Cover Story
Touch Girl Apple Blossom’s Pure Pop Community
Four notes is all it takes to recognize Touch Girl Apple Blossom’s “The Springtime Reminds Me Of…” Dustin Pilkington, the group’s bassist, and I are seated at Tweedy’s Bar while guitarist and vocalist Olivia Garner flits between our conversation and patrons’ drink orders. She turned down the overhead speakers a notch for our interview, but…
News
Austin Officials Scrutinize Waymo Incidents, Push for New Oversight
When Austin first responders rushed to West Sixth Street just around 2am on March 1, they were responding to a mass shooting near Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden that killed four people, including the gunman, and injured 15 others. At 1:58am, the first 911 call came in. Within minutes, police, fire, and EMS were moving through…
The Week’s Biggest News in Brief: April 30 – May 6
Billionaire Backers of Hate: VOCAL-TX, local advocates for low-income Austinites and people experiencing homelessness, kicked off its Billionaire Backers of Hate campaign on May 1, International Workers Day, by holding a rally in the courtyard of the Frost Bank building. The campaign aims to familiarize Austinites with the billionaires living in the city and how…
Major Legal Rulings Point the Texas Hemp Industry in Next Direction
Members of the Texas hemp industry said that Friday, May 1, represented a victory for the market. After Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble granted a temporary restraining order on April 10, blocking enforcement of some of the new Department of State Health Services-proposed rules that upended the industry, Judge Daniella DeSeta Lyttle issued…
What’s a Bigger Threat to Texas Public Ed: Private School Vouchers or Charter Schools?
Democrats Allison Bush and Stephanie Bazan, competitors in the May 26 runoff election to represent District 5 and Travis County on the Texas State Board of Education, agree on most things – but not all – when it comes to shaping our state’s education system. When asked about the most pressing problems facing Texas public…
Rosedale Residents and AISD Battle Over Luxury Development
This past February, Kathleen Harrington, an Austinite living on Ramsey Avenue near 49th and Burnet, wrote to Scott Boone of the Zoning and Platting Commission to try to stop a luxury apartment complex from being built across the street from her home, on the site of the former Rosedale Elementary School. “A 75-foot-high, six-story apartment…
Music
Music Notes
TisaKorean Friday 8, 21st Street Co-op TisaKorean gives a different meaning to silly, or as he enunciates the word, sill-eeeeee. The Houston rapper/producer’s distinct penchant for unleashing terabytes of varied flows over mid-Aughts production harkens back to the days of Motorola Razrs and browsing MySpace. He headlines a bill in West Campus that’ll also feature…
mHart’s Pop World-Building Brings Asian American Voices to Austin Stages
mHart is building its own pop universe from scratch, complete with all the sparkly fixings. Choreographed background dancers, high-quality music videos, and elaborate world construction for each of its three signees leave a lush impression – outsized, perhaps, for the independent label’s three years of expertise. Given founder waverly’s meticulous dedication to professionalism, it’s not…
Arts + Culture
A Labor Storm Hits Austin in Grocery Store Drama Work to Do
My most frequent Austin experience is finding a small quirky business that I later learn is actually a slightly evil hellhole for its employees. The reasons are myriad: long hours for diminutive paychecks; the owners being Scientologists; no healthcare (relatable!); and always this oppressive feeling that no one in the city cares they’re being exploited.…
Sonic Guild Names Bobby Garza Executive Director
Sonic Guild, the membership-based music community founded in 2013 as Black Fret, welcomes Bobby Garza as its Executive Director this week. The former Chief Program Officer at the Long Center for the Performing Arts is thinking concretely about music’s connective social function and looking to the community for input as he steps into the new…
Austin Shakespeare Makes Much Ado About Nothing In Free Summer Show
Lone Star summers of sweat and mosquitoes might have you daydreaming about a European vacation filled with romantic hijinks. If you find yourself stuck in the Texas heat this year, however, Austin Shakespeare offers you the chance to escape to the Italian countryside with its free production of Much Ado About Nothing, which will host…
