Texas Monthly

The Daily Crossword: September 20, 2026

Texas Monthly — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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Word Wrangler: September 20, 2026

Texas Monthly — Sun, 20 Sep 2026 09:59:00 +0000

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The Daily Crossword: September 19, 2026

Texas Monthly — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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Word Wrangler: September 19, 2026

Texas Monthly — Sat, 19 Sep 2026 09:59:00 +0000

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In Eagle Pass, I Floated the River While I Still Could

Sam Karas — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 16:01:11 +0000

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. By the time I get to Shelby Park at 9 a.m. on the Fourth of July, it’s already hot, and all I see is orange. There’s so much orange that I’m not even sure where the river is, though context clues would suggest it’s behind the row of shipping containers crowned with concertina wire. A bit closer and I realize that the field of orange is a field of buoys, each about the height of a person and at least twice as long. They’ve been placed here by a company called Gibraltar in service of a floating border wall hundreds of miles long that has been…

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I Can’t Stop Cooking With These Texas-Made Seasonings

Daniel Vaughn — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Nate Thomas released a plume of powdered spices as he lifted the lid off his Vitamix blender. Clouds of coriander and cumin perfumed the air, even through the protective N95 masks we were wearing, in the Groesbeck lab of Sandcastle Seasonings, which Thomas opened with his wife, Cass Pecoraro, in 2022. He poured the contents through a metal sieve into a metal bowl the size of a car tire. To make Still Standin’ Seasoning Salt, a Texified take on a Montreal steak seasoning, Thomas had infused coarse salt and black pepper with whiskey aged in peach-wood barrels, then smoked serrano peppers with Texas pecan wood before drying and powdering them. To better retain the power of their oils, Thomas had ground the spices mere minutes…

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The Daily Crossword: September 18, 2026

Texas Monthly — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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Word Wranglers: September 18, 2026

Texas Monthly — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 09:59:00 +0000

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Two Top 50 BBQ Heavyweights Have Opened a New Joint—in New York

Jason Cohen — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:57:30 +0000

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. Chris Brenton, a 36-year-old software engineer in Brooklyn, hails from Houston, where his favorite local spots are Truth Barbeque and Goode Company Barbeque. But in New York, he’s had a hard time getting his smoked-meat fix.“[In] the places I’ve lived that aren’t Texas, people are always like, ‘Oh, you have to trust me, this one’s actually good,’ ” he says. “And I go in, and it never is. I have tried a couple in New York. The results have not been positive enough for me to keep trying.”That may be a little harsh. The current New York barbecue scene, while not what it once was, still includes…

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Inside West Texans’ Relentless Fight Against Big Bend Border Wall Contractors

Peter Holley — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. For several days this summer, the rumor in the tiny West Texas hamlet of Sanderson, a 643-person community 125 miles east of Big Bend National Park, was that contractors had descended upon the area to begin constructing a border wall. Nobody knew who they were or what they looked like, but almost everyone in town was on the lookout for the alleged interlopers. That included the manager at the Desert Air Motel, who noticed that four men had booked separate reservations for the same dates at the quaint, retro-style lodge, which beckons travelers along U.S. 90 with a vintage sign promising “Refrigerated Air.” Like undercover cops trying…

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The Daily Crossword: September 17, 2026

Texas Monthly — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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Word Wrangler: September 17, 2026

Texas Monthly — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:59:00 +0000

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Why Are People in Mexico Lining Up for Chipotle? We Went to Find Out.

José R. Ralat — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. Neither gray skies nor drizzle nor flooding downpour could prevent the curious and the devout from lining up out the front door of the first Chipotle location in Mexico. They weren’t waiting patiently, either. Instead, they glared at anyone who casually strolled into the restaurant, seemingly paranoid that they were attempting to cut the line. The air was as thick with tension as a Chipotle burrito is crammed with ingredients.I visited the store, located on the ground floor of a glittering shopping center in the affluent Monterrey suburb of San Pedro Garza García, in early September, just a couple of months after it opened. “By now,…

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How McConaughey and Harrelson Became Texas’s Most Unlikely Ambassadors

Sean O'Neal — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. This past spring, after state health officials banned smokable hemp, my thoughts naturally turned to Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. Not that I’m especially worried about Texas’s red-eyed native sons. Harrelson may have moved to the Austin exurb of Dripping Springs in 2023, but he still co-owns a marijuana dispensary in West Hollywood, and I presume he could have a care package FedExed anytime he likes. As for McConaughey, he revealed during a podcast appearance earlier this year that he’d abandoned marijuana altogether, having discovered that he can no longer handle the potency of “that stuff Woody has.” But even if he hadn’t (or if he…

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Rural Texans Hope to Derail a Proposed Battery-Storage Site in the Heart of Wine Country

