Austin Monthly September/October 2022

CAMPING ADVENTURES

Glamping Hubs, Cool Desert Springs, Secret Backcountry Trails, and Floating Platforms on the Gulf

58

The Call of the Wild

The top outdoor gear, a better type of campfire cooking, and all the best spots to pitch your tent in Texas.

68

Rock of Ages

As ACL turns 20 this fall, the fest’s photographers pick two decades’ worth of memorable moments.

76

Around the Horn

Bevo has become a college mascot legend. But steering his own legacy hasn’t been easy.

84

Top Doctors for Women

More than 100 of the top physicians for female patients.

DREW ANTHONY SMITH

The Silver Spurs have been taking care of Bevo since 1945.

Contents

Scout 29

All the characters you’re sure to meet at ACL Fest 30

Texas State debuts a King of the Hill exhibit 32

Huckberry finds a new home base in the capital city 34

Mueller offers so much more than its legendary farmers market 36

Feast 39

Sip and relax at the best new wine bars and shops 40

It’s food truck or fine-dining in Austin’s current restaurant reality 42

All the dumplings you should know 44

Beat 47

Can expansions and upgrades ease travel woes at ABIA? 48

Hotelier Liz Lambert talks SoCo development and life after Bunkhouse 50

Abbott and Beto duke it out in Texas’ governor race 52

Editor in Chief

Chris Hughes

Creative Director

Sara Marie D’Eugenio

EDITORIAL

Executive Editor

Madeline Hollern

Associate Editor

Bryan C. Parker

City Columnist

Omar L. Gallaga

Contributing Writers

Alex Baia, Pam LeBlanc, Erica Lies, Emma Schkloven

ART

Contributing Photographers

Logan Crable, Haley Hill, Sarah Karlan, Drew Anthony Smith

Contributing Illustrators

James Boyle, Joseph Laney, Pete Ryan, Andrea Ucini

DIGITAL

Digital Managers

Rosie Ninesling, Abigail Stewart

INTERNS

Lauren Blue, Lana Haffar, Layla Hall

ADVERTISING

Publisher

Stewart Ramser

Vice President of Sales

James R. Smith

Senior Account Executive

Tina Mullins

Account Director

Dana Horner

Account Executive

Annemarie Gist

Sales Operation Manager

Kiely Whelan

EVENTS

Events Director

Lauren Sposetta

CEO

Todd P. Paul

President

Stewart Ramser

Vice President of Sales

James R. Smith

Editorial Director

Rebecca Fontenot Cord

Director of Operations

Hollis Boice

CIRCULATION

Audience Development Director

Kerri Nolan

ACCOUNTING

Accounting Manager

Sabina Jukovic

CONTACT US

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Editor’s Letter

When Nature Calls

BEFORE WEATHER APPS and smartphones, it could be difficult to predict when you might run into a freak storm that saturated all firewood, turned a campsite into a muddy cow pasture, and collapsed your tent with the weight of a midnight downpour. Which is why, until recently, my experiences with camping were limited to a doomed trip I took during high school to Bremond, about 45 miles outside of Waco. Reduced to eating untoasted marshmallows in an abandoned hunting shack crawling with hornets—and toweling off with the one t-shirt that hadn’t gotten soaked in the rain—I swore to enjoy only inside recreations from there on out.

But over the years, my more enlightened friends schooled me on the pleasures of rooftop camping on the rim of Palo Duro Canyon, considered “The Grand Canyon of Texas.” Our new associate editor, Bryan C. Parker, relayed the transportive experience of wandering around Big Bend and “connecting with something larger than yourself.” And frequent contributor Pam LeBlanc regaled me with stories of her tricked-out Ford Transit van (nicknamed Vincent VanGo), which she’s used to explore grounds as diverse as Seminole Canyon State Park and the shores of Matagorda Bay. Slowly, my resolve has whittled away like so much useless kindling in a North Texas monsoon. Now, my fall is being measured out in Howler Brothers gear and Hipcamp.com visits. But whether you’re a regular Teddy Roosevelt or a tepid outdoorsman like myself, you’ll want to check out our guide to all things camping, “The Call of the Wild” (p. 58). From insights on secret equestrian trails and poison ivy remedies to tips on freshening up your open-fire hot dog game, there’s everything to make you want to pack up and take it outside this season.

If it’s a different kind of stargazing you’re after, executive editor Madeline Hollern looks at ACL Fest’s 20 years of making musical history in “Rock of Ages” (p. 68). From the perspective of the photographers who’ve captured its greatest moments, you’ll hear about death-defying stage antics, gutsy political protests, and one hell of a nosebleed. Or maybe you’re reserving your sweat equity (literally) for the lineup of high-profile games at DKR Texas Memorial Stadium this fall. To roll roughshod over Roll Tide, superstitious UT fans will no doubt be looking toward the steadying presence of the school’s iconic mascot. In her thorough and fascinating history of Bevo, Emma Schkloven writes about more than a century of gameday shenanigans and off-the-field heroics by the hardest-working steer in the business (p. 76).

After a historically hot summer, you’re no doubt itching to get outdoors. From coast to canyon, concert to burnt orange corral, we’ve got you covered. Just make sure to take advantage of that weather app.

Chris Hughes Editor in Chief chughes@austinmonthly.com

The Whole Nine Yards

Like so many locals, Danielle Shepherd moved to Austin to pursue music—at least, that was the plan. “I ended up getting way more absorbed in making costumes for myself and other musicians than actually practicing with the band—so, they kicked me to the curb,” she laughs. Fortunately, the Phoenix native, who started sewing at age 8 and worked in alterations at a vintage clothing shop in San Diego, found much more success in the sartorial world. Launched in 2018, Shepherd’s ready-to-wear couture line DASHE (pronounced dah-shay) dazzles with

dramatic jewel tones and standout materials like organza, taffeta, velvet, and satin. Case in point: her gorgeous hand-shirred Sienna dress (pictured), which took 25 hours to make and includes a whopping nine yards of fabric. This fall, Shepherd will be premiering a Western-themed runway show centered around the LGBTQ community at Willie Nelson’s Luck Ranch on Nov. 4. Shop her couture at Native Hostel’s weekly Native’s Creatives event on Thursdays and view her designs on Instagram at @da_she_. —Madeline Hollern

The 20 People You Always Meet at ACL Fest

BY ALEX BAIA AND ERICA LIES

EVERY OCTOBER, AUSTIN City Limits Music Festival brings together 450,000 people from all over the country for two magical weekends in a row. These music fans flock to Zilker Park mainly to dress up, take selfies, do drugs, and scream. Yet beyond the opportunity to see more than 130 bands in one setting, half the fun of this annual tradition is in gawking at the other attendees. That’s especially true of this pack of colorful characters, who you’re bound to run into this ACL.

1 The Aging Hipster Who Hates the Lineup

This guy will tell you all about how this corporate sh*tshow has been going downhill since 2006 when ACL started pushing mainstream radio crap at the expense of classic underground genres like psychobilly, jug blues, and tumbleweedcore.

2 The Hula Hooper

Dressed in all black, hooping even to Spoon’s set with zero spatial awareness. Sure, Austin’s currently under a burn ban, but they’ll be juggling fire sticks by nightfall.

3 The ’90s Alterna-Rock Dad

Still rocking a goatee and vintage cargo shorts, this humble dad accompanies his teens to see Conan

Gray on the condition that he gets some Red Hot Chili Peppers time to himself.

4 The Wandering Pack of Teens with All the Emotions

A massive youth amoeba that grows and contracts as rapidly as acne. It pushes to the stage; it knocks over your beer; it’s crying by the port-a-potties. It’s a barreling freight train of feelings because Taylor watched SZA with April, who’s really into Cooper, who went to Samia with Olivia, who’s actually into Brayden, who wandered off after eating a gummy he didn’t realize was that kind of gummy.

5 The Really Stoned Guy Who Doesn’t Know Who the Bands Are

He’s the one yelling “F*ck, yeah, Radiohead!” during Phoenix’s set.

6 The Lawn Chair People

They’ve staked out their territory and will camp there for the whole weekend. Should an outsider cut through their sovereign land to get to the food trucks, they’ll secede from Zilker.

7 The Influencer

He’s smiling and Instagram-ready, wearing a blue, button-up shirt tucked into crisp khakis and… Wait, that’s just Beto O’Rourke, here to remind everyone that he’s still a punk rocker.

8 The Dehydrated Californian

They packed their suitcase expecting sweater weather only to discover that October in Texas is like August everywhere else. You’ll see them chugging ice-cold Ozarkas and recovering from heat stroke on the grass while their bestie does an Instagram Live about “migas tacos.”

9 The Van Life Couple

From Bonnaroo to Burning Man, this adventurous couple is taking their Mercedes Sprinter van across the country and exploring their love of music and YouTubing and threesomes. They’re freakin’ stoked to tell their podcast followers about their latest antics, including the amazeballs BBQ sauces they tried at la Barbecue.

10 The Guy Who Beats People Up

Whether he’s watching emo-rap or indie-pop that could rock a baby to sleep, this shirtless UFC reject’s goal for the weekend is to randomly punch heat-exhausted drunks who won’t fight back.

11 The Elderly Couple

He’s 34, she’s 30. Sure, they’re a bit out of touch and past their prime, but it’s super awesome that ACL is such a welcoming space that even our senior

citizens can get out in the sun for a day and enjoy Lil Nas X.

12 The Human Skittle

This Rainbow Bright stepped out of a Katy Perry fever dream, though she’s here for Carly Rae Jepsen. Bump into her even once, and you’ll be washing glitter out of your hair for months.

13 The Guy Who’s Just There to See One DJ

He pays $300 to stand in long lines and listen to a full weekend of music he hates, but it’s all worth it for the 40 glorious minutes that he hears Purple Disco Machine.

14 The Music Journalist

They have their entire ACL mapped out in Google Sheets: five minutes at Diplo before racing to check out The Chicks for 15, followed by Paramore for 110 seconds. They have an iPhone in each hand and are dressed in a custom aerodynamic body suit to move quickly between stages while live tweeting telepathically.

15 The Baby on A Blanket

Why is this random baby just lying here on this pot leaf print blanket?

16 The Bro-dal Party

These six former Phi Epsilon brothers descended upon Bat City for Brad’s bachelor party. They’re all wearing Springsteen bandanas and won’t shut up about crypto, even during Diplo’s set.

17 The Guy Dressed as a Giant Pickle

This guy’s main thing is that he’s on MDMA.

18 The Hard Seltzer Entrepreneur

This vendor is introducing the vanguard of music culture to the most rockin’ Texas-based hard seltzer the world has seen, “Armadillo Acqua”—the only cherry-berry seltzer made from low-carb rainwater that benefits armadillo habitats.

19 The Woman with Many Hats

You saw her yesterday with a leather cowboy hat and two hours ago with a lime green bucket hat. Now she’s sporting a straw fedora with a peacock’s feather, then a mini top hat with steampunk goggles, then a tricorn pirate’s hat, then an entire bird’s nest of White-Tailed hawks on her head. Too bad she can’t hear P!nk above the screeching of her hawks.

20 The Ghost of Stevie Ray Vaughan  Not a look-alike. Actually the ghost of Stevie Ray Vaughan.

It’s Good to Be King

Mike Judge fans can now get their King of the Hill fix thanks to a new full-time display at Texas State. BY

MADELINE HOLLERN

IF YOU CAN’T get enough of the unforgettable residents from fictional Arlen, Texas, it’s worth the drive to San Marcos to see Texas State’s new King of the Hill display. The Wittliff Collections is home to the production archive of the show, which was donated by series writer and executive producer Jim Dauterive. The lot includes everything from scripts and production materials to original whiteboards. Here’s a look at just some of the featured items, located on the seventh floor of the Alkek Library.

→ The back of the case contains a smaller reproduction of a “Making of King of the Hill” whiteboard that hung in the show’s production offices and explained the process of creating each episode to visitors. The original whiteboard is now preserved in the archives of The Wittliff Collections.

↑ The Wittliff has more than 100 scripts from the series. Many of their covers were whimsically doodled upon by writers and staff members during production.

← Figurines of Bobby Hill and the family dog, Lady Bird. The Lyndon B. Johnson references were prevalent in the show, with Hank’s boss Buck Strickland based off the former president.

↑ Collectible figurines from Toycom that were released in 2002. The illustration behind the figures shows the layout of the Hills’ neighborhood, depicting the characters’ houses in relation to each other.

↑ Dauterive and his producers created a list of directives for animators and directors. The style guide provides an overview of the show’s concepts and characters for the production team working on show animation.

