Texas Monthly

The Texanist: New Mexico Has an Official State Scent. What’s Stopping Texas?

David Courtney — Mon, 25 May 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Q: Texas doesn’t have a state scent. As I walk through West Texas brush in mid-March, the smell of agarita is abundant and wonderful. I know that “the sage in bloom is like perfume” around here, but I nominate the prickly agarita for its pleasing aroma. What’s your pick?Stephen Lupton, ChristovalA: The Texanist, a man blessed with a relatively prominent proboscis, possesses a sense of smell so keen that folks have suggested that if this advice-giving gig ever falls through, he might consider applying for employment as a sniffer with the Transportation Security Administration. In part because of this extraordinary skill, he recognizes that a good sense of smell is crucial for safety (as in, say, smoke detection), health (rancid-meat detection), romance (pheromone detection), and other…

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The Daily Crossword: May 25, 2026

Texas Monthly — Mon, 25 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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Word Wrangler: May 25, 2026

Texas Monthly — Mon, 25 May 2026 09:59:00 +0000

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What It’s Like to Stay at the New Hotel of a Historic Austin Property

David Courtney — Sun, 24 May 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Book It recommends a hotel, cabin, or glamping site that’s worth its own trip. For decades the historic six-acre Green Pastures estate, in South Austin, was known for its eponymous restaurant and sprawling canopy of live oaks. Now it’s also home to a 63-room inn from La Corsha Hospitality Group, who revamped Big Spring’s Hotel Settles and will soon unveil a renovation of the Baker Hotel, in Mineral Wells. The Inn at Green Pastures opened its doors to guests this past December.The Look: The new three-story structure is tucked demurely into the back of the grounds. The stylish yet understated guest rooms are mid-century modernish in feel, with natural woods (mostly blond oaks), low-slung furniture, and rich green carpeting.The Fare:Henry’s Nite & Day serves as…

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The Daily Crossword: May 24, 2026

Texas Monthly — Sun, 24 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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Word Wrangler: May 24, 2026

Texas Monthly — Sun, 24 May 2026 09:59:00 +0000

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The Daily Crossword: May 23, 2026

Texas Monthly — Sat, 23 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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Word Wrangler: May 23, 2026

Texas Monthly — Sat, 23 May 2026 09:59:00 +0000

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Tom Brady Joked That Texas Tech Is a “Glorified Community College.” Who’s Laughing?

Dan Solomon — Fri, 22 May 2026 22:46:47 +0000

Former Texas Tech wide receiver Danny Amendola had an unlikely NFL career. A product of The Woodlands High School, in greater Houston, he started his Red Raiders career as a punt returner, in 2004, and ended it as a gritty ball catcher, in 2007. Still, sub-six-foot white guys with average speed aren’t considered great pro prospects, and Amendola went undrafted, spending time on the Dallas Cowboys’ and Philadelphia Eagles’ practice squads. His first two years in the NFL, he never played a down of regular-season football. But he was a gutsy, hardworking competitor, and he eventually found an opportunity to see the field as a member of the St. Louis Rams, in 2009, before signing with Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots four years later. There, he…

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West Texas Oil Field Workers Have a New Favorite BBQ Joint

Daniel Vaughn — Fri, 22 May 2026 11:00:00 +0000

David Holbrook was just reelected mayor of Kermit. He’s held the position in the small West Texas town near the New Mexico border since 2022, but it’s just one of his day jobs. The other is running Poor Daddy’s Smokehouse BBQ with his wife, Charlotte “Charlie” Holbrook. The couple moved to Kermit from the DFW area in 2018 to escape the suburban sprawl and be closer to Holbrook’s hometown of Monahans, just 24 miles south of Kermit. Holbrook soon noticed the poorly funded city services in Kermit, which helped motivate his mayoral run. None of the fire trucks were stored indoors, trash pickup was infrequent, and the constant traffic from trucks going to and from the oil fields caused crumbling streets and massive potholes. Holbrook said…

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You’ve Never Seen Texas Festivals Quite Like This

Robyn Ross — Fri, 22 May 2026 11:00:00 +0000

When Arin Smith was growing up in Stonewall, near Fredericksburg, her annual Peach JAMboree routine never changed. Friday night: Attend the rodeo. Saturday: Accompany Grannie to enter her pie or cobbler in the baking contest, watch the parade, and then go home and wait for the phone call that invariably told Grannie she’d won.Through the eighties and early nineties, Smith’s Grannie, Mildred Jenschke, dominated the JAMboree’s baking contests: Judges couldn’t resist her buttery crust, always the perfect shade of golden brown. Her winning recipes would’ve remained secret had the Stonewall Chamber of Commerce not persuaded her to share them in its commemorative JAMboree cookbooks. Those books are now displayed at the Bullock Museum, in Austin, as part of the exhibit “Texas Festivals: Creating Community Through…

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A Year After the Flood, Kerr County Quietly Opens the Summer Season

Bekah Stolhandske McNeel — Fri, 22 May 2026 11:00:00 +0000

On July 4, Vinny Mifsud was only halfway through his first season running GlowRow kayak tours from his property at the foot of the Sidney Baker Bridge, in Kerrville. His small, clear, fiberglass watercraft each light up with a differently colored LED strip, so that the guided trips up and down the Guadalupe River look like something between a rave and a regatta. Last summer, on nights when Louise Hays Park was full, kids often ran to the river to wave and watch them paddle by, Mifsud said. On the night of the deadly July flood, Mifsud locked up the trailer full of kayaks and oars and went back to his house, half an hour away, in Pipe Creek. The next morning, the kayaks, his…

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The World Cup Is Weeks Away, and Texas Has a Problem

