Volume 19, Number 42
news
Travis County Probation Program Gets SMART: Photos by Kenny Braun
BY GREGORY GLOVER
How healthy is Austin's Colorado River?
BY DAN OKO
Case Marianella homeless shelter provides a badly needed haven for homeless Spanish-speaking immigrants.
BY ANNA HANKS
University of Texas employees will be staging a sickout to protest low pay and benefits; citizen planners in the East Cesar Chavez Neighborhood Planning Team are honored for their work; the Dawson Neighborhood Association tries to reach a compromise to keep Southwestern Bell from tearing down homes in their neighborhood; The Save Our Springs Alliance honors Brigid Shea as a "Barton Springs Hero"; Statesman political reporter Dylan Rivera leaves for Portland, Oregon.
BY ERICA C. BARNETT
Council reluctantly approves retail in the new city hall, with the stipulation that there be no gaudy storefronts on Second Street.
BY KEVIN FULLERTON
food
Lots has changed of late at the Empanada Parlour, Rebecca Chastenet de Géry writes, but the restaurant's festive little pockets stuffed with spirited meat, vegetable, and fruit blends are as delicious as ever, and continue to enjoy a dedicated local following.
BY REBECCA CHASTENET DÉ GERY
Virginia B. Wood updates readers on Austin's expanding Italian restaurants.
BY VIRGINIA B. WOOD
Cafe Mundi
BY PABLEAUX JOHNSON
Chronicle Cuisines editor Virginia B. Wood surveys local wedding venues.
Food Reviews
music
Hanging out in Monterrey with a passel of up-and-coming Mexican rockers
BY MELISSA SATTLEY
Previewing Alejandro Escovedo's new autobiographical play, By the Hand of the Father.
BY MICHAEL BERTIN
The Gourds weren't Phishing for trouble when they covered "Gin and Juice"; the Meat Puppets have (probably) found a new home.
BY KEN LIECK
Record Reviews
Mermaid Avenue Vol. II, 'Til We Outnumber 'Em: The Songs of Woody Guthrie
Love, God, Murder
Down to the Promised Land: Five Years of Bloodshot Records
Wires & Wood
Red River
Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant
Macha Loved Bedhead
Whatever You Love, You Are
Serenity
Pastoral Composure, Gravitational Systems, Time Is of the Essence Is Beyond Time
Wandering Moon
Healing Time
Love Comin' Down
Soft Place To Fall
Punishing Kiss
Rated R
High as Hell
screens
In a city filled with artists and filmmakers, Luke Savisky is an original -- an innovative projectionist whose unique art has graced the surfaces of buildings, rock stars, video screens, and more for over 15 years.
BY BRYAN POYSER
Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Stewart Stern remembers writing Rebel Without a Cause:"I was caught up in the same kind of fervency and speed that the characters were."
BY CHALE NAFUS
Upcoming events and workshops of interest to the Austin film community.
BY MARC SAVLOV
With PBS' Point of View (POV) documentary series, columnist Belinda Acosta has found a place where her ideals about the medium collide with reality.
BY BELINDA ACOSTA
Screens Reviews
Film Reviews
arts & culture
With another acting job in a new play, his own new theatre about to open, his own stage company that champions theatre as something fun as well as substantive, and a lot of friends to help him make "good stuff" onstage, is Ron Berry the Happiest Man in Austin?
BY ROBI POLGAR
More cultural philanthropy and a disturbing Statesman report on same.
BY ROBERT FAIRES
Arts Reviews
She was Pop before Andy silkscreened soup cans or Oldenburg piled up erasers, and the Blanton Museum of Art's new exhibition "From Zero to Infinity: Yayoi Kusama in Context" shows her pioneering influence in a survey of Pop Art that is freakin' amazing.
In his latest script, playwright Kirk Lynn sends the Rude Mechanicals off to War, and the result is another Rude Mechs show that is conceptual and cryptic, literary and obscure, but also very funny, with the company managing to make genuinely original observations on conflict and escapism in the energetic realm of absurdist comedy.
Second Stone Theatre's A Mid-Indian Summer Night's Dream takes the play out of Athens and sets it in Austin (kind of), but while the idea is striking, the production doesn't make the transition as completely as it could.
columns
Reflecting on Alternatives
BY LOUIS BLACK
Our readers talk back.
This week, to celebrate Father's Day, "Public Notice" makes room for daddies and implores dykes to check their boobies.
BY KATE X MESSER
BY STEPHEN MACMILLAN MOSER
BY GERALD E. MCLEOD
BY MR. SMARTY PANTS
Ray Lewis may not have committed murder, but he's hardly the wronged innocent that the media are now making him out to be.
BY ANDY "COACH" COTTON
Celebrate Father's Day and Benefit Kids with AIDS
Letters to the editor, published daily