↑ The show centers around the suburban life of Hank Hill, a salesman of “propane and propane accessories” with a “narrow urethra” and an obsession with the Dallas Cowboys.

TURNING THE PAGE

A Breath of Fresh Air

Now based in Austin, Huckberry draws in city slickers who are a little bit country.

BY MADELINE HOLLERN

WHEN IT COMES to men’s apparel, companies often fall into one of two camps: stylish, dapper attire for urban professionals, or sporty, rugged clothing for adventure seekers. Huckberry wanted to be somewhere in the middle. Developed by two former investment bankers with a shared love of the outdoors, the brand originated in San Francisco in 2011, mainly as a digital marketplace that has since grown into a content creation site appealing to a specific type of consumer: “We love the culture, creativity, and lifestyle that living in cities provides, but so much of where we find our inspiration and what we like to do with our free time is travel and adventure,” says VP of marketing Ben O’Meara.

Quietly relocating its headquarters to the capital city in 2020, Huckberry now sells everything from merino shirts and chukka boots to whiskey glasses and camping grills. Local brands are a particular focus, with representation from Austin lines like Howler Brothers, Ooni, and ROKA. Online, the company has its own journal with original articles and videos, and it recently launched its first show, Dirt, on both Outside TV and the website. Intent on not taking itself too seriously, Huckberry also collaborated with Aaron Franklin for a video filmed during Hot Luck Festival. “He’s a big welder, and he took this old vintage Schwinn bike and welded it into a chicken rotisserie smoker,” O’Meara says. After all, he notes, “Adventure is whatever the hell you want it to be.” huckberry.com

In 2002, Kendra Scott withdrew $500 to design her first jewelry collection in the spare bedroom of her home. Two decades later, her company is valued at more than $1 billion. But, despite her success, Scott has endured plenty of drama, divorce, and loss along the way. She details these experiences in her candid new memoir, Born to Shine: Do Good, Find Your Joy, and Build a Life You Love. Out Sept. 20, the book includes the lessons that have shaped the entrepreneur, from being bullied as a young girl in Wisconsin to launching her failed hat store. As Scott notes, “While my life at times certainly has been shiny and beautiful, it has also been painful and sharp. There is no level of success that can smooth all the edges for you.”

Huckberry features apparel brands suitable for camping trips, such as Flint and Tinder (pictured).

What to Do at Mueller

Enjoy the award-winning farmers market and take Fido for a staycation at this East Central hot spot.

BY MADELINE HOLLERN

WHETHER YOU’RE SAVORING an 11-course sushi experience, entertaining the little ones at an interactive museum, or catching a flick at Alamo Drafthouse, there’s always something fun happening at Mueller. Once home to a municipal airport, this hyper-walkable neighborhood is now brimming with restaurants, retail options, and 13 miles of trails.

Explore

Stock up on farm-fresh produce and Que Sazon chilaquiles at the Texas Farmer’s Market (1, 4) every Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. The market has been voted Best Farmers’ Market/ Farmstand by the Austin Chronicle for nine years in a row. Youngsters can discover swaying pendulums, spinning discs, and musical wheels at the new Notion of Motion exhibit at the Thinkery (2), a playbased children’s museum that features an emphasis on STEAM (science, technology, engineering, the arts, and mathematics).

Sleep

Bring your pooch and pals with you to Origin Hotel Austin (3). Opened in June, the pet-friendly boutique hotel features

Blue Lacy, a restaurant that includes comfort fare such as chicken and waffle kabobs and shrimp and grit fritters with chorizo along with a “for the dogs” menu (think Bowser beer and doggie ice cream). In addition to regular rooms, Origin offers a bunk bed suite that sleeps up to six people. Snag a photo next to the “It’s So Austin” mural in the courtyard, which was spray-painted by local artist Brittany Johnson.

Eat

Make a reservation well in advance to try Tsuke Edomae’s 11-course omakase-style dining experience. Chef/owner Michael Che imports his seafood almost exclusively from Tokyo’s famed Toyosu Fish Market. Grab a bite after grocery shopping at

H-E-B’s stellar food hall, Main Streat, which includes Roots Chicken Shak by celebrity chef Tiffany Derry. For date night, savor the bucatini, cavatelli, and other house-forged pastas at L’oca d’Oro (5), which sources ingredients from local purveyors including Steelbow Farm and Eden East. Taking a break from dairy? Order a charcuterie board from Rebel Cheese. The vegan deli makes its plant-based fromage from ingredients like cashew and coconut.

Indulge

Never mind basic vanilla: Lick Honest Ice Creams uses flavors like Mexican marigold, lavender, and roasted beets to sweeten its frozen batches. For a special occasion, order the elaborate confections from Lady Quackenbush’s Cakery,

which creates whimsical treats such as Jurassic Park–themed groom cakes and rainbow-colored macarons.

Drink

Sláinte! Experience traditional Irish music live over a pint or two at B. D. Riley’s Irish Pub

The bar hosts intermediate trad players every Thursday night at 7 p.m. For a pre-movie libation, swing by Barrel O’ Fun inside Mueller’s Alamo Drafthouse, which features circus-themed decor and weekly events like karaoke bingo and Geeks Who Drink trivia nights. Slated to debut in the neighborhood this fall, Aviator Pizza + Drafthouse will include more than 50 Texas craft beers and wines on tap in addition to its pies.

Everybody Loves Ramen

“When people think about ramen, it’s often what you see in anime: narutomaki (fish cake), a pork belly roll, and maybe some spinach,” says Kris Hammond, chef of Sazan Ramen. “But the world of ramen is just enormous.” Opening a West Campus location this fall, Hammond and owner Taiki Wakayama are determined to push the boundaries of the category closer to what’s happening in modern Japan. Moving beyond the labor-intensive tori paitan they’ve become celebrated for, Sazan will now attempt to educate Austinites on lesser-known styles like a crystalline chintan shoyu. Miso -based bowls will also be a focus at the West 29th Street spot, such as one broth laced with 10 types of chiles, charred esquites, and roasted pork belly coated in a Texas-style barbecue rub. Considered alongside newer faces like pop-up-turned-brick-andmortar Ramen512 in Cedar Park, Hammond says chefs are “pushing expectations and changing the idea of what’s possible with ramen like never before.” —Chris Hughes

Ferment to Be Together

Central Texas is officially on cloud wine as a wave of new shops, bars, and tasting rooms have opened across the area.

BY CHRIS HUGHES

Blurred Vines

Exclusivity is the name of the enology game at this reservation-only spot on East Seventh Street, where guests can book one-hour guided tastings and even purchase VIP club memberships. Rarely seen indie labels—particularly from domestic West Coast producers—are the focus of sommelier Malon Lemoins’ educationdriven modus operandi. blurred-vines.com

Cape Bottle Room (1)

There’s a good chance your only encounter with South African vino has been a polarizing encounter with pinotage.

But Cory and Danya Declusin are determined to show another side to the country’s budding industry. At this all-South African wine bar and shop on the East Side, consumers can get a taste of rare producers like Alheit Vineyards, which epitomize the region’s potential for social and environmental sustainability. capebottleroom.com

Summer Revival Wine Co. (2)

Husband-and-wife team

Ian and Becky Atkins are native Texans who spent the last decade learning the ins and outs of winemaking in the Pacific Northwest. Now, they’ve

returned with a new Dripping Springs tasting room to showcase both their Texas and Oregon labels. Pair a bottle with their “picnic fare” menu sourced from Abby Jane Bakeshop and other local purveyors. summerrevival wineco.com

Best Little Wine & Books (3)

Travis Tober (Old Pal) continues his great Lockhart expansion with this new project headed by sommelier Kaye Askins. In addition to selling a wide array of beverage-related books, Askins focuses on female- and minority -owned wineries in its 150-plus selections,

available for retail and on-site enjoyment. Bonus: Their rescue dog, Chicken, is typically there to greet customers. bestlittlewine.com

Underdog

When their jobs ended during the pandemic, Momofuku alum Richard Hargreave and his partner, Claudia Lee, decided to make that now-familiar leap from LA to Austin to open a spot of their own. Opening soon in the Bouldin Creek neighborhood, Underdog will largely serve biodynamic wines to complement umami-forward dishes like Korean fried chicken and a chilled yuba salad. underdog-atx.com

The Great Divide

Restaurant costs are spiking, food trucks are on the rise, and a new way of dining is upon us.

As

the country’s

fastest-growing city is proving, the middle might just be dead. BY CHRIS HUGHES

WITH ONLY 10 seats and three time slots per evening, it’s understandable that you’d receive multiple email reminders to show up early to experience the choreographed culinary symphony that is Pasta|Bar. Helmed by an LA transplant couple with a Michelin star to their name, the concept makes punctuality pivotal to appreciating all 11 courses, doted upon by six chefs in a clandestine East Austin kitchen. Perhaps overly spellbound by the early-2000s infatuation with speakeasies, though, there is no signage or even a subtle window cling on its tinted plate glass entrance. So, odds are, you’ll pass by this portal to picturesque plating and caviar flourishes countless times before realizing Ah, this is all part of its little game

Find your way inside, and a chaperone guides you to a complimentary cocktail and a kind of safe room, where they explain the rules of Pasta|Bar (for one: there is no cell service), like some dinner theater version of Fight Club. When I visited in May, most

of my party consisted of superfans who’d recently relocated from Southern California themselves. The dudes fist-bumped the chefs after every course, and the women crowdsourced opinions on the merits of visiting Marfa. The ambience reeked of satire, as the culture clash of the new, bloated Austin was thrown into stark relief.

And what about the food? Meh. Like the speakeasy concept itself, much of it felt overly precious—a throwback to a not-so-long-ago era where chefs worshipped at the altar of Magnus Nilsson and other gastronomic gods you might find on Netflix’s Chef’s Table series. Wagyu, foie gras, and even a chimichurri foam (imagine having someone spit in your mouth after eating at Sweetgreen) made some appearances. But for all the pedigree and elite procurement, the experience felt so, so empty.

The problem wasn’t even that it cost $195 per person ($295 with curated wine pairings), but that this type of overwrought, wallet-wringing spectacle is becoming more of a necessary norm in a town now considered one of the least-affordable cities in the country.

It’s not just rent (up 40 percent year over year; the highest increase in the U.S.) and housing prices (the median is now a whopping $640,000 as of May) that are skyrocketing—it’s everything. Steven Dilley says that the original Bufalina cost him roughly $200,000 to open in 2013. Today, he’s confident that same bare-bones blueprint would top $700,000. Chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph (Hestia) estimates that just in the last three years, the price of doing business has risen 20 percent. That includes

The exorbitant price of living in today’s Austin is having an outsized impact on how we eat.

commercial rent, packaging, higher wages for retaining hourly employees—whose cost-of-living has spiraled out of control—and the ingredients themselves. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, prices for food have climbed almost 11 percent between April 2021 and 2022, the largest increase since 1980.

All those factors are not only leading to menu price hikes, a focus on high-margin items, employee wellness fees, and other cost-cutting measures—such as tighter business hours and an elimination of happy hour menus—but they’re actually dictating how we eat.

“A company that’s going to invest in something over $1 million has different expectations for return on investment, and they’ll have more say in what the menu looks like,” Dilley says. “It’s sad because we’re seeing fewer original concepts. But maybe that’s just the consequence of a growing Austin.”

Chef Bryce Gilmore (Odd Duck) says that without a buffer to figure out the ins and outs of any first-generation business, not to mention experiment and grow as a chef, the margin for error is almost nonexistent today. And that has led to a greater dichotomy in the dining scene itself. The brick-andmortar dream for most chefs is becoming less realistic in an industry still suffering the effects of the pandemic, and in a town pricing out the creative class. Which is why you’re seeing an explosion of food trucks.

In 2021, the Texas Workforce Commission estimated that there were 161 mobile food vendors in Austin. Today, that number has topped 1,200, a massive 600-plus percent increase in one year. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as trailers like Con Todo, Huckleberry, and Distant Relatives continue to redefine what’s possible on four wheels and a flat top. But, occasionally, air-conditioning and the pleasantries of a regular dinner service would be nice. Unfortunately, servers and a design element are largely becoming the domain of the special-occasion splurge. The f*ck-your-bank-account fling.

The space between the two extremes—eateries that promote quality and affordability (i.e. Better Half Coffee & Cocktails or The Peached Tortilla)—is becoming a gaping chasm. It’s the ghost of Austin’s middle-class past, separating the fistbumping haves from the city’s more handcuffed rank-and-file. What’s for dinner? Choose your utensil: Silver spoon or spork.

License to Fill

Hard to define, but oh-so-easy to devour, the dumpling is getting a global glow-up at a new class of restaurants.

