News
Dog’s Head Detractors Bark Back With Lawsuit
Back in July, Save Our Springs Alliance attorney Bobby Levinski warned that the city of Austin was walking into a lawsuit over the planned Dog’s Head development. That lawsuit has arrived. SOS, People Organized in Defense of Earth and Her Resources, and a group of Dog’s Head neighbors filed suit against Austin and City Council…
ICE Opens Fire
On Sunday morning, Sept. 20, Elizdar wanted her husband, Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, to stay home with her. But instead, he left to work, to deliver food orders for DoorDash. At 12:56pm, Austin-Travis County EMS received notice of a shooting from the Austin Police Department, ATCEMS Chief Rob Luckritz said on Sunday. When they arrived…
The Week’s Biggest News in Brief: Sept. 17-23
ICE Shooting in Austin: On Sunday, Sept. 20, 28-year-old Wilber Rafael Garces Perez was shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in North Austin near Anderson Square and Highway 183. According to his attorney, Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, the man was completing a DoorDash order when he encountered the ICE agents. Law enforcement fired shots…
After ACLU Settlement, 99% of Travis County Arrestees Get a Lawyer at Bail Hearings
In April 2024, after years of pushing Travis County to implement counsel at first appearance (CAFA) – or, provide an attorney at bail hearings to defendants who can’t afford their own – VOCAL-TX and the ACLU of Texas filed a class action lawsuit against the county for denying the constitutional right to representation. A settlement…
An Early-Career Reporter’s Thoughts on AI and Journalism
To ponder the injection of artificial intelligence into journalism is not a source of joy for this local reporter. When ChatGPT was released, I basically ignored it. To this day, I try my best to pretend generative AI doesn’t exist – until of course, I try to Google anything, and it slips past my self-imposed blinders.…
TOMO Mags Works to Restore the Austin Community’s Relationship With News
Since opening TOMO Mags, a magazine shop that started as a traveling bus, in December, owner Vico Tadeo Puentes noticed a trend: Customers loved the store’s issues on culture, art, and fashion, but they weren’t interested in the news. Interior design magazines sold out. The Economist collected dust. “It just begs the question,” Puentes recently…
Music
What’s Red River Asking For?
Red River is once again in troubled waters. Earlier this month, in response to property turnover that put the buildings housing Valhalla, the 13th Floor, and Elysium on the market, Red River Cultural District issued a public letter to the city, urging City Council and staff to implement policy tools that could shape the district’s…
Music Notes
Ryan Dove Monday 28, 13th Floor Alternative hip-hop artist/open mic frequenter Ryan Dove celebrates the second anniversary of his first full-length, LIVE LAUGH DOVE. Starry name change be damned, he’ll always have the line, “In a world full of Sprite, baby, I’m Sierra Mist.” R&B duo the Loop backs him at this free show. Jane…
Arts + Culture
Carolyn Osborn, Influential Austin Writer, Dies at 92
Carolyn Osborn, esteemed author, journalist, and educator, passed away at age 92 on Sept. 12 after suffering a fall in her home. Osborn taught English at UT-Austin for many years and published four collections of short stories, two novels, and a memoir in addition to years spent reporting for newspapers and radio stations. She was…
SK8 ATX Goes Long for Inaugural Multi-Day Skate
On Monday and Wednesday evenings, in-line skaters can be spotted rolling through Austin, and if you’re like me, a group of 20 Rollerbladers flying past you on the South First Street bridge is enough to draw a little curiosity. Those skaters form SK8 ATX, a community group that’s been rolling since 2016 when founder Jan…
Let There Be Light
There is something intentionally wrong with the light in Aineki Traverso’s paintings. If it’s traditionally meant to reveal, her latest solo show, “Silencio en el Fondo,” investigates its equal capacity to obscure. Painted, impressively, during a monthlong residency as McLennon Pen Co.’s 2026 summer artist-in-residence, Traverso’s explorations of light, perspective, and spatial orientation unsettle one…
Screens
Primetime Review: The Evil That Men Do
Primetime, like the early 2000s TV show To Catch a Predator that this film lays bare, is in turn icky, undaunted, questionable, and compellingly watchable. Documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim (Ren Faire, Some Kind of Heaven) makes his narrative feature debut with Primetime, a film based on real events that thrusts newsman Chris Hansen’s hidden-camera show…