Naina Srivastava — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. Six miles outside the tourist hot spot of Fredericksburg, past idyllic vineyards, wildlife trails, and ranches, visitors turning onto Country Creek Lane are greeted by a rectangular red sign propped up against a fence: “Stop Dangerous Solar/BESS in Gillespie Co.” Nearly every yard on the mostly residential street, home to eighteen families, has a smaller red sign with the same message.Here, between the rolling hills and clear streams that locals say their tourism-heavy economy depends upon, hundreds of residents have united in opposition to a roughly thousand-acre solar farm and accompanying battery-energy storage system—BESS, for short—called the Marshall Springs project. John Love, a father of two, has…

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The Daily Crossword: September 16, 2026

Texas Monthly — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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Word Wrangler: September 16, 2026

Texas Monthly — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 09:59:00 +0000

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Enter to Win a Doubleheader Weekend Ticket Package

Texas Monthly — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 22:08:16 +0000

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. One lucky winner will receive a prize package including: Two (2) tickets to Texas Monthly BBQ Homecoming, September 19, 2026 Two (2) tickets to the Frisco RoughRiders game, September 17, 2026 (or September 18, 2026*) One (1) DoMore annual membership One (1) one-year Texas Monthly BBQ Club membership Join the Frisco RoughRiders for game two of the series against the Amarillo Sod Poodles and their final home game of the season! Your Riders are on the hunt for the third Texas League title in franchise history, so come out and cheer them on as they make their postseason push.Texas Monthly BBQ Homecoming is bringing some of…

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The Artist Who Crushed a Tesla With a Huge Stone Head Has an “Explosive” New Texas Installation

Michael Agresta — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. It’s impossible to know exactly how many people have seen Chavis Mármol’s most famous artwork, but the number is well into the millions. In March 2024, the now-44-year-old Mexican artist used a crane to drop a nine-ton Olmec head—a hand-carved imitation of an iconic relic of pre-Aztec Mexico—onto a blue Tesla Model 3. You can still visit the resulting smashup, which remains on view in a vacant lot in Mexico City’s Roma neighborhood. The car’s torso is pancaked, glass everywhere, chassis buckled. Sunk between trunk and frunk sits the huge Olmec face, stonily indifferent.Almost instantly, coverage of the piece—including plenty of homemade and influencer content—spread widely…

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A Sociologist Walks Into a Gun Range . . .

Josh Alvarez — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Harel Shapira, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, is one of the country’s leading scholars of the American political right. For his first book, Waiting for José: The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America (Princeton University Press, 2013), Shapira spent years embedded with a militia group, which helped point him to his next subject, gun culture. To research his new book, Basic Pistol: Living and Dying by the Gun in America (Pantheon, September 15), Shapira spent four years immersing himself in that culture, participating in firearms and self-defense training courses in Texas and around the country and getting to know instructors and students.Texas Monthly recently spoke over videoconference with Shapira, who is completing an academic fellowship in Germany.Texas Monthly: You point out that thirty…

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The Daily Crossword: September 15, 2026

Texas Monthly — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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Word Wrangler: September 15, 2026

Texas Monthly — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 09:59:00 +0000

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Texas Republicans Finally Rebuked Bo French’s Racism. What Took Them So Long?

Robert Downen — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 18:40:51 +0000

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. On Sunday morning, as many Texans were still basking in the ecstatic afterglow of the University of Texas at Austin’s historic comeback win over Ohio State University, Bo French was doing what he does best: posting racist rants on the internet. In a series of social media posts, French, who is the Republican nominee for Texas railroad commissioner, blasted what he framed as a takeover of the state’s flagship school by nonwhites and “third worlders,” specifically taking issue with a photo of South Asian students celebrating at the game. “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this,” French wrote on X. “I didn’t believe it.…

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Congressman Greg Casar Wants to Stop AI From Killing Us All

Dan Solomon — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 10:44:20 +0000

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. In the almost four years since Chat GPT was released and generative AI tools became part of daily life, critics’ concerns have focused on real but fairly ordinary risks: students cheating, researchers getting facts wrong because of AI “hallucinations,” users following bad advice and harming themselves, the possibility of mass job loss as the technology replaces human workers. This summer, though, experts have begun warning of a more existential threat. The news of the July cyberattack on the machine learning platform Hugging Face by OpenAI agents acting without human instruction offered a first glimpse of what rogue AI might look like. Then, last week, a researcher…

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We Spent a Day at the Universal Kids Resort. Surely It Couldn’t Be That Bad?

Eric Benson — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 10:43:49 +0000

Digital subscribers can listen to this article. Subscribe today for unlimited access to Texas Monthly. Already a subscriber? Log in. The new Universal Kids Resort launched with a promise: In the sparklingly new, rapidly growing, and resolutely family-friendly city of Frisco, an equally sparkling and family-friendly theme park would rise. When the plans were unveiled at a press conference in December 2023, then-Mayor Jeff Cheney said the Universal Kids Resort would “grow into being the very essence of growing up and living in Frisco.” At the same event, Universal Creative president Molly Murphy vowed that the park would “inspire the unbridled creativity of kids through imagination.” If Walt Disney could carve his world-famous Magic Kingdom out of some woebegone tracts of Orlando swampland, why couldn’t the…

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