BY CHRIS HUGHES

Empanadas Dough Squad

Chef Nick Trevino says the biggest misconception about his new trailer parked at Hopsquad Brewing Co. is that they serve doughnuts. But even die-hard sweet tooths won’t be disappointed with the other handheld delicacies Dough Squad offers, including Argentinian-style empanadas that are fried instead of baked. Using a shortcrust pastry dough, Trevino stuffs each with nontraditional ingredients like braised tri-tip, pimiento cheese, and roasted broccolini over a bed of spiced ricotta.

Pierogis Rogues Over the Top Pierogi

Missing the flavors of the Polish neighborhoods in Pittsburgh where he went to culinary school, chef Derek Desko created this farmers market favorite that’s soon to be its own South Austin food truck. In addition to selling pre-packaged frozen varieties at his stalls, Desko prepares on-site pierogis like his Kimcheese: squid ink–colored dumplings topped with kimchi mayo, pickled chiles, and roasted pork fried rice. On occasion, there’s even smash burgers crowned with the Eastern European specialty.

Rice Balls

Diner Bar

The South’s answer to Italian arancini, this deep-fried bar fare is revered for its alcohol-soaking prowess on both sides of the pond. Instead of arborio rice, chef Mashama Bailey uses long-grain Carolina Gold rice from Anson Mills, which gets its red hue from a combination of tomato paste, cayenne, and paprika. Cooked down with vegetable stock and local Boggy Creek Farm red bell peppers, the starchy filling is a perfect foil for a Vieux Carré

Gasping for Air

Even with sweeping changes in the works at Austin’s airport, continuing chaos is on the radar during the city’s biggest travel year ever.

BY OMAR L. GALLAGA

LAURA PEVEHOUSE, AN Austin communications consultant, took to the skies in May like millions of other travelers. She’d flown with her daughter on a vacation in summer 2021 and visited Las Vegas for work, but she knew this trip might be different. An email from her airline advised Pevehouse to arrive three hours before her international flight as the airline industry reeled from widespread flight cancellations and delays caused by inclement weather, technical issues, and staff and pilot shortages. That didn’t even include the huge numbers of spring travelers expected to pass through Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (ABIA) that month.

As it turned out, Pevehouse had no issues getting out of Austin. Getting back, however, turned out to be another story.

Starting with slow passport lines on June 1 at Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris, Pevehouse and her daughter faced one travel delay after another, including mechanical issues that stalled takeoff and bad weather that forced them to miss their connecting flight in Dallas. After being told that the in-person wait to rebook the flight would be at least

four hours, they opted instead for a $344 rental car to get home in time for a wisdom teeth extraction appointment the next morning.

That experience has been typical for air travelers at ABIA this year, as COVID-weary crowds with a pent-up desire for travel—coupled with an exploding population—has led to unprecedented traffic. In May of this year, more than 2 million passengers traveled through ABIA, the most ever in one month. This surge wasn’t helped by instances like a much-publicized March log jam at the car rental garage, after a harried traveler simply abandoned their stalled vehicle at the drop-off curb. As others followed suit, a line of cars choked Presidential Boulevard causing a three-hour disruption. “We had never seen anything like it before,” says ABIA spokeswoman Sam Haynes.

To combat this record-breaking influx of fliers, in a year where more than 20 million people are expected to pass through Austin’s airport, ABIA has about 60 scheduled projects as part of an ambitious AUS 2040 master plan. It was originally created with the expectation of serving 33 million

Travelers endure substantial wait times at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

A travel bug resurgence has meant historic numbers passing through the terminals at ABIA.

20 million

Travelers expected to go through AustinBergstrom in 2022

17.65%

Percent increase from previous high in 2019

Oct. 25, 2021

ABIA’s single busiest day, when 35,298 passengers passed through its gates

34

Number of gates at ABIA, up from 25 with the completion of the airport’s last big expansion in 2019

90

Total number of nonstop destinations available from AustinBergstrom

JUST PLANE CRAZY

Expect a 50/50 chance that your flight itinerary will be modified.

passengers a year by 2037, but as Haynes admits: “We’re going to reach that 30 million passenger number a lot sooner than predicted.”

Among the projects that returning fliers might notice are a new baggage system for outbound bags, a new TSA checkpoint that opened last winter, and a west terminal expansion that will open three new gates by summer 2025. Longer term, the plan calls for an entirely new concourse, the addition of even more new gates, and roadway and terminal expansions.

Going into the fall, Haynes says, the number of travelers should drop off, but there will be some significant dates to watch out for including Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Oct. 24, the Monday after Austin’s annual F1 race at Circuit of The Americas. “F1 is typically our busiest single day of travel of the year,” Haynes says of the event, which even outpaces the most congested days of South by Southwest.

The travel spike of 2022 isn’t exclusive to Austin, or even the country, says Natalie Kloss-Biagini, founder and CEO of Travel Abundance, a luxury travel agency. Her clients now expect more hand-holding than at any time prior to the pandemic. “We’ve been up in the middle of the night talking to clients in Europe for either missed transfers or missed flights or they can’t find their transfer driver,” she says. “It’s now 24/7 support when they’re traveling.”

In Europe this summer, flight cancellations, pilot shortages, and the massive 30 to 40 percent price increase on tickets caused groups like Travel Abundance to actually advise customers to delay vacations until the fall, if possible. “A lot of our suppliers would not take summer bookings,” says Kloss-Biagini, referring to hotels, drivers, tour guides, and other vendors they do business with. “I’ve never seen this in 15 years. I’ve never seen a supplier turn down a booking because they’re so full-up.”

Experts like Haynes and Kloss-Biagini both offer some of the same advice air travelers have been hearing for months: Arrive at least two-and-a-half hours prior to boarding times, look into TSA PreCheck or CLEAR as ways of speeding up your security-line experience, and consider purchasing a Global Entry pass (which costs $100 and speeds you through customs) if flying overseas.

Even with all that pre-planning, Kloss-Biagini says you can still expect a 50/50 chance that your flight itinerary will be modified, whether it’s a small delay or a total cancellation. “We have to remind our customers that the first thing they have to pack is patience,” Kloss-Biagini says. “They have to pack patience because something will change.”

The question for travelers closer to home is whether ABIA and its partner airlines will be able to handle the growth, or if flight delays, security-checkpoint congestion, and higher ticket prices will continue past summer. For that, Haynes provides a bleak assessment for anyone planning on a holiday escape: “We really don’t have off-season months anymore,” she says.

Liz Lambert

Hotelier

In the early aughts, Liz Lambert bet big on South Congress and helped transform the avenue into a chic enclave by renovating Hotel San Jose. Since then, the visionary (and sometimes controversial) entrepreneur has redefined Austin’s aesthetic with an empire of stylish projects, like Hotel Saint Cecilia and Austin Motel, under the Bunkhouse Group umbrella. After the company shockingly fired her in 2019, she joined forces with Larry McGuire and Tom Moorman to pen a new chapter in an already storied career.

INTERVIEW BY BRYAN C. PARKER

Where do the cohesive visions for your properties begin?

Placemaking is often about storytelling. For instance, El Cosmico was really nothing more than a horse pasture. You can stand there and think, what’s the story of this place? What should a place in West Texas feel like? It takes a little while for it to come together, and that’s a culmination of things that have informed you. A lot of it is born out of necessity. El Cosmico was born from the idea that we didn’t know exactly what we were going to do, so we began with trailers and tents, things we could move around, to try to figure out how the land would be used. Those things became the basis for the place. It’s organic and often based on whatever story I’m telling myself at the time.

If you could give your 25-yearold self one piece of advice, what would it be?

There’s that Pema Chödrön quote where she says something like “You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.” Lots of hard things are going to happen. Lots of drama. The best thing you can do is remain consistent through it all. Stay grounded, knowing that it’s going to pass. It’s a mistake to think that you’ve ever arrived or that you will arrive. It’s about rowing in a boat in the open ocean and being OK with that.

How does it feel to live in a city that so clearly bears your fingerprint?

I’m honored to be part of it. I don’t think there was any intention to have fingerprints on Austin; it was just a time and a place. It was such a short time ago that beer and tacos were cheap. It felt like that whole idea of Hey, let’s put on a play and we’ll charge the neighbors 25 cents to see it. It was wide open, and the stakes weren’t as high. It was part of what everybody was doing at the moment. It just felt natural to be making places.

Does criticism about the impact of your projects bother you? It is maddening when they’re armchair criticizing and haven’t been involved or understood what it’s been like to be part of the last 20 or 30 years in Austin. It feels easy to let it roll off my back, honestly. It would be a lot harder if I felt misunderstood by somebody I actually had a relationship with. But when it comes from the far reaches of social media, it’s easier to dismiss.

Is it still possible for an individual to experience start-up success in Austin today?

I think it is. I share the concern that it’s becoming so expensive to live in Austin that we’re going to run out of town the very people that are most important to making it interesting. But I still think that people are creative

and crazy and can make things happen wherever they are. The approach will be different. The ’80s were a whole different thing than the 2000s. It’s always changing, but I do think it’s possible.

Will your approach at McGuire Moorman Lambert Hospitality differ from Bunkhouse?

Every company has its own DNA. One of the exciting things is that we immediately approach it with food and beverage in mind. At Bunkhouse, it was an afterthought. It wasn’t a skillset that we really had. It’s super fun to create a hotel playing to the strength of food and beverage, which really rounds out a whole experience. We were working on the New Orleans hotel (Hotel Saint Vincent) together already in my role at Bunkhouse. MMH was already signed up to do the food and beverage. It was sort of natural to try to figure out how to start a hotel division.

Looking back, is there a predominant feeling you have about being fired from Bunkhouse?

Such a mixed bag. It was a particular group of people that created Bunkhouse together, and it was a moment in time when things were freer and easier. I have a certain amount of grief for the loss of those people and that time. But those aren’t my places anymore. It makes me sad, but look how much Austin has changed. I mean, there’s a Hermès store on South Congress. It’s nuts. I remember calling Steve Wertheimer, who owns the Continental Club, and telling him that there were cars on South Congress. I was so excited to see someone parked in front of the San Jose. I wonder if my mourning of those places and time are wrapped up in a bigger mourning of Austin. That said, I’m excited to see our city growing up. There’s a lot of opportunity.

How does Austin affect your work, even outside of Texas?

It’s so much of who I am. I have great love and respect for West Texas, but my life is in Austin. That’s where I chose to be. Austin defines me more than any place ever has. It’s Texas… but it’s a particular place in Texas. I will always feel lucky that Austin was here to have me. I take it with me everywhere.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

The stakes couldn’t be higher in deep red Texas.

THE RESULTS OF

torial race may have seemed like a foregone conclusion back in March, but gun violence, a power grid catastrophe, and the abor

Born in Wichita Falls, Abbott spent his early years in Longview and Duncanville, where he was an honors student and Boy Scout.

From his first race for Texas Supreme Court justice in 1998 until now, Abbott has won every election by double digits. A perfect knockout record.

As COVID cases surged in August 2021, Abbott played the fiddle at a political event, drawing comparisons to the Roman emperor Nero.

Seemingly always flanked by a posse of lawmen and like-minded political players, Abbott makes press conferences look like movie sets.

A successful private practice lawyer and judge, Abbott also won a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the homeowner and a tree service company responsible for the fallen oak that paralyzed him at age 26.

No abortion, no weed, no taxes, and definitely no sex toys, which Abbott once argued should be banned because they didn’t aid procreation. But you can carry your gun anywhere you want—the bigger the better.

tion ban have created enough volatility to throw the office’s fate into question. With O’Rourke creeping closer in polls, we look at

Born in El Paso to a father who was a county judge and politician, O’Rourke spent his youth listening to punk rock, playing in bands, and generally making mischief.

The former El Paso congressman was dealt his first loss by Ted Cruz in the 2018 U.S. Senate race. He also dropped out of the 2020 presidential election.

At Willie Nelson’s 4th of July Picnics in 2018 and 2022, O’Rourke joined the famed country singer onstage to perform classics like “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die.”

Dropping a casual F-bomb isn’t unusual. He also made headlines for interrupting Gov. Abbott at a Uvalde press conference to challenge him on gun legislation.

Although O’Rourke founded a tech company and an El Paso arts magazine, many have noted that his billionaire father-in-law (William Sanders) has helped float his political campaigns.

A stronger education system with increased funding, easy access to marijuana, few restrictions on abortion, and a state power grid tied into the national network.

BY CHRIS HUGHES, PAM LEBLANC, AND BRYAN C. PARKER

It’s time to step outside the ordinary. To prepare a better kind of meal by the fire. To channel your inner #Vanlife. And to explore all the amazing kinds of camping Texas has to offer. This fall, gear up and get out.

