Cover Story
Homegrown Folk and Rap Duos Briscoe and Geto Gala Debut at Austin City Limits Fest
Deezie Brown knows a seamstress. Off to the side of a cactus-adorned, desert-themed hole at Peter Pan Mini-Golf, the rapper, producer, and animator and Jake Lloyd, the other half of the nostalgia-infused Southern rap project Geto Gala, are scheming designs for her to stitch into the leather of their Austin City Limits Fest getups: a…
News
Task Force Created to Tackle Homelessness in Downtown Austin
The city of Austin announced an initiative called the Downtown Homelessness Task Force on Aug. 19 that seeks to understand and address the causes of homelessness in Downtown Austin. The effort is a partnership with the Downtown Austin Alliance, and will collaborate with other organizations that work with unhoused community members, ranging from law enforcement…
One Big Beautiful Bill Took a Swing at Abortion Access, but Whole Woman’s Health Is Still Going Strong
It is no small feat for an Austinite to reach their nearest abortion clinic. Four years ago, at least 19 clinics operated in the state of Texas. In North Austin, you could find Whole Woman’s Health in an office park beside kidney specialists and a birthing center. Now, an Austin patient must book a flight…
Austin Leaders Seek to Defuse Pet Abortion Controversy
City leaders moved last week to safeguard their relationship with nonprofit animal services provider Austin Pets Alive!, which is a crucial partner in the city’s efforts to care for stray dogs and cats without resorting to euthanasia. By a 6-4 vote, City Council added a narrow exception to existing city law that will ensure that…
Anger and Fear Over Homeless Navigation Center Proposal
One hundred residents of Travis Heights and adjacent neighborhoods met Tuesday evening with Council Members Zo Qadri and José Velásquez, police chief Lisa Davis, and the head of the Homeless Strategy Office, David Gray, to discuss a proposal from Gray and HSO to place a homeless navigation center alongside I-35, south of Oltorf, near their…
Headlines
Government Shutdown: The federal government shut down Wednesday, Oct. 1, after Congress failed to reach terms to keep it funded. Dems have hung their vote on gaining health care concessions – specifically, they’re trying to reverse cuts Republicans made to Medicaid and to extend government subsidies for lower-income folks who purchase health care out of…
AISD Board Cuts State-Mandated Reporting
The Austin ISD Board of Trustees are facing a Nov. 21 deadline to decide which schools will close next school year – a push announced last week from an original Nov. 14 deadline – following the Texas Education Agency’s mandate demanding Turnaround Plans (TAPs) for AISD campuses given “unacceptable” ratings based on STAAR results. Nonetheless, the…
Music
20 Essential Acts to See at ACL Fest 2025
Zilker Park transforms into Austin City Limits Fest Oct. 3-5 and 10-12, headlined this year by Sabrina Carpenter, Hozier, the Killers, Luke Combs, the Strokes, John Summit, and Doechii. In addition to these high-profile names, rising acts (MJ Lenderman), returning veterans (Modest Mouse), and fun wild cards (T-Pain) populate the park with the best pop,…
Music Notes
ACL Fest Nights: The Favors, spill tab Saturday 4, Stubb’s If you don’t feel like attending ACL Fest this year, you can once again avoid heat and overzealous pop stans during the day by catching some of the festival’s midcard acts during the night at dedicated music venues. This particular night show is headlined by…
6 Texan Artists Performing at ACL Fest 2025
Alongside afternoon sets by Austin staples Asleep at the Wheel and the Huston-Tillotson University Jazz Collective, ACL Fest spotlights Austin rockers, Dallas pickers, and more Lone Star musicians between Oct. 3-5 and 10-12. Start your day with homegrown talent before catching out-of-town headliners. Find the full schedule at aclfestival.com. Looking for more ACL Fest recommendations?…
ACL Interview: R&B-Country Singer Tiera Kennedy Steps Outside Nashville Standards
“When I first moved to Nashville, I had this idea that I was gonna sing at some bar and get discovered,” laughs Tiera Kennedy. “I thought I was gonna have that kind of story.” Kennedy exudes a contagious joy even when discussing the hustling highs and lows of the music industry she’s experienced over the…
ACL Interview: Young Rapper Dizzy Fae’s on Solid Footing
With a freshly realized frontal lobe and a near decade in the music industry in hand, Dizzy Fae is ready for her first festival performance at ACL Weekend Two. Building an intentional, genre-fluid foundation and trusting her own growth is top of mind for the Gen Z hip-hop artist. “I’m constantly evolving. I’m constantly a…
Acid Bath, TV on the Radio, Pavement, and More Reviews From Levitation 2025
ACL Fest officially has real competition. Prioritizing psych rock and other forms of alternative music, Levitation has long been a local’s preferred fall Austin music festival, but this year’s change from distinct Red River Cultural District mini-shows to centralized Palmer Events Center musical convergence brought legitimacy and community to the forefront. The Chronicle music team…
ACL Interview: Shallowater Soundtracks the West Texas Desert
