Brooklyn (New York City)

Titus Andronicus at Walters, 5/10/2013

Titus Andronicus, The So So Glos, The Caldwell Walters May 10, 2013 Friday night featured a four-band showcase at the new Walters (not on Washington) headlined by New Jersey indie-punk group Titus Andronicus, bringing their Brooklyn friends The So So Glos along on what they are calling the "Bring B ... More >>

5 Beers to Try Now at Witchcraft Tavern & Provision Co.

Lately, I've been finding the best beers in some unexpected places. On Monday night, it was a jaw-dropping line-up at the brand-new D&T Drive Inn, where the guys behind Down House have renovated a neighborhood icehouse and installed a huge tap wall of eccentric draft beers to rival the records in i ... More >>

Jose Rodriguez-Treto: Baby Seat Tipped Off Cops That He Wasn't A Cop

There's no bigger thrill, if you're one of these people who like to imitate cops, than to blast on the party lights and blow by some dweebs who have to pull over. (Well, we suppose a bigger thrill for these idiots would be pulling over a drunk, credulous woman with big cleavage, but we digress.) On ... More >>

Chef Chat, Part 3: Jeff Axline of Brooklyn Athletic Club and a Taste of Americana

This is the third part of a three-part Chef Chat series. If you missed the previous posts, you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. This week, we chatted with Jeff Axline of the new Brooklyn Athletic Club (BAC) on Richmond. We learned about his experiences, how he's made a name for himself with ma ... More >>

The Complete SXSW Overflow Festival 2013 Guide: Week 1, Part 2

This year Rocks Off would like to help our readers get a handle on all the acts playing Super Happy Fun Land's SXSW Overflow Fest, and event that is longer than SXSW itself, with almost as many bands. There are nine nights left to go, and "season passes" are still available. See superhappyfunland.co ... More >>

The Complete SXSW Overflow Festival 2013 Guide: Week 1, Part 1

With SXSW underway in Austin, Super Happy Fun Land is keeping Houston ears satisfied with its Overflow Festival 2013, a two-week lineup of up-and-coming music acts from all over the world. Below is a complete list of the rest of this week's performers. TUESDAY, MARCH 12 Ash Reiter: The San Franci ... More >>

DJ Sun's Guided Tour of One Hundred, Part 1

DJ Sun knows how to release an album right. For the past three months or so, the Houston turntablist, producer and radio-show host (KPFT's Soular Grooves) with an enviable address book and a local residency almost every night of the week -- not to mention a multiple Houston Press Music Award winner ... More >>

Spare Change: Armed Robbers Hold Up Convenience Store, Net $20

Police in Brownsville say two armed robbers entered a Stripes Convenience Store on Friday and robbed it at gunpoint. One of the two, wearing a "baby blue sweater with a hood" (aw, cute!), went behind the counter and pointed a gun at the cashier before grabbing about $20 in cash and change from the r ... More >>

Ranking The 2012 Heisman Finalists According To Music Videos

Last week in this space, I speculated that the Vegas big board for the 2012 Heisman Trophy winner released back in June, 23 candidates in all, would actually turn out to contain no eventual 2012 finalists. If you go back and look at the list, it didn't take Kirk Herbstreit to figure that out. On M ... More >>

SXSW Releases First Batch of 2013 Performers

Here go hell come, SXSW has just released the first batch of names for the 2013 festival. I know, only a week after Fun Fun Fun Fest and a month since ACL. Did you see the FPSF blog from earlier today? Yeah, time is moving too fast. The big names on the list so far include the Zombies, Alt-J, Akro ... More >>

State Criminal Justice System Group: "Texas Failing Traumatized Girls"

The state's juvenile justice system is failing the girls in its custody, according to a new report from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. The findings of a one-day survey of approximately 100 girls at the Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex suggest that the residents, most of whom ... More >>

Skatestock

Charles Bradley & His Extraordinaires

Gonzo Artwork and Lone Star Labels on the Rise: The 10 Best Beer Labels in Texas

Last week, we took a look at some of the very worst labels you can find on a bottle of beer. To counterbalance all that artistic vomit, we gathered some of the most iconic and creative labels on shelves today -- labels that feature artwork as original and important as craft beer itself. 10. Boulev ... More >>