Michael Hardy — Fri, 22 May 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Serious questions hang over next month’s World Cup. Will extortionate ticket prices keep out ordinary fans? Will America’s immigration crackdown deter international visitors? Will Iran’s national team participate in the tournament? For host cities Dallas and Houston, though, the problem is more basic: Will grass grow indoors? To stage the world’s biggest sporting event, which will be played across North America, organizing committees in the two cities are spending millions to install natural playing surfaces at Dallas’s AT&T Stadium—which, as cynics like to point out, is actually in Arlington—and Houston’s NRG Stadium. The artificial turf at AT&T and NRG may be good enough for Dak Prescott and C. J. Stroud, but it will not do for the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Since the World…

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The Daily Crossword: May 22, 2026

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Word Wrangler: May 22, 2026

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Texas Monthly Wins 2026 National Magazine Award for General Excellence, Special Interest

Texas Monthly — Thu, 21 May 2026 16:22:40 +0000

On Tuesday, Texas Monthly took home a National Magazine Award—considered the most prestigious honor in magazine journalism—for general excellence, special interest. This top honor from the American Society of Magazine Editors recognizes publications that serve “highly defined reader communities, including city and regional magazines.” This is the first general excellence award for the magazine since 2009 and the fifteenth National Magazine Award in Texas Monthly’s history.For its entry in this category, Texas Monthly submitted the June and August issues, whose covers featured the ever-popular quadrennial Top 50 BBQ list and the harrowing firsthand account of senior editor Aaron Parsley’s fight for survival during last year’s historic Central Texas flooding, which earned him a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing this month. A wide-ranging body of work…

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The Hard Lessons of “Hardening” Schools

Sandi Villarreal — Thu, 21 May 2026 11:00:00 +0000

On a Thursday afternoon in 2023, about an hour before it was time to pick up my nine- and seven-year-old kids from their elementary school, I received a phone call with a prerecorded message from their principal. She spoke in an even tone: Everything was now okay, but the school had been placed on “secure status” earlier in the day, and she’d send more details shortly.My daughter would later tell me that she had spent about ten minutes huddled with friends behind the curtain onstage in the cafetorium. She said they’d never practiced for an emergency during their lunch period. Unsure of what was happening, the third graders catastrophized about armed gunmen roaming the halls. Parents and teachers can give kids all the assurances they…

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The Daily Crossword: May 21, 2026

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Word Wrangler: May 21, 2026

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Two Years. Two Deaths. Six Elections. Meet the Most Exhausted Voters in Texas.

Michael Hardy — Wed, 20 May 2026 18:52:06 +0000

It’s been a rough couple of years for residents of Texas’s Eighteenth Congressional District. In July 2024, beloved Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee died in office after representing the deep-blue Houston district for nearly three decades. She was succeeded by her daughter, Erica Lee Carter, who served less than two months before passing the baton to former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who lasted another two months before dying in office. Governor Greg Abbott called a special election for the vacant seat, to occur eight months after Turner’s death—a lengthy delay—and that November race would require a runoff. Finally, in January, the district elected former Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, a 38-year-old rising star, to serve out the remainder of Turner’s term. But Menefee barely had a chance…

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A Weekend in the Biggest Antiques Playground in Texas

Emily McCullar — Wed, 20 May 2026 17:20:07 +0000

I had barely taken a bite of breakfast when the interrogation began. I’d ordered myself a sausage, egg, and cheese taco at Round Top Coffee Shop, housed in a quaint green cabin right off the main drag, the older of the town’s dedicated coffeehouses. I just so happened to set my stuff down next to a table of local retirees who were meeting for their standing Thursday-morning group hang. Quickly sensing that I was a foreigner, they invited me to join their table—which I would soon learn had been hand-carved by one of them—and began peppering me with questions. Where was I from? What was I doing in town? Had I tried the blueberry muffin? When I told them I was a writer working on…

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A Famed Austin Pitmaster Starts His Redemption Arc

Daniel Vaughn — Wed, 20 May 2026 11:00:00 +0000

For better and worse, Churchrow Tejas BBQ is not Valentina’s Tex Mex BBQ. Churchrow’s kitchen is helmed by Miguel Vidal, the former owner, chef, and pitmaster of Valentina’s, a groundbreaking joint that imploded suddenly and spectacularly in 2024. While Vidal’s talent is undeniable, Churchrow’s pit room hasn’t yet achieved the level of consistency I came to expect at Valentina’s. Both Vidal and Churchrow’s owner, Simon Madera, know there is still work to do, and they are relying on each other to realize their ultimate vision for the six-month-old restaurant.Over four visits, I’ve witnessed mistakes and improvements at Churchrow. I’ve also seen a different Vidal than I knew at Valentina’s. “The version [of Vidal] that we have is really good,” Madera said. When he hired Vidal…

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Inside the Texas Ranch Where Big-City Professionals Go to Get Dangerous

Peter Holley — Wed, 20 May 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Though I have almost certainly deserved it on numerous occasions, I have never been punched in the face. My lone fight was a short-lived scrape on an elementary school playground with a snot-nosed kid whose name escapes me. It resulted in a draw, I’m proud to say, and my chubby cheeks were left bruise-free. During my 43 years, I have never owned a gun nor felt the need. Maybe I’m privileged, or maybe I’m just lucky. When I mentioned all of this to Travis Miller, an affable mountain of a man and a professional bodyguard, he said another word comes to mind: “naive.” For as long as he can remember, his world has been defined by danger. He grew up in a rough Philadelphia neighborhood, and…

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The Daily Crossword: May 20, 2026

Texas Monthly — Wed, 20 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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Word Wrangler: May 20, 2026

Texas Monthly — Wed, 20 May 2026 09:59:00 +0000

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