Screens
Two Women Review: Sex and the Married Woman
The last couple of decades of sex comedies, especially those emanating from Hollywood, have rarely felt like they were made for or by adults. That’s definitely not true of the delightfully thoughtful and unapologetically horny Two Women. An updating of sorts of director Claude Fournier’s 1970 saucy romp Deux femmes en or (Two Women in…
Blue Heron Review: Some Things Last a Long Time
Within the family at the center of Blue Heron, the black sheep is a blond. Fair-skinned teenager Jeremy (Edik Beddoes) is an outlier among his siblings, two jostling preteen boys and watchful, 8-year-old Sasha (Eylul Guven), who are all darkly featured and take after their Hungarian parents (Iringó Réti and Ádám Tompa). Jeremy’s hair color…
The School Duel Review: A Different Kind of School Shooting
There are moments in the bleak social commentary of The School Duel that make it clear that satire is dead. Or rather, that the extremity of what is happening in American culture is so grotesque that it’s almost impossible to push into the realm of absurdist commentary. Yet maybe that’s when writer/director Todd Wiseman’’s brutal…
Food
Tzintzuntzan: A Place of Hummingbirds, Huevos, and (Occasional) Heartbreak
There’s a tired cross-stitched pillow mantra that advises, “Life’s uncertain, eat dessert first.” At Tzintzuntzan, that isn’t just a kitschy sentiment in your grandmother’s guest room; it’s a survival strategy. Since opening in February, the brunch spot has made it clear that if you wait until the end of your meal to eye the pastry…
Columns
Feedback: May 8, 2026
Hungry AIs Dear Editor, Thank you for the in-depth, well-researched article this week on what Central Texas is going through and can expect from the expansion of AI plants [“How Data Centers Are Eating Up Central Texas,” News, May 1]. Without water, WE can’t live and won’t be around to use AI! Heidi Gibbons Keep…
Announcing The Austin Chronicle’s Best of Austin® Readers Poll Finalists
More than 40,000 votes were cast by y’all in this year’s first round of the Best of Austin Readers Poll. From those votes, nearly 800 finalists emerged across 180 categories in eight sections: Arts & Entertainment, Food & Drink, Kids & Family, Nightlife, Politics & Media, Shopping, Services, and Sports & Recreation. Represented on the…
As Austin FC Stars Return From Injury, So Does Optimism
The final 10 minutes of Austin FC’s Sunday evening win over St. Louis City were about as celebratory as you’re likely to experience at an MLS match in early May. Not only was the weather immaculate inside Q2 Stadium, not only did Myrto Uzuni score a game-sealing goal to finish off the club’s second 2-0…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
From 1912 to 1948, art was a competitive activity at the Olympics. Remitly has released several tea flavors to help the homesick. For example, their Fish and Chips tea is inspired by flavors of the British seaside. A recent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety revealed that drivers are significantly more likely to…
The Luv Doc: Lack of Response
Dear Luv Doc, I keep “dating” people who seem emotionally literate right up until the moment anything becomes real. They can easily talk about attachment styles, therapy, boundaries, and “intentionality” like they’re Mel Robbins, but the second I ask whether we are actually doing this or just dancing around the word commitment, they suddenly become…
Day Trips: Kenny & Ziggy’s, Houston
Kenny & Ziggy’s New York Delicatessen, Restaurant, and Bakery brings authentic New York deli food to the Bayou City. It’s been a few years since I have darkened the door of a NYC deli, so my critique of the Houston deli may be a little stale. Friends who have recent experience with both say Kenny…
Qmmunity: The Queer Mother Lode
Wow! It’s Mother’s Day weekend, and even though rain’s currently predicted, I’m sure there’ll still be plenty of chances for everyone with cool moms to enjoy themselves together. If you don’t have a cool mom, take it easy instead and maybe celebrate someone who is spiritually a cool mom, an older friend or Lady Gaga.…
Fun + Games
Free Will Astrology
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): When lightning from a cloud hits sand or soil, the current travels down into the ground. It melts material along its path and forms tubular, branching glass structures that can penetrate deep below the surface. I believe that metaphorically similar phenomena will soon happen in your life, Taurus. Sudden insights or…
