Cover Story
Austin’s Slowest City Department Tries to Pick Up the Pace
There’s a story Kirk Watson likes to tell to illustrate how he felt about the Austin Development Services Department as he ran for mayor in 2022. “When I was running, I emphasized that I wanted to do a performance review of Development Services, the site-planning process in particular,” Watson told the Chronicle. “And the joke…
News
Texas Dems Want Gun Safety Bill to Block Mexican Smuggling
Last October in Laredo, a K-9 caught the scent of gunpowder. Following the dog’s lead, federal agents entered a trailer and pulled down a false wall of plywood. There lay hundreds of deadly weapons, stacked from floor to ceiling and bound in plastic wrap. Between two trailers, officers counted more than 300 pistols and rifles,…
What Does the Future Hold for Six Closing AISD Campuses?
Lindsey Kucharski says she still feels like the new kid on the block, and her family has lived on the same street in the Hyde Park-North Loop area for 14 years. Four doors down, her neighbor has lived in the same home since 1967. The Kucharskis’ neighborhood school is Ridgetop Elementary. A single-story, red-tiled building…
City Leaders Take Step Back in Plan to Consolidate IT Workers
City leaders are responding to the outcry from AFSCME Local 1624, the city workers’ union, and IT employees throughout the city. On Wednesday, as the Chronicle went to press, the city announced a modification of its plans for the IT consolidation known as One ATS, which was expected to concentrate all of the city’s 1,000…
The Week’s Biggest News in Brief: March 26 – April 1
No Kings Gets Bigger and Better: Thousands of “No Kings” protests took place throughout all 50 states and internationally on Saturday, March 28, marking the third “No Kings” demonstration since Trump took office for his second term. According to organizers, Saturday’s protests were “the largest single-day nationwide demonstrations in U.S. history,” with over 8 million…
Music
Music Notes
Two Hoots & a Holler’s Farewell Saturday 4, C-Boy’s Two Hoots & a Holler closes its 40-plus-year run this weekend. The farewell performance is also a benefit for founding member Rick Broussard, who recently suffered a stroke, according to a GoFundMe created last month. Scheduled special guests during Two Hoots & a Holler’s swan songs…
Arts + Culture
Pop Girly Meets Gothic Glam
A few guarantees for when Ballet Austin’s Artistic Director Stephen Mills drops a new show: First, it will be a twisty retelling of a classic – classic fairy tale, classic author, classic historical figure. Second, he’ll add a delectable dash of darkness. And finally, the production will have a stellar combination of music and set…
DORF’s “Homeward Bound” Presents a Timely Portrait of Migration and Home
While they look wildly different for each of us, our individual concepts of home serve as one of the central ways by which we define ourselves. We are indelibly shaped by our cultures and communities. We love our homes and yet bemoan them – often in the same breath, if you’re from Texas. These initial…
Finney’s Books Offers Romance on the Austin Texas Book Trail
During the week, Cameron Lagrone works a typical 9-to-5 as a government auditor. But every Friday at 3pm, she unlocks the door to a weekend in romance reader’s paradise where pink curtains line the windows and stories from elaborate love affairs to unhinged erotica line the walls. Finney’s Books (3823 Airport), named after Lagrone’s dog…
Screens
The Drama Review: To Spill or Not to Spill
Planning even the most modest wedding can be endlessly stressful. Narrowing down the flowers, the food, the first dance, a decent DJ? Exhausting. Writing a toast about your new spouse? Nerve-wracking. Playing a drunken game of “let’s share the worst thing you ever did” a week before the wedding? Ruinous. The Drama – a title…
Two Prosecutors Review: Bolshevism and Its Discontents
A large metal lock clanks against an imposingly tall gate as a guard inserts a key to open the unidentified structure. That clanking sound of padlocks opening and closing is, perhaps, the signature sound of Two Prosecutors. A half-dozen scraggly men enter the vast space behind the gate, looking as though they hadn’t seen a…
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Review: Big on Cameos, Light on Story
When animated adaptation The Super Mario Bros. Movie released back in 2023, I went to see it despite not being much of a gamer (and when I do game, I’m a Capcom girlie). After all, why not see what all the big, bright, colorful ruckus was about? That seemed to be most people’s attitude at…
Columns
Qmmunity: Over and Over
Hello to all the queer people reading this column – and also to the straight and cisgender people who want to be kept abreast of the community business. Would that I had some great updates to inform you on, but I’m just keeping my head above water at the moment. Instead, why don’t you take…
The Luv Doc: Tale as Old as Time
Dear Luv Doc, I am a useless lesbian and have no idea how to flirt or find girls who like other girls. Look, tale as old as time, gay girl can’t tell when ladies are flirting with her. Hilarious, I know. I, however, have an excuse; I am autistic. Flirting while autistic is like playing…
Day Trips: Jacob’s Well Natural Area, Wimberley
Jacob’s Well is dead. We are possibly the last generation to enjoy the cold water on a hot summer day of the iconic swimming hole outside of Wimberley. The well is actually a big hole in the limestone bedrock that serves as the headwaters of Cypress Creek that feeds Blue Hole Regional Park, another historic…
Austin FC Aims to Crash Miami’s Party
For the last 141 weeks, the Major League Soccer universe has revolved around South Florida. That’s because it was 141 weeks ago that Inter Miami CF officially signed the sport’s greatest living player, Lionel Messi. All Messi has done in his time since joining MLS is win back-to-back MVPs and lead Miami to a Leagues…
The Real Cornbread Mafia
I’ll admit it – South by Southwest does not make me fall in love with Austin all over again. In theory, it represents the essence of what makes Austin special: a magical meeting of the greatest up-and-coming voices in tech, film, music, education, and culture. How some cynical Austinites see it: another corporatized travesty generating…
The Common Law
Is there a process in Austin that allows citizens to pursue a petition drive that can change local laws? How does that process work? Yes, there is. The City Charter of Austin gives residents two ways to shape local law: through petition initiatives and referendums. An initiative petition allows Austinites to propose new ordinances. A…
Feedback: April 3, 2026
What’s Good for the Goose… Dear Editor, Since Gov. Greg Abbott reacted so quickly to allegations of sexual misconduct against Cesar Chavez, he should preemptively declare that Texas will never declare a holiday, build a statue, or name a single street, highway, or airport in honor of Donald Trump [“Austin Processes Cesar Chavez Abuse Accounts,”…
Fun + Games
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Now is an excellent time to decide your favorite color is amaranth (a vivid red-violet), or sinopia (earthy red-orange), or viridian (cool blue-green, darker than jade). You might also conclude that your favorite aroma is agarwood (deep, smoky, resin-soaked wood), or heliotrope (cherry-almond vanilla), or petrichor (wet soil after a rain).…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday, is the traditional feast day before Lent starts on Ash Wednesday. A “Pancake Bell” is rung before confession. The tiny pocket in your jeans was originally designed to hold a pocket watch. Thirty years ago, 225 million boxes of oranges were picked from Florida orange groves, almost enough for one…