Young Mammals

RIP Adam Yauch: Beastie Boys' MCA Dead At 47

Well, damn. Adam Yauch, the gravel-voiced third of Noo Yawk '80s and '90s rap-rock superstars the Beastie Boys, has died at age 47, Rolling Stone reports. The exact circumstances of his death were unknown at press time, but Yauch had been battling cancer since being diagnosed with a tumor in his sa ... More >>

7 Cool & Cheap Things To Do This Weekend -- In Houston, Not At SXSW

T-Bone Walker heir Don Kesee, one of the area's Houston's most underheralded bluesmen - which unfortunately is saying something, but watch a little bit of the above clip at Navasota's Blues Alley festival - comes into the city for a gig at the Shakespeare Pub. Super Happy Fun Land's SXSW Overflow ... More >>

KTRU Spring Outdoor Show

Tasting Notes: This Week in Wine Blogs

After reading our blogging colleague Katharine Shilcutt's post about Robb Walsh's tasting and pairing of Texas Gulf oysters and wines last week at Oceanaire on Westheimer, we were geeked to see a post from a wine blogger's perspective by one of our favorite Houston wine educators, Sandra Crittenden. ... More >>

White Rabbits Have Some Very Strange Ideas About Spring Break Songs

White Rabbits aren't your run-of-the-mill hipsters. The New York Times recently likened the New York band's third album, Milk Famous, to "Radiohead's technique of surrounding a sustained vocal melody with jagged pointillism... some songs barely bother to flesh out their chords. They're all rhythm an ... More >>

Michael Jordan's $29,000,000 Mansion Is for Sale -- 6 Fun Facts

With his divorce over five years old and his kids now all grown up and college age, I guess it's time for Michael Jordan to officially pull up stakes in Chicago and sell the old homestead. And it appears he's doing just that, as Jordan placed his Highland Park, Illinois, mansion on the market today ... More >>

Calling All Amateur Chefs! Compete in the Houston Beer Experiment on March 4

Photos courtesy Theo PeckNational Food Experiment​Do your friends rave about your cooking? Are you convinced you have an award-winning dish in your arsenal of recipes? Do people--other than your mom--constantly tell you to become a professional chef? Here is your chance to prove you've got wha ... More >>

Guillermo Villarreal & Leoncio Sanchez: Buying 17,000 Rounds of Ammo at Academy Stores Will Raise Eyebrows

If you live in Texas, or much of the South, you've probably heard the bouncy jingle "Academy Sports & Outdoors -- the right stuff, the right price!" This apparently holds true if you're in the market for a ton of ammunition to sneak into Mexico. Guillermo Enrique Villarreal, 37, of Brownsville, an ... More >>

Brew Blog: Brooklyn Winter Ale

Photo by Nicholas L. HallThank you, petty thieves.​I love make-your-own-six-pack programs. Sure, they're almost always driven by theft, and the resulting need to move a bunch of individual bottles at a significant per-bottle markup. That part sucks. I like to focus on two positives. First, at ... More >>

The Rapture

Tasting Notes: This Week in Wine Blogs

Vintage Texas: Budget cuts by the Texas legislature have slashed funding for the promotion of Texas wines, reports Houston-based blogger and wine writer Russ Kane, author of the top Texas wine and winery blog, Vintage Texas. In an email sent to "partners" of the "Texas Wine Marketing Program" (and r ... More >>

Om Prakash Budha: Faces Prison over Refusals to Fill Out Visa Forms

Man, Om Prakash Budha, 28, does not want to go back to Nepal. He was nabbed in October 2010 crossing the U.S. border at Brownsville without proper documentation. Fine, you got caught, go home and try again, right? Wrong. "On four separate occasions during a four-month period, Budha steadfastly ref ... More >>

Glasnost

Favorite Three: Pizza Places

Photo by Kevin ShalinSimone on Sunset's Smoked Duck Pizza​Picking a favorite pizza place is a hot-button topic. Let's see which places showed up on our lists. John Kiely 1. Dolce Vita Pizzeria & Enoteca 2. Russo's Coal-Fired New York Pizzeria 3. Pizza Hut John's Take: The worst pizza I've ... More >>

