News
With More ICE Reported in North Austin, City Leaders Urge Residents to Be Prepared
Over the week of Aug. 10, Jose Carrasco, a community coordinator in North Austin’s Rundberg neighborhood, received multiple phone calls from his neighbors about arrests made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. On Aug. 12, there was a call reporting ICE near a mobile home community in Rundberg. “The mobile home park that we’re…
New Report Identifies Contaminated Waterways in the Austin Area
With temperatures still flirting with triple digits into September, Austinites continue to try to beat the heat by cooling off in the city’s many bodies of water. A statewide report released last month by nonprofit Environment Texas identified contamination in some of the area’s regularly frequented sites like Walnut Creek and Bull Creek. However, the…
Former SAFE Alliance Nurses Look to Continue Serving Sexual Assault Survivors
Paula Marks called it the biggest heartbreak of her life – leaving her job at the SAFE Alliance, Central Texas’ leading provider of support for survivors of sexual assault and child abuse. Marks was a nurse at SAFE’s Eloise House for over a decade, providing rape kit exams and other care for survivors, before funding…
The Week’s Biggest News in Brief: Aug. 27 – Sept. 2
Tarrant County Reduces Voting Locations: With November’s election just two months away, the Republican Party continues working to limit voting access throughout the nation. Most recently, in a 3-2 vote, Tarrant County commissioners approved a new list of polling sites for the election that reduces the amount of available locations to a total of 224,…
Music
Hopeful and Resolved, Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields Festival Connects Women of All Ages
In babydoll dresses and bloomers, wearing flower crowns and carrying handheld fans, mother-daughter duos traipsed from one’s favorite band to the other’s. As Bikini Kill called for a revolution and Doechii sampled Beyoncé, they tied hopes and dreams to Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree and snapped photos in front of a hot-pink Jenny Holzer truism in…
Music Notes
Lynn Thursday 3, Guero’s On the Radar uploads new content at a frequency matched only by Frito-Lay’s ability to endlessly spin off its products. Every so often, an artist like Lynn makes a serious impression within the digital platform’s bottomless smorgasbord of freestyles and one-track performances. A clip of the Alabama-born, Austin-based rapper’s June freestyle…
Arts + Culture
Encouraging Art Without Boundaries in Creative Resistance
Hearing Eliot Gray Fisher and EG Gionfriddo describe the results of their mentorship program meant to run Austin dance artists through self-producing, ARCOS Presents: Creative Resistance, is like witnessing a firework of ideas. The co-directors of ARCOS – a multidisciplinary group that combines tech with art – keep explaining the two pieces’ expanding concepts, ideas…
Screens
Dear You Review: Identity and Integration in a Hidden Family History
Chinese historical drama Dear You’s original title translates more accurately to Love Letters to Grandma. Yet it’s been a long time since Iap Sogriu (Wu Shaoqing) has received that kind of mail. Instead, Lamgi – or Ama, as her grandson, Hiou-ui (Zheng Runqi), calls her – has quietly raised her family and tended olive trees…
The Sun Never Sets Review: A Love Triangle in the Land of the Midnight Sun
In the first half of his career, as a foundational member of the mumblecore movement, Joe Swanberg was making at least a movie a year – a galloping clip of funny, provocative, scruffy works by and large about people acting like idiots. But the pace got to be too much, burning out fans like myself who…
Onslaught Review: Pervy Sex and Bloody Death
Long before Adam Wingard became the guy who made box office eye candy like the Godzilla films, he made a little hallucinatory horror called Pop Skull about junkies in Alabama. It’s a skeezy, depraved little nightmare, and if you’ve been wondering where that Adam Wingard has been for the last few years, then it’s safe…
Food
The New Driskill Grill Is Old Austin With a Lot More Energy
The Driskill Hotel has been part of my life for as long as I can remember – even though I didn’t make it to high tea until adulthood. I’ve been to anniversary dinners and holiday parties and saddled up to the bar during many a festival. It has always felt less like a place I…
Columns
The Luv Doc: Airport Pickup
Dear Luv Doc, Last January my boyfriend and I relocated to Austin so he could take a job as an attorney. This was/is a great opportunity for someone just coming out of law school, so I encouraged him to go for it. I was working a retail sales job while he was going to law…
Qmmunity: My Innermost Thoughts
I don’t often talk about my innermost thoughts and feelings in this column. That’s not because they’re too hot for the reading public to handle – although just wait until you hear how I feel about olives! I’m anti! – but more along the lines that my thoughts are rarely cut-and-dry gay stuff. It’s all…
Day Trips: George Foreman’s Grave
George Foreman’s grave sits on a beautiful hill overlooking a tree-covered valley. It’s a lovely final resting place, but not where you might expect the former Houston resident to be buried. Foreman was laid to rest in Sioux City, Iowa. Why would one of Texas’ favorite sons choose such a remote location to be buried?…
Choosin’ Texas
Pumpkin-themed drinks and fall decorations have already started to appear in local shops, but the scorching temperature tells me it’s decidedly still summer as I make my way down a dusty road in East Austin toward the HOPE Outdoor Gallery for the Save Texas Hemp Rally: a fundraiser for the future of hemp in Texas.…
The Summer Austin FC Turned Pretty (We Hope)
For Austin FC, 2026 has become much more than another unending campaign of mostly futile exploits on the soccer pitch. It’s instead turned into a months-long odyssey of sweeping change that the club hopes marks the beginning of a much-needed glow-up. The changes have kept coming in recent days, beginning with the club’s introduction of…
Celebrating 45 Years in Print
Let’s not make too big a deal out of it. That was always the consensus when we started mulling how to celebrate the Chronicle’s 45th anniversary. We’ve done plenty of blowout issues over the years and will again (lookin’ at you, 50). This time around, we thought we’d keep it simple – less about looking back,…
Feedback: September 4, 2026
Spicy & Pricey Dear Editor, Talk about getting burned! Over $125 to take mom, dad, grandma, sister, and brother to the Hot Sauce Festival. ¡Demasiado picante! Back in the Nineties we’d bring cans of good food AND make a cash donation to the Central Texas Food Bank. Hot sauce, of all foods especially, is para…
Mr. Smarty Pants Knows
According to the insurance industry, tornadoes, hail, and powerful winds are now considered more of a risk to homeowners than hurricanes. The golf great Robert T. “Bobby” Jones retired from competitive golf at the age of 28. A murmuration happens when a large group of birds simultaneously move together, including twisting, turning, swooping, and swirling…
Fun + Games
Free Will Astrology
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): You’ve been extra reasonable lately. How do you manage to be so responsible, measured, and composed? I’m not complaining. I admire your integrity. But now the cosmic omens are clear that’s it’s time to address your soul’s needs for more wonder and awe and reverence. So I will slip you a…
