill battle they face to grow the game around the nation. Despite being the most popular sport in the world, soccer doesn’t even get a spot on the team sports podium in…

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booksThe Bullet SwallowerElizabeth Gonzalez JamesAntonio Sonoro, one of the protagonists of this spectacular new novel, is a desperate, violent man who’ll do anything to provide for his family. Well, not quite anything. He won’t stop drinking, won’t get a job, and often won’t come home at all. Antonio is happier scheming, stealing, and, when he’s so inclined, killing. When he hears, in the summer of 1895, that looted treasure is being taken from Mexico to Houston, he’s sure his family’s fortune lies on that train. Antonio’s journey from Dorado, Mexico, into Texas and back again leaves a trail of violence and blood—much of it his. In 1964, Jaime Sonoro is a successful Mexican actor who knows almost nothing about his grandfather Antonio or his other ancestors…

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