Package Deal

Good eating comes in tiny bundles thanks to one local company.

Sarah Welton’s camping vocabulary never included the words “store bought.” Growing up, her outdoorsy family ate food made by her mother, who sliced and dried fruits and vegetables at home. So, when she moved to Colorado and started backpacking with friends, she pined for the flavor of real food around the campfire. “I called home and asked, ‘How did you make food taste so good?’ and ‘Can you send some?’” Welton laughs. That experience became a project at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she earned a graduate degree in business. In 2008, she and her mother launched Packit Gourmet, with a handful of items, like a chipotle chicken tortilla soup that’s rehydrated with boiling water. Today, the Austin-based company makes more than 40 prepared meals, including pasta bolognese, a smoky Texas chili, and chicken and dumplings based on her grandmother’s recipe. “We make it as something we’d sit down to eat at home,” Welton says. “That’s what you want in the wilderness.”

Packit Gourmet is available at Whole Earth, select REI locations, and online at packitgourmet.com.

DANGER ZONE

Whether it’s irritating insects, perilous predators, or the lingering threat of lightning, danger abounds on just about every campground in the state. Dave Scott, founder of Earth Native Wilderness School in Bastrop, shares what every Texan should be on the lookout for and how to respond in a crisis.

Snakes

Even though Texas has almost 100 species of snakes, Scott says there are only three that are of any real concern: rattlesnakes, copperheads, and cottonmouths. If you see one in the wild, try not to approach it, and move away slowly.

Mountain Lions

Although extremely rare, mountain lion attacks can happen if the animal is sick or malnourished. Because they are ambush hunters, Scott suggests making direct eye contact and creating loud noises. If the confrontation escalates further, pick up anything in the vicinity that can be used as a weapon, such as rocks or sticks.

Bad Weather

Lightning, flash floods, and tornadoes aren’t the only major events to keep track of on the WeatherBug app. Also, monitor for extreme heat so you can

prepare with the appropriate clothing and amount of water. “Underestimating the heat and doing too much physical activity can be fatal,” Scott says.

Poison Ivy

The “leaves of three” adage can be a bit confusing because of poison ivy lookalikes such as boxelder. Make sure to look for a longer stalk in the middle of the leaflet and alternating side shoots. If any sap gets on you, wash it off within 30 minutes using Tecnu wipes or a grease-cutting dish soap.

Ticks and Chiggers

Tick-borne illnesses like Lyme disease aren’t as prevalent in Texas as they are in the Northeast, but you’ll still want to take precautions. Spray Permethrin on your clothing and be diligent about applying insect repellent. Chiggers are delicate enough that rubbing down your arms and brushing your clothes after a hike is a good rule of thumb.

JOSEPH

Higher Grounds

Texas’ best camping sites promise great scenery and memorable escapes.

Lost Maples State Natural Area

Renowned for the namesake trees that boast beautiful fall foliage, Lost Maples offers relaxing camping a short drive from Austin. If you’re headed out in October, you can check a weekly leaf-peeping report on the park’s website. Otherwise, its nearly 3,000 acres offer year-round activities like hiking along the rim of a 2,200-foot cliff, dropping a line into the Sabinal River for a fresh catch of rainbow trout, or stargazing into the velvety dark of a clear Texas night.

Colorado Bend State Park

A 3-mile round-trip hike through the verdant, rolling hills of Central Texas brings you to Colorado Bend State Park’s crown jewel: Gorman Falls. An array of 70-foot-tall, spring-fed waterfalls streaming over mossy rock feels more like a tropical rainforest than it does a state park within a two-hour drive of Austin. Campers can choose from walk-in, drive-up, or primitive sites. You can even set up guided tours in one of the park’s 400 caves.

Breathtaking views and backcountry camping abound at Big Bend National Park.

Palo Duro Canyon State Park

Hailed as “The Grand Canyon of Texas,” this state park boasts around 28,000 acres of stunning canyonlands, in which visitors can enjoy biking, backpacking, and horseback riding. Among the state’s larger parks, it offers over 100 campgrounds (including some with water and electricity), as well as equestrian sites that allow visitors to camp with their own horses. For those in the mood for luxury, the park now offers glampsite cabins with beds, air-conditioning, and refrigerators.

Balmorhea State Park

Amid the arid deserts of West Texas, Balmorhea State Park provides a cool oasis with its natural spring-fed pool. Hovering between 72 and 76 degrees year-round, the crystalline spring water is perfect for snorkeling, scuba diving, or just enjoying a respite from the Texas heat. Stay at one of the park’s 34 campsites and consider a quick jaunt to visit the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis. Or experience Donald Judd’s contemporary art at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa.

Guadalupe Mountains National Park

Traveling to this West Texas mecca will reward adventurers with a chance to climb Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in the Lone Star State at 8,751 feet. Be prepared for 8.5 miles round trip along this unforgettably scenic hike. One of only two national parks in the state, it’s notoriously gusty, with wind speeds that reach up to 70 mph. Plan on nailing down loose items around the campsite and bring appropriate outerwear.

Cast a line for rainbow trout in the Sabinal River at Lost Maples State Natural Area.

Big Bend National Park

Texas’ most remote and rewarding camping getaway, Big Bend offers breathtaking scenery and dynamic topography. Outside of its four different developed campgrounds, guests can opt for a more adventurous approach by heading into the wild for backcountry camping. With more than 150 miles of trails to explore, don’t miss the easy hike on a paved trail to The Window (an iconic view between two of the park’s peaks) or the picturesque trek through Santa Elena Canyon.

Sea Rim State Park

For an unusual camping experience, paddle your canoe out to a floating platform in the Gulf of Mexico and pitch your tent amid the serenity of soothing waves. You’ll have to bring a specialized human wasteneutralizing bag and bucket (available for purchase at the park store). Visitors can also enjoy beach camping or a stroll through the marshes along the Gambusia Nature Trail Boardwalk, perfect for spotting birds and the occasional gator.

Caddo Lake State Park

The largest natural lake in Texas, this massive, 25,000-acre body of water on the Louisiana border holds ample opportunity for escape: hiking trails, more than 70 species of fish to catch, and historic cabins you can book for as little as $40 a night. Rent a kayak or paddleboard to enjoy the sleepy lake, or have a ranger guide you on a historical nature walk through the park. Stay on your toes, though, because alligators lurk underneath the bald cypress trees.

Mustang Island State Park

Situated on Padre Island, just south of Port Aransas, this park offers primitive and RV camping 400 yards from the beach. Wildlife enthusiasts will enjoy birdwatching or fishing, and you might even catch a glimpse of the sea turtles that lay eggs nearby. After traversing the 20plus miles of paddling trails at this dog-friendly spot, you can grab dinner in Corpus Christi or enjoy the ocean breeze as you gaze at the stars.

Mineral Wells State Park

Less than an hour from Fort Worth, Penitentiary Hollow at Mineral Wells State Park offers one of the few natural rockclimbing experiences in North Texas. For a $3 fee, visitors (17 or older) can access the bolted sport-climbing routes. Guided climbing on the cliffs can be arranged through the park-approved Rock-About Climbing Adventures. Adjacent to Lake Mineral Wells, the park also offers more laid-back water recreation experiences for the fam.

The scenic Guadalupe Mountains boast the highest point in Texas.

At Sea Rim State Park near Port Arthur, you can canoe to your floating campsite.

COOKING WITH FIRE!

Take al fresco eating from spartan to spectacular in just a few easy steps.

Best in Show

Game Plan

To maximize cooler space, replace some of those ice packs with frozen steaks, swordfish, and other proteins you plan on whipping up during the trip. Also, pre-prepping will keep you out of a sandwich-and-s’mores rut. Load up on foil-pack meals like ones with fajita-marinated chicken and peppers or garlicky broccolini, kale, and Italian sausage.

Get Saucy

Whether it’s fresh pesto to drizzle over grilled corn, tangy chimichurri to help brighten up a ribeye, or just a jar of tomatillo salsa to help turn tortilla chips and eggs into chilaquiles, sauces are a game changer. Even the most basic campfire standards can be elevated with something that fits inside a Nalgene travel bottle.

Fermentation is Your Friend

Kimchi, giardiniera, sauerkraut, and quick-pickled red onion are all naturally preserved foods that can handle some lax cooler management. They also provide an acidic spark that’s a must for camping’s ideal cooking partner: the hot dog (*see below). After all, what would a Chicago dog be without some sweet pickle relish and a dill spear?

Build a better dog by borrowing from other snacks and sides in your cooler.

Banh Mi Dog

The Essentials: Cucumber slices + pickled carrot and radish + cilantro + sriracha mayo

Slaw Dog

The Essentials: Apple cider vinegar slaw + pickles + barbecue sauce + crumbled barbecue chips

Divide and Conquer

Approach camping like Friendsgiving, where no one shows empty-handed. Even if it’s just nutrient-dense snacks such as Bearded Brothers energy bars (p. 62), bottled water, or granola for the next morning, distributing the cooking responsibilities is key. Pool your resources, so no one feels like the culinary pack mule.

Shift into High Gear

Weight and portability is always a factor, so you’ll want to pack wisely. Stick to cookware that has a do-everything versatility, such as a Lodge cast iron skillet, or Rome Industries’ long-handled Pie Iron ($20), which can prepare everything from breakfast burritos in the morning to a whole fish at night.

Zone Off

Odds are, even if there’s a picnic table in sight, it’s going to be gross. Put down an oilcloth for your dedicated meal prep and serving areas. The same logic applies to that communal fire pit. Bring your own foldable grill grate (such as one from Texsport) to avoid any funky flames.

Sonoran Hot Dog

The Essentials: Bacon (wrapped around dog) + pinto beans + tomatoes + grilled onions + mayo

RIDE AND JOY

How one travel writer took to the outdoors in a new way by learning to appreciate the #vanlife. BY PAM

LEBLANC

I’ve always preferred snoozing in a tent to sleeping on high thread-count sheets at a fancy hotel, but I recently discovered a happy medium: the campervan.

I’ve been writing about outdoor adventure for more than 20 years in publications like Texas Monthly, and yet even I can appreciate the ease of pulling into a campground and settling in without so much as hammering a single tent stake. In the last year, my husband and I have slept all over Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado in a customized Ford Transit that we dubbed Vincent VanGo.

That’s not to say we’re typical “vanlifers,” a trend that gained steam about a decade ago. More of a

millennial fantasy, traditional vanlifers live full-time out of their stripped-down rigs—working on the road while they churn out social media content. Check Instagram today, and you’ll find more than 13 million posts with the #vanlife hashtag.

This hardcore subset revels in a life free from the anchors of urban living. They covet old Volkswagen Vanagons, which they refurbish and equip with beds and kitchens. Others use modified Mercedes Sprinters, Ford Transits, and Dodge Rams as their home bases.

Before we embarked on our own version, we rented a Dodge Ram named Ivan from Native Campervans in Denver and road-tripped around Colorado. We boondocked (that’s camping lingo for legally overnighting on public lands without designated campsites) near Salida, parked between rows of peach trees at an orchard around Paonia, and discovered a hidden campground in Redstone.

We were sold on the freedom a campervan offered, and in spring 2021 we ordered an all-wheeldrive Ford Transit of our own. Working with a company called Wayfarer Vans in Colorado Springs, we had it kitted-out according to our specifications. Nothing overtly plush, just a bed built on a sheet of plywood, a pump sink that ran on containers of water, a heater, a vent fan, a compact refrigerator,

[It] has added a degree of spontaneity that taps into the hippie that lives in my heart.

and a portable stove were sufficient. We didn’t need an on-board bathroom, but we did purchase a bucket for emergencies. Even with that as our loo, the new rig felt like a four-star hotel compared to our usual backpacking setup.

We picked up Vincent last April and immediately hit the road. Taking the long way back to Austin, we quickly learned that the #vanlife is not without adventure. Within the first 30 minutes of ownership, we were caught in a freak snowstorm just outside of Colorado Springs. In the lane next to us, a car hit an icy patch of pavement and spun a complete 360 degrees, nearly plowing into the side of our new home-on-wheels.

Over the next week, we managed to avoid any further drama as we overnighted near Royal Gorge Bridge and admired the rolling hills through its rear doors. In Angel Fire, we nabbed a spot at the upscale Angel Fire RV Resort, where we did laundry and cursed COVID for putting its hot tub out of commission. We camped in a muddy RV park in Red River, and the next morning, drove all the way to Palo Duro Canyon. By the time we rolled into the capital city, we knew we were going to love life with Vincent.