The Rivers That Run Through Us
hen Ben Masters was a boy, he’d spend time on his great-grandfather’s ranch in the Panhandle, on the north fork of the Long Draw. Masters recalled, “The water table was so high that he went out there with his backhoe into this marshy area, and he dug this two-acre pond for all the kids to…
Food
Carolyn Osborn, Influential Austin Writer, Dies at 92
Carolyn Osborn, esteemed author, journalist, and educator, passed away at age 92 on Sept. 12 after suffering a fall in her home. Osborn taught English at UT-Austin for many years and published four collections of short stories, two novels, and a memoir in addition to years spent reporting for newspapers and radio stations. She was…
Texas French Bread Rises From the Ashes
I didn’t go to UT, but in my 20s I lived in the nearby Heritage neighborhood for the simple reason that it was cheap as hell. On weekend mornings, my boyfriend would put his foot on my back and gently nudge me out of bed, whispering, “Bring me a muffin and a coffee.” Before anyone…
Columns
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
Forty-eight states have avenues named after them in Washington, D.C. The two that don’t are represented by California Street and Ohio Drive. As of February 2026, Tesla robotaxis were involved in 14 crashes since launching in Austin in 2025. Per a BBC news report, Istanbul is Europe’s largest city, population 15.5 million. Some argue that…
The Luv Doc: A Content Creator
Dear Luv Doc, I am 33 and I am four years into a live-in relationship with my boyfriend, who I met at a service industry job I was working at part time. He is a nice guy and he is very sweet to me, but he makes very little income. He is working hard to…
Feedback: September 25, 2026
Luxury of Forgetting Dear Editor, I’m a white Austin resident, and ICE is kidnapping and torturing people for my supposed benefit. It’s the second ethnic cleansing campaign I’ve been the “beneficiary” of – the first was Austin’s real estate boom that drove out all the poor, nonwhite families in my neighborhood, that pushed the same…
Day Trips: Texas Dance Halls
Historic dance hall season starts heating up when the weather starts cooling down. Most of the old dance halls rely on Mother Nature to supply the air conditioning for boot scootin’ during Oktoberfest festivities. Jean Spivey, executive director of Texas Dance Hall Preservation, says there are several historic dance halls around Austin, and many of…
Austin FC Stays Alive in Playoff Race With Unbeaten Streak
Austin FC’s refusal to give up on a once-thought-lost 2026 season is growing more impressive by the week. Last Saturday, the Verde and Black trekked up to Frisco to do battle with Copa Tejas rivals FC Dallas – one of this season’s top contenders in the Western Conference – and fought to a valuable (if…
Qmmunity: Cool Dreams, Hot Events
You know that old chestnut about how you never truly appreciate something until it’s gone? That’s how I feel about having an A/C that works. Honestly, by the time you read this, Reader, I’ll probably be in a chilly apartment again. But my current state? I’m a little sweaty, yes. Could stand to be less…
Opinion: Let’s Keep Austin Weird, Not Alight
One recent morning I biked through the parks at the east end of Lady Bird Lake. I saw kindling, not a park. Grass cured to straw. Standing and leaning dead trees, gray and barkless. Cut limbs jackstrawed into piles taller than my handlebars. All of it sits between the East Riverside-Oltorf and Montopolis neighborhoods and…
Why The Austin Chronicle Has Joined the Copyright Lawsuit Against OpenAI and Microsoft
It feels rather fitting that several days after we launched our AI policy here at the Chronicle, I joined a growing coalition of publishers in a copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. Our colleagues at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia (of which the Chronicle is a member and I serve on the Board of Directors)…
Fun + Games
Free Will Astrology
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): In the 18th century, Libran philosopher Denis Diderot was instrumental in creating the Encyclopédie. It wasn’t the first compendium of the world’s knowledge, but it was the most ambitious and comprehensive. In 28 volumes, it assembled contributions from a large number of writers, including leading figures of the French Enlightenment. Robust…
