Welcome to the Rocks Off 100, our portrait gallery of the most compelling profiles and personalities in the far-flung Houston music community -- a lot more than just musicians, but of course they're in there too. See the entire Rocks Off 100 at this link. With his signature panama hat and a wide sm ... More >>
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 >>
Five reasons EDM shows are better than rock concerts.
Rocks Off spoke to Kris Kristofferson by phone from his home in Hawaii where he describes living a life as spare and literal as the records he makes with producer Don Was. Twice he told us that he's old, once he told us that he's brain-damaged and then he told us that his favorite place on Earth is ... More >>
You might say that law enforcement personnel assigned to the Brownsville bus station has seen it all, especially with the smuggling (or attempted transportation) of illegal substances. "With the U.S.-Mexico border being right there, there are a lot of drugs on the main highway and in the bus termi ... More >>
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 >>
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 >>
A Houston-bred attorney from a prominent local family wants to come home for the biggest day of his life: his upcoming 13-count federal racketeering trial. If the feds grant his change of venue request from Brownsville to Houston, Marc G. Rosenthal will bring one of the juiciest legal scandals in Te ... More >>
Robert Hedrick was the guy who convinced some Brownsville residents he would make the city an international destination through his Pan Am Airlines: flights from Brownsville to Johannesburg! All that came crumbling down when he was arrested for child porn. A jury convicted him yesterday in less tha ... More >>
Travel books tell you to take some extra cash for emergencies when making a trip, but try telling that to the Customs and Border Protection officers in Brownsville. Domingo Quezada-Hernandez was coming across from Mexico to visit our fair land and -- no doubt hearing we are a backward country that ... More >>
An off-duty Border Patrol agent drunkenly drove his truck into a Brownsville taqueria in the early-morning hours Thursday, police say. Luis Alfredo Gonzalez, 24, faces DWI charges after driving into the popular local eatery called the Ultimo Taco Restaurant, the Brownsville Herald reported. "Gonza ... More >>
Brownsville set a trend last year when it became the first city in Texas to ban the use of plastic grocery bags in nearly all consumer settings. Brownsville mayor Pat Ahumada told the New York Times that the ban had eliminated 350,000 plastic bags per day, a decrease that "transformed our city from ... More >>
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 >>
What could go wrong with young kids learning to be cops by hanging with them as they do their jobs? Lots, according to this week's cover story. The Explorer program is administered by Learning for Life, a subsidiary of the Boy Scouts of America. Teenage girls and boys take part all over the ... More >>
It's early on a Friday night at The Davenport , but there's already a pretty decent crowd. The interior is dark, almost romantic, lit by candlelight and a faux fireplace. Throw a bearskin rug on the floor, and I bet some people would forget they're in public. A few folks are still in post-work att ... More >>
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 >>
Courtesy National Hurricane CenterLittle Donnie is getting bigger.The National Hurricane Center reconnaissance plane found winds strong enough in Invest 90 to declare it the fourth tropical depression tropical storm of the 2011 hurricane season -- their next full report is at 6 p.m. As we m ... More >>
Hey, it's worth a shot.It's difficult to say whether Rene Huerta Jr. was ballsy, dumb or maybe forced to do something against his will. But he dodged a huge bullet (ha HA!) in November 2010 when Customs and Border Protection inspected his car as it crossed over from Mexico to Brownsville. Th ... More >>
Right this way, and don't forget to tip your agentA Border Patrol agent has admitted he waved through a car full of cocaine and helped aliens cross into the U.S. which, to be honest, is pretty clearly against the law. Luis Enrique Ramirez, 38, of Brownsville, entered a guilty plea today, say ... More >>
The latest chapter in Mexican pop singer Kalimba's life saddens us for a number of reasons, but the possibility of never hearing his music again is not one of them. If you haven't heard, while recording his latest album in El Paso, Kalimba was held by the U.S. Border Patrol on suspicion of ... More >>