To make him more our own, I hung a multi-colored disco ball that sprays a meteor shower’s worth of glowing lights across its interior. And the modifications didn’t end there. We added a small solar shower (a water-filled bag that heats up in the sun), so we can rinse off after biking or hiking—something that came in handy after I dropped out of the recent Texas Water Safari race after 154 miles. My husband also built a flip-down desk, like an airline tray table, so I can plug in my computer and work when needed.

For instance, on a recent assignment near Langtry in South Texas, I drove Vincent and camped at Seminole Canyon State Park. The next morning, instead of sitting in a dreary hotel room, I got up early and went for a hike along a ridge above a canyon known for its ancient rock art.

One weekend, on a last-minute trip to East Texas, my husband and I drove our van through swirling fog and over green swamps to Martin Dies Jr. State Park. There, we pulled in next to a forest of pines and drank wine as the sun set beneath the canopy of fragrant needles. We’ve listened to waves lap ashore from the beach of Matagorda Bay and simply used our van to haul our mountain bikes to trails at Reimers Ranch Park closer to Austin.

A campervan has added a degree of spontaneity that taps into the free-wheeling hippie that lives in my heart. Whenever the travel bug hits, we no longer have to make hotel reservations or scroll through Airbnb listings. We hardly have to plan at all. It’s just a matter of filling the tank, throwing some food in the icebox, and pointing our trusty steed wherever the winds take us.

ROAD RULES

Take the wheel on your own van ventures.

YOU DON’T HAVE to invest in your own campervan to get in on the action. Online sites like RVshare or Austin-based Outdoorsy let you rent an array of recreational vehicles through private owners. Once you’ve got a rig, pick a destination. Texas State Parks are a good option— but there are plenty more out there. Try Lower Colorado River Parks, Travis County Parks, or private campgrounds. Websites like Hipcamp.com can help you narrow your search, but in Central Texas, some great options include Muleshoe Bend Recreation Area on Lake Travis, Colorado Bend State Park in Bend, and Dos Rios RV Park on the Llano River. Once there, simply find a level spot to park your rig. Other quick tips: Install a powerful vent fan (like the MaxxFan) to help circulate air. Also, like any indoor accommodation, make sure to have detectors on hand for smoke, carbon monoxide, and gas.

Raise the stakes on your next adventure with local gear that will make anyone a happy camper.

1. Take a load off with a minimalist pack featuring big pockets and a back panel that doubles as a seat pad.

Gossamer Gear Gorilla 50 Ultralight Backpack ($255) at gossamergear.com

2. For dry, cracked skin, turn to soothing lotion and lip balms that are all made from beeswax and essential oils.

ClimbOn Eco Skincare Kit ($76) at goclimbon.com

3. Let there be light! This solar-powered lantern folds flat for travel, then inflates at night.

MPOWERD Luci Outdoor 2.0 ($24.95) at mpowerd.com

4. Groovy embroidery, quick-dry fabric, and vintage Western style. What more could you want in a cooling sun shirt?

Howler Brothers “Lazy Gators” Gaucho Snapshirt ($99) at howlerbros.com

5. Local triathletes created these sweat- and fingerprint-resistant nylon frames. Roka Lockhart Sunglasses in Bourbon ($210) at roka.com

6. Fuel up with real ingredients like organic dates, pecans, and chia seeds. Bonus: There’s never any crash-inducing added sugar.

Bearded Brothers Energy Bars ($14.50 for a six-pack) at beardedbros.com

7. Comfortably lug ice, sandwiches, and up to 26 cans of suds courtesy of this hands-free cooler.

Yeti Hopper M20 Backpack Soft Cooler in Nordic Blue ($325) at yeti.com.

8. This comfy camping hammock can be stuffed down into a bundle the size of a beer can. Kammok Roo Double Hammock ($84.95) at kammok.com

9. These poles are not only super lightweight and shock-absorbent, they double as tent supports.

Gossamer Gear LT5 Three Piece Carbon Trekking Poles ($195) at gossamergear.com

WHAT TYPE OF CAMPING IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

Type

Tent Camping

Backpacking

RV or Van Camping

The

Camping at its most fundamental. Simply head out to the countryside, a campsite, or beach, and pitch a tent. It’s a great way for children to experience the joys of nature and open-fire cooking.

Best suited to the self-sufficient. By carrying all your gear, you’re not bound to camping sites, but that means more time in the elements. Make sure to have a pair of supportive shoes and a water filter.

All of the scenic beauty, minus the roughing-it part. By using a campervan or motor home, campers retain creature comforts like running water, entertainment, and electricity.

Rooftop Camping Utilizing tents that pop up, inflate, or unfold on top of your vehicle. The benefit is that camping is available anywhere you can park. The road is your oyster.

Glamping The thrill of nature without sacrificing luxury. Think escapism packaged in a resort-style environment. No matter if it’s a secluded yurt or safari tent, it eliminates any unsavory aspects of camping.

Bicycle Camping Taking the road less traveled—including single-track trails and gravel country roads. It combines the range of riding a mountain bike with the freedom of backcountry hiking.

Embrace the wild life, whether by backpack, beach, or bougie yurt. Depending on your budget and sense of adventure, there are a number of different ways to tackle the great outdoors.

• Countless site options

• Opportunity to unplug

• Cheaper than other forms of vacation

• Freedom of movement

• Peak way to get in touch with nature

• Crowded campgrounds

• Low comfort level

• Shared restrooms and showers can be gross

• RVs often include kitchenettes and working toilets

• Comfortable bedding

• Protected from bad weather

• Easy setup

• More comfortable than ground camping

• Don’t have to worry about uneven ground or staking out your tent

• Better views

• Air-conditioning

• En-suite bathrooms

• Curated views

• Private pools and fire pits

• Only for the most experienced campers

• Lugging supplies can be a challenge

Padre Island National Seashore (including Malaquite Campground and Bird Island Basin Campground), Oxford Ranch Campground, Dinosaur Valley State Park, Garner State Park

Chisos Mountains Loop (Big Bend National Park), Primitive Camp at Lost Maples State Natural Area, Big Bend Ranch State Park, Ink Lakes State Park Trail, Guadalupe Mountains State Park

• Rentals (from sites like outdoorsy.com and rvshare.com) often have mileage and pet restrictions

• Eco-friendly

• Minimalist setup, so you can carry lighter loads

• Not restricted to paved roads or paths

• Tents are heavy and often necessitate two people to take off and on your vehicle

• Requires a lot of storage at home

• Drastically impacts your vehicle’s fuel efficiency

• E xpensive

• Most places book out far in advance

• With amenities like massages and horseback riding, it can feel far removed from real camping

• Less gear also means less comfort

• Packing and planning takes more thought

Rio Grande Village RV Campground (Big Bend National Park), McKinney Falls State Park, Caddo Lake State Park, Tyler State Park

Palo Duro Canyon State Park, Big Bend National Park, Padre Island National Seashore, Chalk Bluff River Resort

The Retreat on the Hill, Walden Retreats, The Yurtopian, Talula Mesa, Camp Fimfo, Collective Hill Country

Possum Kingdom State Park, Palo Pinto Mountains State Park, Brazos Bend State Park, Franklin Mountains State Park, Government Canyon State Natural Area

By Madeline Hollern

IN 2002, MUSIC lovers Charles Attal and Charlie Jones had a big idea: create a fall festival inspired by PBS’ legendary Austin City Limits television series. Conceptualized in less than four months, the inaugural twoday Zilker Park gathering kicked off Sept. 28 with 25,000 attendees per day and local band the Arc Angels as its headliner. Now produced by C3 Presents—the company Attal and Jones co-founded with Charlie Walker—Austin City Limits Music Festival has blossomed into a three-day juggernaut held on two consecutive weekends every October. Touting

crowds of 75,000 fans daily and marquee acts as varied as Radiohead, Jay-Z, George Strait, and Paul McCartney, the experience has established itself in the pantheon of great music gatherings across the globe. As ACL Fest celebrates its anniversary this fall, we asked photographers to select their most memorable images from the last 20 years and share the unique stories of how they captured them. From Ben Kweller’s ill-timed nosebleed to Billie Eilish’s political statement, here are just some of the most iconic photos from its last two decades.

Twenty One Pilots (2015)

Photographer: Charles Reagan

A MEMBER OF the ACL Fest photo team since 2014 (and the lead photographer since 2019), Charles Reagan has snapped his fair share of wild moments, but one stands out as the craziest. Before Twenty One Pilots took the stage in 2015, the band’s management told the photo team that there would be a point where its lead singer, Tyler Joseph, would run into the audience and crowd surf, so Reagan took a spot in the pit. But when it was time for Joseph to run down, the singer never arrived. As he peered up, the photographer noticed a shadowy figure climbing up a truss next to the jumbotron. Realizing that it was Joseph, he instinctively ran as fast as he could toward the back. “I knew if I took a picture of him from the photo pit, which is so close, it wouldn’t tell the perspective of what he was actually doing,” he says. Wearing no harness, Joseph emerged on the small metal beam above the stage. “In my head, I was thinking, ‘Oh my god, I’m taking the last picture of him alive.’” But the frontman stood up there for several minutes singing and holding onto the Texas flag before he descended back down without a scratch. “I think it took a while for everyone to realize [he was up there]. Just, like, whoa,” Reagan says. “From the ground up, that’s got to be 80 feet.”

Aerial Rainbow (2016)

Photographer: Charles Reagan

TO CAPTURE INCREDIBLE overhead shots throughout the weekend, festival photographers often ascend above the crowd on boom lifts positioned throughout Zilker Park. A driver takes them up on the lift, which can reach up as high as 60 to 80 feet in the air. One day, as a crowd started to gather before a Willie Nelson show, Charles Reagan went up on a lift located stage right of the RetailMeNot stage. “It had rained earlier that day,” he remembers. “I was up there for about 30 minutes, and I was like, ‘I’ve got to go, I got some pretty shots up here.’ Then as we’re going down—and it takes 10 to 15 minutes to get in place for one of those—and I’m taking this harness off, I suddenly turn around and see this rainbow.’” Reagan ran after the lift driver, who had already packed up, and yelled for him to return. By the time they went up, the photographer was only able to get three shots before the rainbow disappeared. “It’s so weird, because the photo itself, it looks like the colors aren’t real, and I have gone back so many times to try and re-edit it. But that’s what it looked like,” he says. “I’ve lived in Austin my entire life—I’ve never seen downtown, the sky, the clouds, and the colors all come together like that.”

Billie Eilish (2021)

Photographer: Pooneh Ghana

THOUGH IT PALES in comparison to the total abortion ban that would supplant it in 2022, Texas sent shockwaves through the country last fall as it voted Special Bill 8 into law, banning the procedure in the state six weeks after conception. As the 2021 festival was set to kick off one month after the law went into effect, rumors began to swirl that Billie Eilish was going to cancel her appearance. “People had been saying that she might not even play; she might pull out in protest to the State of Texas,” remembers Pooneh Ghana, who photographed the concert from the pit. While the superstar decided to go ahead with her performance, she demonstrated her disapproval for the law by putting up a “Bans Off Our Bodies” sign onstage. “I remember her saying something along the lines of ‘I’m here for y’all, I’m here for the fans, my body, my choice,’ and saying she doesn’t want to punish the fans for what was happening… but also this is messed up and we should all be upset about this and aware of it.” After capturing an image of Eilish with her middle finger in the air, the photographer reflected on how inspired she was to see an artist not be afraid to use her platform to get political. “There are moments like that that make you remember why you love doing this so much and how impactful [it is],” Ghana says.

Ben Kweller (2006)

Photographer: Chad Wadsworth

AS THE YEARS go by, certain ACL Fest performances are discussed so widely that they become the stuff of myth. So it was for this unforgettable Ben Kweller concert, which Chad Wadsworth chronicled during his first time covering the festival in 2006. Shortly after Kweller appeared on stage, the artist began to have an uncontrollable nosebleed. “I was in the pit. All the photographers are looking at each other, like ‘What is going on? It’s really coming out.’ And then he’s asking the crowd if anyone has a feminine product. [Laughs] And we’re like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. This is just rock ‘n’ roll—this guy is going to keep going on.’ Sure enough, a gal threw out her tampon, a bunch of them threw them up, and Ben applied it in a unique way and carried on.” Though he captured several images of Kweller playing with a tampon up his nose, Wadsworth says the most compelling photo from the concert came just before that (pictured here). “Both the physical pose of the body and the way the blood is coming down and hitting the pick guard and the guitar, to me that was the image,” he says. “It was wild. And that was my introduction to Ben Kweller and Austin City Limits. I was like ‘Dang! This is pretty incredible.’”