The Fleshtones, Ivan Julian

Comment of the Day

​Today Kevin Shalin reported on the city's best bathrooms, grossing out Eating Our Words nation with the word "deuceability." Commenter Ruthie J M chimed in: Stella Sola's bathroom is great -- It's got the Dyson hand blowers left over from the place's former life as Bedford. Worst bathroom ... More >>

A Domino's Convert

​Trust me, I am a champion of the SLGT movement. In fact, for my family's tradition of eating pizza on Christmas Eve I really tried to support local so that we could all grow together. So I called Daddy-O's and Lazaro's, and as the phone rang and rang, I soon realized that local business owner ... More >>

The Five Creepiest 2010 Christmas Ads

The Christmas ads this year seem to be creepier than ever. Maybe it's the recession. But what used to be a joyous collection of sledding electric razors and wide-eyed kids running to the tree has turned into something bizarre and cruel. The five worst offenders: 5. Phillips Senso Touch 3D Razor I ... More >>

Openings & Closings: November 2010

Zelko Bistro and Katz's have some new fried pickle competition in the new Natachee's.​It's been a while since we've done a monthly roundup of openings and closings, but we're getting that train back on track now, and what a month to pick for that re-railment. November was busy, both in terms o ... More >>

Nine Nation Animation

Valley Sheriffs Want To Search Southbound Cars, Too

Be careful headin' south​Be careful if you're driving south with your guns and life savings. If some sheriffs have their way, county cops could take it all away.Late last week, sheriffs from Cameron County and El Paso County announced that they would love it if deputies started inspecting every ca ... More >>

Brownsville Chess Teams Get Some National Pub

HBO provides proof positive chess is a sport​It's been more than two years since the Houston Press wrote about the unlikely success of the collegiate and grade school chess programs in Brownsville, but now the big boys at HBO have caught up and will air a segment Tuesday night about the community' ... More >>

Concrete Dreams

Preemo paints his masterpiece, but who will wake up to listen?

Donald Ray Spencer: Tiny Terror Tries To Grab Cop's Gun After Burglary Bust

Photo courtesy HCSOSmall, but feisty​It's a cliché, but criminals come in all shapes and sizes.On Saturday night, the Houston Police Department picked up 20-year-old Donald Ray Spencer for burglary of a habitation, a felony.Evidently Spencer did not go down without a fight, because he is also cha ... More >>

PETA Be Buggin' About Blinged-Out Border Beetle

Photo courtesy CBP​Contraband along the Texas-Mexico border flows both ways. Drugs tend to come north. Desperados on the lam tend to flow south. But every now and then there's a novelty like this woman and her strange pet. The Brownsville Herald picks up the tale: It wasn't marijuana, co ... More >>

Beer, Pizza and Monster Truck Racing at Spaghetti Western

​We were on North Shepherd last week and stopped into the Spaghetti Western Italian Cafe to start off my day. We began with a house-made bellini -- vodka and peach schnapps is a great way to get things going. We spotted the Italian nachos -- fried wonton chips covered with alfredo sauce, mozza ... More >>

Mexican Marmalade

​My friend Ed Cooper is a financial consultant. I was hoping for a hot stock tip for Christmas, but instead he gave me Mexican fruits. Ed grew up in Brownsville eating these Conserva Valdez conserves. They are fairly unusual-looking, but quite good. The orange conserves contain big pieces of o ... More >>

The Narrows - Live

Web exclusive!

Les écailles de la Mémoire (The Scales of Memory)

Brooklyn’s Urban Bush Women and Senegal’s Compagnie JANT-BI join forces in a collaborative dance performance

Au Revoir, Simone

Brooklyn female threesome tones it down while keying it up

On Your Top Eight?

Stranger than Fiction

Bringin' tha Funk

Mixtape Masters

Caps and Jones keep the party Moving

The Lost Houston of Sig Byrd

Forty years ago, one writer captured our city better than any before or since. Now he's forgotten. And the Houston he saw? All but gone.