Cover Story
Meet Your Makers
At this point, most of the Chronicle readership is probably on board with understanding the evils of mass consumerism – the myriad environmental and social ills that come with corporatized convenience. When it’s two weeks away from Christmas, though, and you still haven’t gotten your mom a gift, those moral ideals may begin to slip…
Features
AV Beamon’s Mind-Mend Connection
Austin Beamon’s journey to becoming an in-demand tailor before the age of 30 began like any other Austin teenager’s: “I guess I was, yeah, a little unsure, a little lost, up in the air. I liked music, clothes, normal stuff like that, and was trying to figure out just what to do with it,” he…
For Julia Lenoir, Starting Over Is the Trick
Julia Lenoir has lived many lives. In 2022, she was working in hospice and tattooing herself casually, learning to draw botanical designs by tracing: “I started doing everything in dots, because I couldn’t pull lines on my machine. I would sit with my tracing paper over the image, and I would just dot, dot, dot,…
Emma Hollingsworth’s Labor of Love (Emphasis on Love)
Much ink has been spilled about the difference between art and craft. In the 1970s, feminist artists reclaimed what had been thought of as women’s work – and thus devalued – elevating it to the level of fine art. In 2025, it seems craft is everywhere in the art world – but often a detached,…
In the Elements With Ceramicist Arielle Shaves
Ceramics is one of the few art forms that involves all of the elements: earthen clay, water to shape it, fire to set it, and air to dry it. That’s what Arielle Shaves likes about it: “It brings back some childlike feeling of messing with Play-Doh, mud, playing with the earth. It doesn’t matter what…
For an Herbal Cigarette Maker, “Heritage Brands” Are the Aesthetic Inspiration
Smoking kills! And yet, the kids keep doing it – the World Health Organization now warns that nine times more children than adults are vaping, fueling a “new wave of nicotine addiction.” Teens may be teetotaling, but they definitely haven’t given up nicotine. Back in the early 2010s, Emily Schexnayder, born to two smokers, was…
News
San Marcos Lets License Plate Reader Contract Expire After Deadlocked Vote
For months, San Marcos has been circling the question that’s reshaped policing debates across Central Texas: What do we really get from a citywide network of license plate scanners? On Tuesday, Dec. 2, the discussion finally came to a head – though not in the clean yes-or-no way people expected. The majority of San Marcos…
The Week’s Biggest News in Brief
GOP Map Is Back for 2026 Midterms: The battle over the state’s congressional districts continues, as the Supreme Court ruled to allow the GOP’s redistricted map to be used for the upcoming 2026 midterms this past Thursday, Dec. 4. There has been plenty of back and forth since the map was originally proposed and passed…
The Bathroom Bill Is Now in Effect. What Does That Mean for Texans?
On Saturday, Dec. 6, at 2 o’clock, about 15 people went to pee at the Capitol using the restroom aligned with their gender identity. Nothing happened that first trip. But after rallying at the rotunda, the group went to the bathroom a second time, and this time were met with at least six Texas Department…
Austin Reacts to Greater Wildfire Risk
The city of Austin is surrounded by miles and miles of rolling Hill Country, dotted with Ashe juniper trees and blanketed with long native grasses. Most Austinites are probably not aware of it, but that means that our city is basically nestled in a high-risk wildfire zone, with our Central Texas flora being relatively dry…
Former UT Police Chief Says She Was Discriminated Against
UT-Austin has experienced unprecedented turnover in top leadership positions over the last two years, much of it the result of Texas Republicans’ ongoing ideological war with the university. Several prominent deans have been replaced. So have a half-dozen of the university’s administrators, including its president and provost. In almost every case, the public has learned…
Music
Music Notes
Almost Famous: A Soundtrack Party Thursday 11, Hotel Vegas This sequel to the first Almost Famous event again features Austin musicians tributing various movie soundtracks. Michael Sanders, Ivy Mine, and Daybed close out the show with a performance of the Shrek soundtrack, because we simply must remember Smash Mouth’s rendition of “I’m a Believer.” Daily…
It’s A Very Carper Christmas Indeed
Melissa Carper’s tender, time-warping voice is well-suited to Christmas material. Turns out, so is her storytelling. A Very Carper Christmas presents 13 original tunes lovingly plucked from the songwriter’s hardscrabble universe of scrappy living and simple joys, plus two classic covers that pay homage to the legacy of sorrow and humor in holiday tunes. Fifties…
Money Chicha Locks In
Echo en Mexico, Money Chicha’s 2016 debut long-player, jolts immediately – as if someone plugged in a hotplate at some interior pueblito, where any electrical socket can spark or shock. Live-wire guitar, a Farfisa bleat, and percussive layering straight off the last century of Mexican music pulse potently through this ATX fivepiece. 2020 follow-up En…