Cage the Elephant (2017)

Photographer: Pooneh Ghana

DURING A HIGH-ENERGY concert, it’s common for musicians to go into the audience and even crowd surf. But standing on the crowd? That’s a lot less likely—unless you’re shooting Cage the Elephant, that is. After touring with the band several times over the years, photographer Pooneh Ghana knew that frontman Matt Shultz would often immerse himself in the audience. As the band closed its set around twilight in 2017, Ghana captured an image of Shultz standing among a sea of fans hoisting him up by his legs. “He’s going full chest out, muscles out, total rock star moment,” she says. To get the best picture of him, the photographer had positioned herself on the stage. “I remember in that moment, ‘OK, this is a song where he’s going to be out in the crowd, I don’t know where he’s going to be, but I definitely want to be onstage and capture it from that perspective.’ I think it was the last song of the set, ‘Sabertooth Tiger,’” she says. “I remember hustling, trying to make sure I got the shot before he fell over.”

Dave Grohl and Gary Clark Jr. (2015)

Photographer:

Cambria Harkey

AFTER FALLING OFF the stage during a concert in Sweden in the summer of 2015, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl suffered a broken right leg, which threatened to curtail the band’s international tour. Thankfully, his spirit remained intact. While recovering, Grohl continued touring by performing from a grandiose throne that had smoke and lights shooting from the top and guitar necks jutting out of the sides. Before Foo Fighters’ headlining appearance at ACL Fest 2015, Grohl told Cambria Harkey (the photo manager for the festival from 2002 to 2019) to set up in the pit instead of onstage. “He loved to have people come onstage,” says Harkey, who had photographed the band many times over the years. “He didn’t plan a fist bump, but he so enjoyed his jam session with Gary [Clark Jr.] that it just happened. I was right there in the nook in front where I could capture it.” Though Harkey shot the original photograph in color, she ultimately decided it looked better without it: “Both of these guys are so classic, just old school rock ‘n’ roll to me, that it called for black and white.”

Lizzo (2019)

Photographer: Sydney Gawlik

BEFORE 2019, LIZZO had already experienced a meteoric rise. But when “Truth Hurts” was re-released as a radio single that year, demand to see the artist reached a fever pitch. While she was scheduled to perform at a medium-sized stage at the festival, the Houston-based artist nonetheless commanded a headliner-worthy crowd. Photographer Sydney Gawlik made sure to get to the show super early so she could nab a spot onstage. When the musician asked the audience to turn on their phone lights to see how far back the crowd went, Gawlik stood on top of the DJ booth and used a wide-angle lens to get the shot. “I wanted to get as high as I could, so I just kind of put my hands in the air with my camera,” she says. “I could tilt my screen down so I could see it a little bit, but I was like, ‘I hope this is in focus!’” A dedicated fan of the artist, Gawlik was blown away not only by Lizzo’s talent but her inclusivity: “You have fans of all ages, you could see young girls in the crowd, and she’s this symbol of joy and celebration and freedom, and so to see her really captivate that many people is why I’ve loved being a music photographer. The way she marries music and dance— it’s just what has made her an icon.”

The University of Texas’ beloved bovine may be living large now, but for Bevo, it hasn’t always been such a smooth ride to the mascot mountaintop.

By Emma Schkloven

Photographs by Drew Anthony Smith

wishes as he skulks near a copse of trees. That is, if it wasn’t for the posters and other souvenirs taken from his designated corral at Darrell K Royal Memorial Stadium and hung on the walls of the semiopen cattle shelter that bears his likeness.

All in all, it’s a quiet life out on the 20 acres the UT icon exclusively roams. A gentleman of few words, he much prefers the tranquil country life on his personal part of the larger ranch property about an hour north of the capital city. Naturally, a devoted fanbase and an entire museum dedicated to his greatness ain’t too bad either. But who’s counting?

SUN-DRENCHED, LIKE A bleached blonde who’s clearly been enjoying summer vacation to the fullest, Austin’s favorite son appears to have more of a creamsicle hue in the hazy heat of June than his usual shade of burnt orange.

Even with 6-foot horns and an impressive bulk on his broad-chested frame, he might be easy to overlook among the 250 acres dotted with other steers—something the fella clearly

There in that beatific meadow, he snacks on softly swaying prairie grass, sleeps in the shade of live oak trees, and then munches some more. “His every day is a more pampered version of any other longhorn,” says Ricky Brennes, executive director of the Silver Spurs Alumni Association, which works in tandem with his owners, John T. and Betty Bak-

er, to ensure his every need. “Cattle on pasture are just going to graze in the grass that’s out there, not necessarily get called in and hand-fed twice a day.”

But Bevo’s long journey from the Mexican border to his current, expansive Lone Star abode wasn’t always quite so luxurious. Through 15 iterations and more than a century of turmoil, he’s faced kidnappings, hazings, and even the dinner crowd before rising to the big bull on campus.

Brand Ambassador

SHOVED INTO A boxcar, the steer was on his third day of travel without food or water when the ceaseless rocking finally came to an abrupt halt. Rescued from cattle raiders and sold to a group of Texas alumni for $124 (mainly because of his striking re-

For posterity’s sake, the Bevos of old are stuffed and mounted at John T. and Betty Bakers’

semblance to UT’s colors), he’d been dragged to the Laredo rail station and shipped to Austin in late November 1916.

Gaunt and grumpy from days in the dark, the hitherto unnamed legend found himself at the mercy of stick-wielding children, four grabby cowhands, and one particularly aggravating photographer, whom he rightfully chased from his corral in the stockyards near the Congress Avenue bridge. If that weren’t stressful enough, the steer was then led onto the turf at Clark Field that cool Thanksgiving Day in 1916 to the roar of a packed crowd. Some 15,000 strong clambered to get a good look, with a few even vaulting down from the stands to encircle him as he bucked against the handlers restraining him from horseback. But this particular bovine did not share in their school spirit. “The most recalcitrant freshman ever bulldozed into higher education,” The Daily Texan would later describe him.

By mid-December, word had spread about UT’s new longhorn named Bevo—a moniker that was cemented two months later when a group of Aggie fans broke into his stable under the cover of night, pinned him down, and burned the score of the 1915 A&M blowout onto his flank in an 8-inch-high brand. And while the exact origins of the name still remain hazy (theories range from a play on the word “beeve” to a funny pages strip and even a non-alcoholic beverage of the era), what’s clear is that the brand sealed Bevo’s fate. Permanently imprinted with the reminder of a humiliating 13-0 loss, the longhorn was relocated 60 miles west of the city, his whereabouts kept secret for fear of additional Aggie onslaughts. Unfortunately, he didn’t escape the minds of university officials, who noticed how his annual upkeep, now squarely set against the background of World War I, had come to roughly equal his original purchasing price.

So, the Athletic Council did what any true Texan would do when handed a prime cut: They tossed him on the barbecue pit.

Tables set and RSVPs returned, Bevo I returned to campus on Jan. 20, 1920, for his second and final appearance—this time as the main course of a special banquet that, ironically, brought together Longhorns and Aggies alike. There, UT officials presented Bevo’s branded hide to A&M leaders. In true school spirit, Bevo didn’t go down without a bit of a fight, even in death. “He was one of the toughest cuts of meat I have ever eaten,” an account in The Daily Texan later explained.

LONG MAY HE REIGN

A timeline of Bevo’s most memorable moments in his 100-plus years on the field.

Nov. 30, 1916 Bevo I is welcomed to UT with a poem and other assorted speeches.

ranch.

Horns Up

LIKE AN ACTOR in a makeup trailer, the longhorn stands as sturdy as a statue, his massive horns tucked under the arms of a pair of young guns in cowboy hats who ease his iconic “Bevo”-emblazoned halter onto his muzzle. It’s a well-worn dance among the longhorn and his Silver Spur handlers, the four members of the student service organization chosen each year to assist in handling and transporting the mascot.

And just like that, he transforms.

“If you will, that’s when he showers, shaves, and puts on his better attire,” says John T. Baker, who has produced UT’s three most recent mascots, XV included. Or perhaps, like Silver Spurs alumni association board member Howard Nirken says, there’s a deeper meaning behind those layers of leather. “A longhorn is really a steer, but when you put that halter on them, just like Batman, they become something more. They become this revered symbol.”

Either way, a luminary of such importance must travel in style, and Bevo’s curb service is no exception. Built wide with plenty of room to accommodate his massive horns, two air-conditioners to combat the broiling Texas heat, and custom windows to improve air circulation, his tricked-out trailer receives a special police escort to DKR ahead of each game. The guard’s not merely for added fanfare. “Before we got police escorts, we’d be at a stoplight and people would get out of our cars and stand in the road trying to take a photo before the light changed,” says Brennes, who took care of Bevo XIII during his time as a handler.

Always one for punctuality, he arrives with plenty of time to greet his adoring fans at the Bevo Boulevard extravaganza, a university-organized celebration that has been transforming part of San Jacinto Boulevard into the ultimate Longhorn tailgate since 2018. Before the game starts, the youngest steer ever to assume the Bevo mantle is led onto his grassy stage to rehearse his all-important tunnel gallop onto the field.

Bevo is christened after being branded by Aggies with the score of a 1915 win over the University of Texas.

Nov. 19, 1945 With the help of a prankster, Bevo III leads the Spurs and police on a 30-minute chase.

1937 The Silver Spurs are founded. They would take over caring for Bevo in 1945.

Jan. 20, 1920 Bevo: He’s what’s for dinner at a banquet for 200.

Nov. 1, 1952 Bevo V shows off his agility by clearing the sides of his trailer during an SMU game.

Nov. 1943 Aggies dehorn

Bevo I’s stuffed head.

The brief pre-game stretches harken back to the even more rigorous spring training regimen he underwent in the leadup to his 2016 coronation. Not only did the Bakers’ rigorous preparation include exposure to everything from shotgun blasts (standins for the touchdown eruptions normally produced by Smokey the Cannon) to country-music-blaring boomboxes and spiraling pigskins, it also featured obstacle courses designed to improve his maneuverability and surface training, where he practiced walking across various textured surfaces.

Such conditioning is essential as he taps back into the muscle memory of core drills during midgame audibles, or, in the mascot’s case, uproarious choruses of “Texas Fight.” Still, the smallest detour can cause Texas-sized hiccups, like cracks in the stadium’s concrete floor during an exercise ahead of the 2018 season. “He was reluctant to step across them,” recalls former handler Patrick Dowell, guessing that, maybe, they reminded the steer of a cattle guard. “It took probably a good 20 minutes to get him to walk 100 yards or so.”

Once the Longhorn Band has invigorated the stands and the coin toss has commenced, Bevo sticks to his corral in the south end zone. “Outside of the ranch, his spot at that football stadium is where I’d say he is definitely the most comfortable,” Brennes says. “When we’re walking in, most of the time, he leads the guys to his spot.” Loyal devotees rely on his reassuring presence. The particularly superstitious among his admirers even attribute the team’s on-field success to his posture, while some believe the Spurs have trained him to stand for “The Eyes of Texas.” They haven’t, Brennes clarifies, though with the Bakers’ 35 years of Bevo boot-camping, just about anything seems possible.

Such training, let alone patience, was never afforded to the Bevos of old. And it surely showed, as longhorn after longhorn (and the one-off Hereford, who is said to have held the role briefly sometime in the mid to late ’30s) were plucked from various zoos and historical parks and dropped into the middle of UT’s rowdy football atmosphere… only to be cut from the team when they didn’t perform under pressure.

After receiving a bashing atop the head from a megaphone-wielding SMU yell leader at his debut in 1932, Bevo II put a scare in both fans and players as he kicked at the sideboards of his trailer and attempted to jump the railing. Earning the title of the “the meanest of them all,” Bevo IV spent his only season in 1949 escaping 11 handlers to attack parked cars and leap over 8-foot-high fences before being returned to Fort Griffin State Park.

Also spooked by some gameday hubbub, Bevo VI tried to ditch his entourage in 1955, tripping over

a megaphone and pulling a rope of Spurs behind him in front of the UT student section—though some versions of the tale insist he charged the Rice bench, much to the approval of cheering Longhorns fans. The incident led the university to take out an insurance policy on the animal. “No matter what anybody tells you, you cannot take [a longhorn] out of a pasture, take them down to the stadium, and expect them to behave,” Betty Baker says. “It’s impossible. They’d go crazy.”

Not every bout of on-field shenanigans earned a penalty flag in the history books. Bevo VIII’s 1968 goal-line stand—or rather sit-in, seeing as how he plopped down on the front edge of the endzone and refused to budge—resulted in a delay of game, a break for the Texas defensive line, and an eventual Baylor punt. And, seriously, who can picture a more inspirational motif than his current—err— uniquely labeled waste receptacles, adorned with the Texas A&M and University of Oklahoma logos?

