Cover Story
How Austin’s Queer Community Supports Its Own
Spotlighting the LGBTQ people and orgs looking after our health, youth, elders, and art
Laura Morrison Files for Mayor
November campaign officially begins: “We’re ready to win”
Other Worlds Austin Boards Battlestar Galactica
Festival honors legendary TV director Alan Levi
A Match Made in Habanero Heaven
A couple’s Hot Sauce Festival love story
What’s Cooking With Skate Kitchen?
Hanging with the crew behind the true-life skateboard drama
Where to See Blaze This Weekend
Filmmaker Ethan Hawke and actor Ben Dickey will be in attendance
Council Approves Deal for Soccer at McKalla Place
Members vote 7-4 in favor of Precourt plan
ELO Times Out
Synth-pop perfectionists turn to stone
Rapper Mama Duke Queers Up Austin’s Hip-Hop Scene
With weekly performances and a new EP, nothing’s stopping Kori Duke
Late Night Bar Meals at 15 Local Spots
These local midnight snacks are the real deal
Austin’s Best Summer Salads
Reduce the sweat; increase the greens
Austin Restaurant Weeks Raises Money for Central Texas Food Bank
For the next few weeks, eat your way around town for a good cause
What’s Fantastic at Fantasia
Highlights from the Canadian genre fest, plus films you may see soon
The Time I Ruined a Marriage Proposal
Walker Lukens turns my misdeed into a Song Confessional
Lady Snowblood
Lady Snowblood 1973, NR, 97 min. Directed by Toshiya Fujita, Starring Meiko Kaji, Akemi Negishi, Toshio Kurosawa. A tale of revenge featuring a female assassin that would later influence Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series.
The Titmouse That Roared
Chris Prynoski on Venture Bros., tech, and more
Weekend Wine
August 18 is National Pinot Noir Day!
Follow the Walkers on the Fear the Walking Dead Trail
Texas Film Commission launches location guide to AMC zombie hit
Council Punts Soccer to Wednesday
Amendments, curfew delays votes on McKalla Place
Drag Out HIV for Pride 2018
Beatrix Lastrange joins forces with Planned Parenthood for Pride
Recommended Live Music for the Weekend
When the summer slows down, the live music starts to heat up.
BlacKkKlansman
Spike Lee’s wild true-life story would be a better documentary
Christopher Robin
Back to the Hundred Acre Wood in this live-action sequel
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
YA novel adaptation gently lampoons “pray the gay away” thinking
The Darkest Minds
Earth’s last children hunted by their parents
The Meg
This giant shark tale simply lacks bite
Slender Man
Creepypasta’s most iconic creature hits the big screen
The Captain
A bleak warning from Nazi Germany carries modern resonance
Dog Days
By-the-numbers summer rom-com has more going for it than just puppers
Never Goin’ Back
Augustine Frizell ingeniously revamps the stoner buddy comedy
Summer of 84
Kids vs. serial killer, Eighties-style
Title X Money in the Right Hands
Women’s Health and Family Planning Association of Texas sole statewide grantee
Fear the Walking Dead Casts Its Shadow Over Austin
The AMC spin-off smash brings the dead to Texas
Summer Stock Austin’s Rob1n
This new musical brings Sherwood Forest’s noble outlaw to our time with a message of togetherness
Paid Sick Leave Fight Continues
Paxton, Texas Public Policy Foundation take effort to 3rd Court of Appeals
Snapshot – RTX 2018: Cosplay Contest
The weekend’s most creative cosplayers on handcrafting costumes and blowing little kids’ minds
Paper Chairs’ The Audience
Elizabeth Doss’ adaptation of García Lorca’s unfinished play is less a drama than a dream, unbound by logic, reason, or convention
Southwest Key Boycott Brewing?
Activist group calls for full boycott against East Austin nonprofit’s programs
Home Slice Pizza’s New Location as Great as the Original
The classic local hot spot serves up its New York-style slices on North Loop
Austin Classical Guitar’s dream
The quality of the music in this concert was exceptional, but what made it special was the quality of the listening
Election Notes: It’s a Family Affair … Again
Susana Almanza’s back in D3, and Ann Kitchen has an opponent
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Some say Archytas of Tarentum (428-350BC) invented the screw thread. But it was Sir Joseph Whitworth who in 1841 proposed the angle of thread flanks be standardized to 55 degrees and number of threads per inch should be standardized for various diameters. Meanwhile, in 1864, William Sellers helped establish the U.S. standard of thread flanks…
Gay Place
This Pride keep the spark alive
Austin Justice Coalition Gets Grant
$20,000 in funding will allow AJC to “advance justice”
Luv Doc: More Advice to Be Ignored
An affirmation of already existing opinions
Day Trips: Gandhi Plaza, Irving
Revered international leader memorialized in North Texas
Bridge Farmers’ Superior Acid Metal
Hawkwind and Sabbath didn’t spawn the Austin trio, but they should have
Council: Back in Action
Members return to lengthy to-do list
The Way of the Iron Dragon
Action film festival gets really hands-on
County on Pace to Set Record for In-Custody Deaths
Arthur David Westley is sixth to die in custody this year
Quit Your Day Job: Jess Williamson
Heart-on-sleeve song siren paid her dues, all right – right down to the staples
Quote of the Week: Delia Garza
D2 council member talks about a balance with police
Texas Platters
Alt-folk quartet Batty Jr. captured its debut long-player at a friend’s abode outside of Marfa. Through spoken-word narration by producer Nick Hurt and scene-setting sonics (distant thunder and rolling train whistles), Wormholes welcomes a captive listener under the tin roof of a studio and inducts them as an official member of the Austin crew’s off-kilter…
Why Are Some of Austin’s Smartest Restaurants Heading Toward Dripping Springs?