JaRon Marshall’s Psych-Soul Smorgasbord
Raised on church music, trained in jazz, and blooded by the psychedelic soul of the Black Pumas, of which he’s been a member since they started touring, keyboardist JaRon Marshall has a deep creative well from which to drink. While earth sounds, his 2023 debut with his band the Collective, leaned most heavily on both…
Arts + Culture
Sob Through the Holidays With Parade
Ground Floor Theatre’s annual Christmas counter-programming kicks off December with an impeccable downer. The show may be called Parade, but the only thing marching before you is a cavalcade of horrors. It presents the true story of Leo Frank (Jacob Rosenbaum), a Jewish man falsely accused of murdering 13 year-old Mary Phagan (Brooklynn Nickel) in…
Austin Theatre Gets Possessed by Queer Christmas Cheer With The E(Xmas)ist
Bringing good tidings of gay joy, The E(Xmas)ist makes its regional debut at Austin’s CRASHBOX theatre this weekend and next (Dec. 11-13 & 18-20). This campy Christmas parody from playwright Vince Kelley puts a candy cane twist on one of the most influential horror movies of all time, The Exorcist. Featuring all the film’s iconic…
Vanessa Gonzalez’s New Hour Is Real Austin Comedy
Austin’s comedy scene is different from when Vanessa Gonzalez did her first tight five at Fallout Theater. At the time, Gonzalez had been sticking to sketch and improv because, as she puts it, “stand-up was the most intimidating one to get the guts to do.” Thankfully, her friend Lisa Friedrich saw the comic’s potential and…
Screens
Silent Night, Deadly Night Review: Santa’s New Slayride
Remakes of certain films border on heresy. You’re not going to make Casablanca more heartbreakingly heroic, you won’t make Alien scarier, and, as 2012’s inessential Silent Night seemed to prove, no one feels like they got a big gift if you remake Charles E. Sellier Jr.’s 1984 Santasploitation classic, Silent Night, Deadly Night. The original…
Dust Bunny Review: Hit Men and Monsters, Oh My!
With TV shows like Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me on his résumé, it’s clear that writer-turned-director Bryan Fuller has an extraordinary knack for the quirky and somewhat macabre. However, his work can sometimes wobble between charmingly, ghoulishly cutesy and simply twee, and so his debut feature as a director, Dust Bunny suggests that the…
Columns
I’ll Be Stoned for Christmas
I think the Grinch gets a bad rap. The suggestions that his shoes were too tight and his heart was two sizes too small are frankly patronizing. He clearly states the issues that bother him: the toys and the noise. I have to agree. The consumerism, the economy, it’s 80 degrees in November, I rant…
Op-Ed: It Shouldn’t Take a Car to Touch a Tree
Austin markets itself as green, active, outdoorsy. But this image hides deep racial and income-based disparities. As a social worker in Austin, I see every day how class determines access to health, safety, and even the simple act of being outside. Austin presents itself as an outdoor paradise, but the lived reality is that low-income…
Feedback: December 12, 2025
Singing Moreau’s Praises Dear Editor, I was thrilled to see Walter Moreau on this week’s cover [“If You Build It,” News, Dec. 5]. Talk about an unsung hero! After living in Austin for more than 35 years, I can’t think of anyone who has done more, and done so consistently, to lift up our community.…
Shop Small and Gay
Have you shopped for all your LGBTQ crew yet? Well, whether you’re like me and have a box you fill up over the year with gifts or you just woke and remembered presents are a thing right now, there’s places for you to keep the season’s shopping small, local, and gay as hell. Here’s a…
The Luv Doc: His Mom’s Birthday Gift
Dear Luv Doc, Me and my boyfriend of 11 years got into a fight last Saturday about who should buy his mom’s birthday gift. Her 75th birthday is coming up and traditionally I have always been the one to get her birthday gift, but I think this year is different. He usually signs whatever card…
Day Trips: Gifts From All Over Texas
Holiday gift giving means it’s time for a road trip. Maceo’s Spice & Import Company (maceospice.com) in Galveston is the perfect destination for the chefs and eaters on your list. Not only is the island city decorated for the holidays, but the 81-year-old specialty shop has an expansive selection of spices and hard-to-find imported foods.…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
The original brand of the blue stuff in airplane toilets is called SkyKem. McKenzie’s Pastry Shoppes in New Orleans popularized the tradition of baking a small plastic baby into their king cakes. It was originally porcelain. If you start throwing around psychological terms to family, it might make things worse because they may not be…
Fun + Games
Free Will Astrology
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Leonardo da Vinci painted his iconic Mona Lisa on a thin panel of poplar wood, which naturally expands and contracts with changes in humidity. Over the centuries, this movement has caused a crack and measurable warping. One side of the classic opus is bending a bit more than the other. Let’s…