These days, few surprises throw a modern Bevo off his game. Sure, there’s the occasional hit from the likes of Earl Campbell (“He didn’t fall, but I could feel him stumble backward,” Campbell later recounted to Sports Illustrated about the post-touchdown incident in 1977. “After he got his balance, he looked at me and said, ‘Moo.’”) or an early removal from a Big XII Championship Game. But pro that he is, this mascot knows how to bounce back, a feat when you’ve just been walloped by a Heisman winner. And if Bevo leaves a trail of stinky displeasure in great brown piles across the Nebraska endzone, like he did in that fateful Big XII game in 1999? Well, those damn Cornhuskers probably deserved it anyway.

Animal House

STILL SKIRTING THE back edge of his pastoral enclosure, Bevo eyes today’s company (namely, me and my Silver Spur escorts) with an unimpressed huff. Unlike the famed steer, his half-brother Two Spot—named for the pair of white spots that blotch his otherwise burgundy-colored forehead—has shown no qualms toward the strangers in their pasture, quickly lumbering over for head scratches and other greetings.

Bevo seems unamused by his buddy’s utter betrayal. It could be a case of superstar standoffishness, built up over years of fame and too much sweet feed. In fact, Betty says they actually had to cut back on the special snack of oats and molasses once he retired from the show cattle circuit to maintain his svelte figure. But perhaps the longhorn’s heightened sense

CATTLE CALL

Bevo is larger than life, and he’s got the stats to prove it.

2015

Birth year of Bevo XV

1st Place

The steer earned in both the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo’s junior and grand championships in 2008

6’

Current horn length tip to tip

2.5-3%

Proportion of body weight eaten per day

5-7 Gallons

Estimated amount of manure produced per day

9 Hours

Time worked from start to finish on gameday

24 x 8 x 8 ½ Feet

Dimensions of his comfy customized ride

$60,000$90,000

Yearly operational cost

No. 4

Position in Sports Illustrated ’s ranking of the greatest mascots in college football history (clearly a mistake)

March 19, 1953 The Texas Legislature gives Bevo a salary increase of one additional bale of hay.

1955 Only a London insurance firm will cover Bevo VI. Is it a result of his antics at the UT-Rice game?

1957 The Post Office rejects a proposal of a commemorative Bevo stamp from the Texas Exes.

Nov 13, 1963 Texas Rangers step in to find Bevo VII after the Aggies abduct him twice in 24 hours.

1971 Bevo vs. Dillos! The longhorn survives amid a push to replace him with an armadillo as UT’s mascot.

of stranger danger emanates from a deeper place, one baked into the very fabric of a lineage riddled with rivalry-related debacles.

By 1925, Bevo I had gone from mascot to main course to ball rack. Now stuffed, his taxidermied head hung in the Athletic Council’s office, a Thanksgiving game football impaled on each horn. A few years later, the mount was center stage as students toted it around during pep rallies. On one such occasion in the fall of 1928, disaster struck when a gaggle of SMU students plucked the head straight out of a student leaders’ hands during a surprise raid in the dead of night. For two weeks, SMU taunted the Longhorns, even brazenly publishing articles in its student newspaper about the affair, before UT students managed to rescue their former mascot’s remains.

The desecration didn’t stop there. Two decades later, Aggie fans broke into UT’s Gregory Gym, the head’s new home, and unceremoniously absconded with its horns. According to a few accounts, crazed Sooner fans enacted similar acts of vandalism on other Bevos (this time living) during the annual Red River Showdown. At halftime of the 1975 game, a student raced down from the stands and attempted to toss a bucket of red paint onto the mascot—a further humiliation considering the final score of the matchup: 24-17, Sooners.

But even the greatest bodyguards haven’t been able to protect Bevo from every assault, especially one orchestrated by at least 80 Aggie invaders. At around midnight on Nov. 12, 1963, A&M students broke into his corral on the outskirts of the capital city and steer-napped the mascot. They were spooked enough that they threatened to turn him over to authorities, but a second, less scrupulous set of Aggies stepped in and took off with him again that very same night.

So scandalous was the ordeal that it made national news and led to the involvement of both the Texas Rangers and the Texas Highway Patrol. Following a harrowing 24 hours of searching and rumors of “Bevo-burgers, mounted horns and steer hide coats,” according to Texas A&M’s student newspaper, The Battalion, the now-rescued Bevo VII underwent a thorough medical exam and was returned from College Station safe and sound.

Suffice it to say, any true UT mascot is wary of strangers entering his personal domain. However, the reticence disappears the moment Betty calls. Then, he lumbers over and nuzzles in close for a little TLC of brushing and belly rubs, eyes scrunching up as he rests his head on her shoulder. The corners of his peachy lips creep up into a contented smile as she scratches his chin and coos to her “punkin,” a variation on a nickname from his youth.

Before his selection as the newest UT mascot, the young steer went by the name Sunrise Spur, and he had a habit of butting with his tiny horns. Normally Betty would have left the reeducation up to John T., a former president of the Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America, whose championship trophies, belt buckles, and plaques adorn just about every free inch of their rustic ranch home. Instead, she took matters into her own hands, calling the future star a “punk” while delivering a strong swat to his nose. And he responded to the reprimand, soon ceasing with his displays of dominance. The admonishment morphed into a now-treasured term of endearment, and the beginnings of an unbreakable bond between the pair was forged.

“I can be at the football game and he’ll hear my voice, and his little ears will go up,” Betty says with a chuckle. “Yeah, I think he’s a mama’s boy.”

Home on the Range

DECKED IN HIS Titian finest, Bevo stands placidly a short distance from partygoers dressed to the nines. Wedding season is a particularly hectic time of year in the longhorn’s bustling social calendar as alums, particularly those from the UT athletic department and Silver Spurs, request his presence at their matrimonial unions.

Handlers by his side, the mascot poses for portraits as guests flash the “hook ’em” sign. Like at so many of these swanky shindigs, the groom’s cake shares his likeness. But from his position outside that evening’s gala, it’s impossible for him to get a good look at the decorated confection. Resigned to the snub, Bevo takes a rare reprieve and lays down on the job, folding his legs back at the joints in a contortionist-like position.

It isn’t merely weddings that make up Bevo’s packed itinerary. These include proverbial ribbon cuttings for major Austin attractions like the new Tesla Gigafactory, little league games, university press conferences, and even funerals. “We’ll have someone come up and tell us three different times they’ve seen Bevo across a 20-year period,” says Brennes, who aspired to join the Silver Spurs after his own meeting with Bevo at age 5. “People remember their interactions.”

Nov. 5, 1977

Among the highlights? He’s visited America’s capital for George W. Bush’s presidential inauguration, where he nuzzled up to Chuck Norris, then newly appointed governor Rick Perry, and George Strait at the Black Tie and Boots Ball. There was his big-screen cameo in the 2015 film My All-American, hangouts with fellow celebs like Mathew McCoNov. 1989 “Texas-sized earplugs” are proposed to protect Bevo’s ears from Smokey the Cannon.

Nov. 23, 1992 A 3x5-foot Bevo-shaped cake is presented to the steer at his 75th birthday bash.

July 1977 Bevo’s cow chips become the focus of a line of jewelry and other accessories.

1972 Both Rice and Texas A&M kidnap Bevo IX during the football season.

Earl Campbell puts Bevo X on his butt after barreling through the endzone.

naughey and Kristen Bell, photo shoots for H-E-B shopping bags, Christmas Day specials on ESPN, and so much more.

Unless you’re the newly sworn-in president, securing his star presence costs a pretty penny (about $5,000 for around a one-hour appearance). Ever the magnanimous presence, a portion of those dollars go toward the university’s Neighborhood Longhorns Program, which offers economically disadvantaged elementary and middle school students the opportunity to earn collegiate scholarships while receiving academic tutoring from UT students. Each year, Bevo and the Silver Spurs Alumni Association deliver a generous check for more than $100,000 to the educational initiative as part of the organization’s ongoing mission to make their charge the most charitable in the country. “If you were picking a legacy, that would be the one you want to have,” Brennes explains. “When you’re representing something people are so passionate about, you want to make sure you’re giving back and doing for that community as much as you can.”

Having donated close to an estimated million dollars toward the NLP since 2013, the group and its Bevo Endowment is well on its way toward that lofty goal. Besides, the steer’s not exactly new to the altruistic world. Over his century of mascot service, he’s helped raise money for March of Dimes, visited Brackenridge Children’s Hospital, and welcomed members of the Boys and Girls Club onto the sideline during games.

The role of Bevo the philanthropist suits him as perfectly as his halter, although he barely notices once he returns to the quietude of his ranch life. As soon as the doors open on his burnt orange chariot, he makes a beeline for Two Spot, and the pair trots off to enjoy the sleepy pace that dwells within its wide-open spaces. “We used to joke that we wanted to be born again as Bevo, because he was always either relaxing in his pasture, or being pampered,” Dowell remarks. “It was like he lived in a big outdoor spa.”

Bevo has no interest, or frankly, time, for the flash of cameras or the attention of fans once the day’s work is done. He may seem aloof, but there’s a reason behind the brush off. The life of a mascot— even one with a personal grooming service—is a tiring affair. Whether it’s the nine hours of an action-packed gameday or multiple corporate appearances, the pressure of constant professionalism is very real. Contrary to popular belief, the Silver Spurs employ no tranquilizers or sedatives to keep him in line. Instead, says Brennes, if they felt the longhorn couldn’t handle the gravity of his role, “we would get a different Bevo.”

So, on those days of leisure, when the horn can simply sit under the shade of the live oaks and bask in the faintest whisper of a breeze, knowing he has nowhere to go and not a person to entertain, maybe it’s best to just let him enjoy it.

As the hardest-working steer in Texas, and possibly the world, he deserves that much.

Dec. 25,

George W. Bush invited Bevo XIII to his first presidential inauguration in 2001.

2013 Bevo gets his first holiday special courtesy of the Longhorn Network.

April 13, 2011 “This Twitter thing is fun!”, Bevo writes, during his first day on the social media site.

Dec. 4, 1999 Bevo XIII leaves his mark on the Nebraska logo during the Big XII championship game.

Jan. 2019 Bevo XV puts a scare into UGA when he charges the Georgia mascot at the Sugar Bowl.

Sept. 2012 A priest blesses Bevo XIV ahead of UT’s battle with Ole Miss.

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12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Elizabeth A. Moorehead

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Michael Pfeifer

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Stephen Price

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Arthy Saravanan

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

BREAST SURGERY

Edward Bombach

Cedar Park Breast Center 1401 Medical Pkwy., Bldg. B, Ste. 412C, Cedar Park 512-379-3850

Caroline Coombs-Skiles

Texas Breast Specialists 1015 E. 32nd St., Ste. 306 512-872-7200

Moya Griffin

Texas Breast Specialists 12221 Renfert Way, Ste. 120 512-873-8900

Heather King

Texas Breast Specialists 901 W. 38th St., Ste. 300 512-421-4111

Sangeetha Kolluri

Wildflower Breast Center 2911 Medical Arts Square, Bldg. 3 512-862-1881

Aimee Mackey

Texas Breast Specialists 4101 James Casey St., Ste. 100 512-687-1300

Robert M. Markus Jr.