The Switch, Pieous, and the League look west
Point Austin: Strange Bedfellows, Stranger Politics
“Efficiency audit” petition campaign could use an independent audit
Texas Platters
Austin space/psych institution ST 37 celebrated its 30th anniversary last year and follows it up with a double-length state of the union address. Longtime leaders Joel Crutcher (guitar), Lisa Cameron (drums), and Scott Telles (bass/vox), joined by axe wielders Bobby Baker and Matt Turner and electronics gremlin Bob Bechtol, reach a new peak. “KBDP” and…
Breathing Room for the City Budget
Proposed FY 2019 city budget features sunnier projections
Headlines
Takin’ It Easy: City Council resumes regular meetings this week, with the proposed MLS stadium at McKalla Place likely to be a very hot-button issue. With a mere 112 other Items, soup to nuts, they should be able to get that all sorted out in no time. See “Council: Back in Action,” Aug. 10. Name…
Texas Platters
Raunchy and provocative, Paul Soileau’s debut album as Christeene, Waste Up, Kneez Down (2012), bashed all notions of gender and normality through a manic spawn of David Bowie and Mykki Blanco. Six years on, the queer local continues fusing hip-hop and gay culture on Basura. Opener “Aktion Toilet” goes for the jugular behind sharp, aggressive…
Public Notice: ZAP!
The commission was right. CodeNEXT must die. But then what?
Texas Platters
Two years ago, Dicks bassist Buxf Parrott began dragging an upright bass and guitarist/co-vocalist Todd Kassens to local coffee houses to woodshed songs that didn’t require eardrum-damaging amplification for power. Bolstered by drummer Alan Williams and the shrieking harp and skronking sax of garage/blues kingpin Walter Daniels, Uncle Pie Hole has developed this oddball murder…
AISD: Respect for All Who Can Pay
School district to rent Performing Arts Center to anti-LGBTQ church
Texas Platters
Tumbling troubadour over a dozen years of playful pop, David Israel’s fourth release plays out like a children’s story about a cartoon astronaut shot into space only to face a midlife crisis. Continuing Jonathan Richman-witty wordplay through an endearingly deep gravel delivery, the preschool teacher employs usual backers Stephen Svacina and Julia Hungerford on comforting…
Pick Your Plan for McKalla Place
Precourt vs. the field
Texas Platters
Jeremy Nail’s 2016 sophomore effort My Mountain rose resilient in a comeback from the cancer that took his leg, but third LP Live Oak rings reflective. Stripped-down production leaves focus heavy on Nail’s gentle vocals and heavy meditations, no less defiant but wrapped in having faced mortality. There’s wonder (“Abiquiu”), resilience (“Live Oak”), and searching…
So Goes CodeNEXT
Fallout from a canceled rewrite
Texas Platters
In a brief note on her fourth full-length release in a career stretching back to Austin’s late-Seventies/early-Eighties blues heyday, Kathy Murray describes this latest dispatch as empowerment: “Taking your power and embracing the freedom to love deeply! To open your heart over and over again, even if you get hurt. To honestly grow and change,…
Soccer Watch
It’s new; it’s Bold!
Texas Platters
San Antonio produced an unlikely musical champion in Garrett T. Capps. 2016’s Y Los Lonely Hipsters slanted a wry, irreverent grin, flashes of Hayes Carll or Todd Snider in Capps’ ballads of bitching and bad decisions. In the Shadows (Again) maintains the underlying absurdity, but bakes a new, weird, hipster honky-tonk that hearkens alt.country and…
More Trouble for Medical Board and SOAH
Dr. Van Boven sues TMB staff and hearings agency hemorrhages
Playback: Pickathon, Texas
Austin talent looms large at Oregon fest
Tania Silva vs. SB 4
Mentally ill undocumented woman would not have been held on ICE detainer if not for anti-immigrant law
Funding Public Safety?
The never-ending question