Cruising down the highway, Houston-styleIf someone were to do a study of commuting traffic in 90 American cities, gauging cost and miles and hours wasted, where do you think Houston would rank? Would it be 90th? Maybe 89th? NO. We are not as bad as horror pits like San Jose (89) or Dallas ( ... More >>
UT-Brownsville: text messaging to fight the drug cartels. UT-Brownsville is using a new tactic to keep its students safe from violence across the border: text messaging. Students, faculty and staff at the school are being asked to enter their cell phone numbers in a university database, so whenev ... More >>
Be careful headin' southBe 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 is getting ready to implement a ban on plastic bags in supermarkets, under an ordinance passed earlier this year.You know who doesn't like that? The American Chemistry Council, which we're sure just deals with the wonders of chemistry and how it can improve lives, through the use of, say ... More >>
Froget it, Jake. It's just the ValleyOn moving to Miami during that city's Cocaine Cowboy heyday, a friend once described the place thusly: "You are nobody here until you are under indictment."As the frontline for the drug war has shifted from Colombia and South Florida to Mexico and South Texas, ... More >>
HBO provides proof positive chess is a sportIt'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 >>
Preemo paints his masterpiece, but who will wake up to listen?
One sick puppyMario Alberto Gasca didn't like it when a group of people in his Brownsville neighborhood accused him of burglarizing a nearby house.In fact, the very idea he could be accused of something like that made him furious. How could he best show how much he was misunderstood? How could th ... More >>
Houston's history is dotted with albums that, fairly or un, have been swept aside. We'll examine them here. Have an album that you think nobody knows about but should? Email sheaserrano@gmail.com. Preemo is an enigmatic, velvet-voiced MC from Brownsville that now lives in Houston. He is both con ... More >>
Photo courtesy Nueces County SOErnesto MartinezA June trial date has been set for the suspect in the Brownsville murder of Barry Horn, a former Channel 13 TV news personality who was at the time of his death the executive director of the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art.The 59-year-old Horn, once ... More >>
When he sat down at his table at downtown Brownsville's El Rancho Alegre Café last Saturday night, all Esequiel Silva wanted was a plate of chicken milanesa enchiladas. Little did he know how just how much the Happy Ranch Cafe would fail to live up to its name.After taking a couple of bites, he ... More >>
Photo courtesy CBPContraband 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 >>
We think "Weird Al" Yankovic screwed it up for everybody. There aren't lots of times you can use the word "weird" in a good way. That's one of those words we need to take back, on the real, because when you put "weird" into the right context it can be a positive thing - a differentiator from th ... More >>
Brownsville is never going to be confused with Portland, San Franciscio or some other bucolic tree-hugging liberal city, but it's home to just as many crunchy ecological activists as any yurt-living commune, apparently.Yesterday its version of the city council voted to ban merchants from usin ... More >>
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 >>
What are you really eating when you order fajitas in a Tex-Mex restaurant?
NEWS FLASH!!!!!!!!! (MUST CREDIT HAIR BALLS!!!!!) Today is the beginning of the hurricane season.While the rest of the so-called mainstream media will ignore this important milestone simply because writing or airing stuff about hurricanes in Houston results in cheap increases in ratings and clic ... More >>
Photo by The Pug FatherThe first case of a death from swine flu has been reported -- and it's here in Houston.Of course, it's not exactly a Houstonian who, say, was attending an elementary school in HISD. It was an infant, born in Mexico, who got sick in Brownsville and was transported to Houston an ... More >>
An open-admissions university has become a national powerhouse in the collegiate game.
A chef who loves Karl's on the Riverbend and Freddie Fender
Off the "X", Beaching Out, The Low Down
Border Patrol agents in South Texas contend they are getting paid to stay put as illegal immigrants go around them. Is this how the much-hyped crackdown along the Rio Grande is supposed to work?
Will the "temp" United States Attorney exile dissidents to the border?