Planning to check out MJ Lenderman at ACL Fest? Have you heard of Shallowater? Comparisons between the Houston trio and the Asheville alt-country darling – and his band Wednesday, and Dallas slowcore group Teethe, and Nineties luminaries Codeine – pop up often in the band’s press, or in conversations about the rise of slow-moving, sludgy,…
Arts + Culture
The Wistful World of Tennessee Williams
Summer and Smoke, Filigree Theatre’s season seven opener, has all of Tennessee Williams’ greatest hits: religious angst, sexual angst, and heavy doses of angsty angst, all set against a sweltering summer setting. It’s an interesting production choice for the onset of fall. But just like the cool evenings or rain showers that offer relief as…
Early Era Collective Takes on Surviving Sexual Assault Through Dance
Nine dancers form the layers of a bruise, dressed in deep purple, pink, and nearly white satin, telling a story about reclaiming strength after surviving an experience with sexual assault in Early Era Collective’s new show, Gently, She Wakes, debuting Oct. 2. The performance at KMFA Studio will address sexual assault stigmas, in collaboration with…
Screens
A Very British War Story
America makes films about the Vietnam War because they’re not really about that particular war. They became a vessel for late 20th century angst with an easy cutoff line because it happened over there, and in many ways that distance makes the wounded warrior figure easy to romanticize. Those defining elements of the Vietnam movie…
Sawed Together
“Everyone watches a movie differently.” When Patton Oswalt says this early in Chain Reactions, he pretty much lays out the entirety of director Alexandre O. Philippe’s thesis. It’s the latest of the documentarian’s video essays on film history, building on the structure he established with 2023’s Lynch/Oz. That film was basically an anthology of six…
Brutal Honesty
You have to love a film with such an unabashed double pun in the name. Bone Lake pulls it off: bone as in boner, and bone as in something to get broken. Yet this erotic survival horror isn’t afraid of these big, saucy swings, as displayed in a pre-credit sequence that involves a lot of…
A Gentle Giant
There’s a famous pro-wrestling promo by two-time Olympian and WWE world champion Mark Henry in which he talks about being told all the time that he was too big, too strong, that he had to be careful with other kids because he would break them. Every time Dwayne Johnson steps onscreen in biopic The Smashing…
Columns
Day Trips: Adamson-Spalding Storybook Garden, Abilene
The Adamson-Spalding Storybook Garden in Abilene turns an outdoor art gallery into a playground for admirers of all ages of children’s literature. Abilene claims the moniker “Storybook Capital of America” due to its annual Children’s Art & Literacy Festival held in June, being the home of the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature, and an…
Free Will Astrology
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In ancient Egyptian myth, the goddess Maat ruled truth, divine law, harmony, and moral order. After death, each person’s heart was weighed against Maat’s feather of truth on a scale in the Hall of Judgment. If the heart, which embodied the essence of a person’s actions in life, was equal in…
The Luv Doc: Our Corporate Tech Overlords
Dear Luv Doc, I have been told since grade school (largely by an obligated grandmother) that I should pursue a writing profession when I grow up. We’ll see if that comes to fruition when I grow up. Currently, my writing is solely expressed through my duties as a fantasy football commissioner, as I began sending…
Senate Bill 8? More Like Senate Bill Hate!
Senate Bill 8 got Gov. Abbott’s grotty little signature last week, and the new restrictions on restroom access in government and school buildings start on Dec. 4. Called confusingly the Texas Women’s Privacy Act, reporting from The Texas Tribune’s Ayden Runnels states that the bill’s Texas House sponsor Rep. Angelia Orr initially said in August…
Austin FC Has Shown Crucial Improvement in Season’s Second Half
If you had asked any Austin FC die-hard for an optimistic word on May 31, you might have earned a swift kick to the groin. From a results standpoint, it was, without question, the nadir of the club’s 2025 season. The Verde and Black had just logged a five-week, eight-match winless streak in MLS play,…
Kevin Curtin Signs Off
Pray for the roof of my mouth. I just ate a bowl of Froot Loops with a foolishly low milk ratio, so I’m writing this column in pain. I’m battered emotionally, too, because this is the last one. I’m told that Chronicle leadership has been overwhelmed with the amount of job applications that have come…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Marshmallows used to be made with sap from the root of the mallow plant. If grackles are emptying out your bird feeder, stock it with safflower seeds because they don’t like them. Squirrels don’t like them either. In 1910, Alice Stebbins Wells became the first policewoman in Los Angeles. By 1915, at least 16 other…
Feedback: October 3, 2025
Entirely Unjust Dear Editor, Given the recent article “As Doggett Exits Race, Casar Announces Plan to Run in CD 37, News, Aug. 29” I feel a follow-up of the impact the recent gerrymandering is essential to allow readers to fully comprehend the urgency of this situation. The redistricting in Austin has effectively diminished the votes…