Surgical Associates of Austin PA 4316 James Casey St., Bldg. E 512-447-4993

Kelly Martinez

Baylor Scott & White Clinic 2608 Brockton Drive 512-654-4050

Bridget O’Brien

Texas Breast Specialists 1401 Medical Pkwy., Bldg. C, Ste. 200, Cedar Park 512-260-6050

Julie M. Sprunt

Texas Breast Specialists 901 W. 38th St., Ste. 300 512-421-4111

Sherrie Thomas

Texas Breast Specialists 12221 Renfert Way, Ste. 120 512-873-8900

DIAGNOSTIC RADIOLOGY

Michael D. Aronoff

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

John M. Barkley

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Bradley A. Brenner

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Jarrod Dale

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Nabeel Farhataziz

ARA Diagnostic Imaging

12554 Riata Vista Circle

512-795-5100

Michael T. Harper

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Sam M. Hassibi

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Jody J. Hooten

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Connie I. Hsu

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Felix Lee Lin

Baylor Scott & White Clinic 300 University Blvd., Round Rock 512-509-0100

John E. Manning

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Russell D. Putnam

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Yvonne M. Queralt

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

David Quintana

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Amy S. Salinas

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Ashkan Shademan

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

Sandeep Anil Shah

ARA Diagnostic Imaging 12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

John Andrew Williamson

ARA Diagnostic Imaging

12554 Riata Vista Circle 512-795-5100

FEMALE PELVIC MEDICINE RECONSTRUCTIVE SURGERY

Tomas G. Antonini

Central Texas Urogynecology and Continence Center 3407 Glenview Ave., Ste. A 512-716-0861

R. Grady Bruce Urology Austin 16040 Park Valley Drive, Bldg. A, Round Rock 512-248-2200

Mary M. Rieger

Ascension Medical Group Seton Women’s Health 911 W. 38th St., Ste. 202 512-324-8670

George Shashoua Austin Urogynecology 12319 N. Mopac Expy., Bldg. C, Ste. 200 512-973-8276

Rachel Sosland Urology Austin 1301 W. 38th St., Ste. 200 512-477-5905

GYNECOLOGIC ONCOLOGY

Rachel Brightwell Austin Cancer Center 12201 Renfert Way, Ste. 245 512-505-5500

Helen Dinkelspiel Eshed Texas Oncology 6204 Balcones Drive 512-427-9400

Valerie Galvan Turner Ascension Seton Infusion Center 1601 Trinity St., Ste. 804 512-324-7865

Kassondra Grzankowski Austin Cancer Center 1180 Seton Pkwy., Ste. 150 Kyle 512-505-5500

Priyanka N. Kamath Texas Oncology 6204 Balcones Drive 512-427-9400

Lynne Knowles Texas Oncology 6204 Balcones Drive 512-427-9400

Angela S. Kueck

Texas Oncology 12221 Renfert Way, Ste. 300 512-873-8900

Paul V. Loar III

Texas Oncology 12221 Renfert Way, Ste. 300 512-873-8900

Michael Teneriello Texas Oncology 6204 Balcones Drive 512-427-9400

Marian Yvette Williams-Brown

Ascension Seton Infusion Center 1601 Trinity St., Ste. 804 512-324-7865

INFERTILITY/ REPRODUCTIVE ENDOCRINOLOGY

Maya B. Bledsoe

ARC Seton Northwest 11111 Research Blvd., Ste. 475 512-338-8181

Natalie Crawford Fora Fertility 715 W. 34th St. 512-596-5006

Lisa Hansard

Texas Fertility Center

6500 N. Mopac Expy., Bldg. 1, Ste. 1200 512-451-0149

Shahryar K. Kavoussi

Austin Fertility & Reproductive Medicine

300 Beardsley Lane, Bldg. B, Ste. 200 512 444-1414

Angela Kelley

Aspire Fertility 911 W. 38th St., Ste. 402 512-817-4056

Kenneth K. Moghadam

Austin Fertility Institute 2200 Park Bend Drive, Bldg. 1, Ste. 402 512-339-4234

Kaylen Silverberg

Texas Fertility Center

6500 N. Mopac Expy., Bldg. 1 512-451-0149

Thomas Vaughn

Texas Fertility Center

6500 N. Mopac Expy., Bldg. 1 512-451-0149

MATERNAL AND FETAL MEDICINE

Kimberly A. DeStefano

Austin Maternal-Fetal Medicine

12200 Renfert Way, Ste. G-3 512-821-2540

Jeny Ghartey

Ascension Medical Group Seton Women’s Health 1301 W. 38th St., Ste. 315 512-324-7256

Sandra Rocio Herrera

Austin Maternal-Fetal Medicine

12200 Renfert Way, Ste. G-3 512-821-2540

Mollie McDonnold

Austin Maternal-Fetal Medicine

12200 Renfert Way, Ste. G-3 512-821-2540

Jasbir Singh

Austin Maternal-Fetal Medicine

12200 Renfert Way, Ste. G-3 512-821-2540

MEDICAL ONCOLOGY

Mika Cline Texas Oncology 901 W. 38th St., Ste. 200 512-421-4100

Beth Hellerstedt Texas Oncology 2410 Round Rock Ave., Ste. 150, Round Rock 512-341-8724

Kathryn E. Hudson Texas Oncology 6204 Balcones Drive 512-427-9400

Krishna Patel Texas Oncology 301 Seton Pkwy., Ste. 105, Round Rock 512-687-2300

Debra Patt Texas Oncology 6204 Balcones Drive 512-427-9400

OBSTETRICS AND GYNECOLOGY

*gynecology only

Shannon Abikhaled*

Women’s Health Texas 6836 Bee Caves Road, Bldg. 3, Ste. 150 512-375-2555

Allison Anderson

Austin Area Obstetrics Gynecology and Fertility 12200 Renfert Way, Ste. 100 512-652-7001

Sindura Bandi

ARC North Austin Ob/Gyn 12201 Renfert Way, Ste. 250 512-994-2662

Crystal S. Berry-Roberts

ARC South Ob/Gyn

4315 James Casey St., Ste. 200 512-383-9752

Sapna R. Bhagat

ARC South Ob/Gyn 4315 James Casey St., Ste. 200 512-383-9752

Nancy Binford

Balcones Gynecology

3705 Medical Pkwy., Ste. 540 512-452-8888

Sharyl R. Brasher-Giles

ARC Seton Northwest 11111 Research Blvd., Ste. 475 512-338-8181

Rachel L. Breedlove

ARC South Ob/Gyn

4315 James Casey St., Ste. 200 512-383-9752

Diane L. Brinkman*

ARC Far West Medical Tower

6811 Austin Center Blvd., Ste. 300 512-346-6611

Andrea L. Campaigne

ARC North Austin Ob/Gyn 12201 Renfert Way, Ste. 250 512-994-2662

Renu Chalasani

ARC Seton Northwest 11111 Research Blvd., Ste. 475 512-338-8181

Shao-Chun Rose

Chang-Jackson

ARC Center Street

22420 I-35, Ste. 203, Kyle 737-404-0347

Tara A. Cherry

ARC South Ob/Gyn

4315 James Casey St., Ste. 200 512-383-9752

Robert J. Cosentino*

ARC Far West Medical Tower 6811 Austin Center Blvd., Ste. 300 512-346-6611

Robert Cowan*

Austin Area Obstetrics Gynecology and Fertility 12200 Renfert Way, Ste. 100 512-652-7001

Alinda R. Cox*

ARC South Ob/Gyn 4315 James Casey St., Ste. 105 512-383-9752

Wendy Cutler

The Austin Diagnostic Clinic 12221 N. Mopac Expy. 512-901-1111

Laura Eastep

Women’s Health Texas

1305 W. 34th St., Ste. 308 512-459-8082

Bailey Escarzaga

Women’s Health Texas

1305 W. 34th St., Ste. 308 512-459-8082

Jayme B. Evans

ARC Medical Plaza Specialty 1401 Medical Pkwy., Bldg. B, Ste. 200, 211, & 220, Cedar Park 512-260-1581

Alyson Garcia

Austin Area Obstetrics

Gynecology and Fertility 12200 Renfert Way, Ste. 100 512-652-7001

Romy Ghosh

ARC North Austin Ob/Gyn 12201 Renfert Way, Ste. 250 512-994-2662

YuHan Virginia Hu

Austin ObGyn Associates

2911 Medical Arts Square, Bldg. 2 & 3 512-391-0175

Robert S. Hughes*

ARC Seton Northwest 11111 Research Blvd., Ste. 475 512-338-8181

Natasya Ikbal

Women’s Health Texas 1305 W. 34th St., Ste. 308 512-459-8082

Lisa M. Jukes*

Modern Women’s Health

5656 Bee Caves Road, Ste. B101 512-862-1669

Caroline A. Kaufman

ARC North Austin Ob/Gyn 12201 Renfert Way, Ste. 250 512-994-2662

Whitney C. Keller*

Ascension Medical Group

Seton Women’s Health 1201 W. 38th St. 512-324-8670

Karen Kish*

Women’s Health Texas

6836 Bee Caves Road, Bldg. 3, Ste. 150 512-375-2555

Kimberly B. Loar*

Texas Oncology 12221 Renfert Way, Ste. 300 512-873-8900

Megan McCoin

Women’s Health Texas 1004 W. 32nd St., Ste. 100 512-454-5721

Laura Meritt

Women’s Health Texas 12201 Renfert Way, Ste. 225 512-339-6626

Cindy Mingea

Wildflower OBGYN 805 E. 32nd St., Ste. 101 512-479-6655

Rosa A. Moreno*

ARC Far West Medical Tower 6811 Austin Center Blvd., Ste. 300 512-346-6611

Michael F. Phillips*

Austin Area Obstetrics

Gynecology and Fertility 12200 Renfert Way, Ste. 100 512-652-7001

Anita R. Sandhu

ARC North Austin Ob/Gyn 12201 Renfert Way, Ste. 250 512-994-2662

Christopher Seeker

Austin Area Obstetrics

Gynecology and Fertility 12200 Renfert Way, Ste. 100 512-652-7001

Jennifer Summers

Women’s Health Texas 1305 W. 34th St., Ste. 308 512-459-8082

Leah D. Tatum

ARC North Austin Ob/Gyn 12201 Renfert Way, Ste. 250 512-994-2662

Marco Uribe

Austin Area Obstetrics

Gynecology and Fertility 12200 Renfert Way, Ste. 100 512-652-7001

Sharon A. Vaz

ARC Seton Northwest 11111 Research Blvd., Ste. 475 512-338-8181

Karla Waller

ARC Medical Plaza Specialty 1401 Medical Pkwy., Bldg. B, Ste. 200, 211 & 220, Cedar Park 512-260-1581

Diana Wang

Austin Area Obstetrics

Gynecology and Fertility 12200 Renfert Way, Ste. 100 512-652-7001

RADIATION ONCOLOGY

Karen Cohen

Texas Oncology 2410 Round Rock Ave., Ste. 150, Round Rock 512-341-8724

Shannon D. Cox

Austin Cancer Center 11111 Research Blvd., Ste. L12 512-505-5500

Michael Herman

Texas Oncology 2410 Round Rock Ave., Ste. 150, Round Rock 512-341-8724

Courtney Sheinbein

Texas Oncology 301 Seton Pkwy., Ste. 104, Round Rock 512-687-2300

Ryan Tierney Texas Oncology 4101 James Casey St., Ste. 100 512-447-2202

Catherine Wu Texas Oncology 4101 James Casey St., Ste. 100 512-447-2202

UROLOGY

Micaela Aleman

Micaela Aleman MD 2911 Medical Arts Square, Ste. 1A 512-476-9850

Melody Denson

Urology Austin 11410 Jollyville Road, Ste. 1101 512-231-1444

Miranda Hardee

Urology Austin 11410 Jollyville Road, Ste. 1101 512-231-1444

Nikki P. Le

The Austin Diagnostic Clinic 12221 N. Mopac Expy. 512-901-1111

Elizabeth Mobley

Urology Austin 11410 Jollyville Road, Ste. 1101 512-231-1444

Koushik Shaw

Austin Urology Institute 12319 N. Mopac Expy., Ste. 200 512-694-8888

Lawrence Tsai

Austin Urology Institute 12319 N. Mopac Expy., Ste. 200 512-694-8888

How the List is Made

Using an online survey, Austin Monthly solicited peer nominations from physicians in the greater Austin area, asking them to nominate up to three doctors per practice area who they would trust with the medical care of themselves or their family. To ensure the nomination process is peer-based, full contact information was requested before nominating and doctors were asked to limit their nominations to physicians whose work they’ve personally witnessed. Austin Monthly then tallied the results, selecting the top percentage of vote recipients in each practice area before submitting the final list to our fact-checking process, which includes a review of good standing among medical boards.

Doctors do not and cannot pay to be a part of the list. We recognize that many good doctors are not included

on the list; this is only a sampling of a huge array of talented professionals within the region. We encourage all consumers to do their own research before selecting a doctor.

Austin Monthly uses best practices and exercises great care in assembling content for this list. It does not warrant that the data contained within the list are complete or accurate. Austin Monthly does not assume, and hereby disclaims, any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions herein whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. All rights reserved. No commercial use of the information in this list may be made without written permission from Austin Monthly. If you see an error in the information listed, please contact info@austinmonthly.com.

Doctors: Congratulations! If you’d like to display this accomplishment with a plaque, please visit our official store at austinmonthly.com/plaques.

F

A C E S O F

2022

A

T X

What defines Austin? More than the innovative tech scene, the booming real estate development, or even the emanating music, it’s the free spirited, authentically cool people that make up the face of Austin. The most ambitious of those lead the business community in a variety of industries. Here, Austin Monthly gives them a spotlight to tell their stories in this special advertising section.

The Face of COSMETIC DENTISTRY

MARK SWEENEY, DDS AUSTIN DENTAL SPA

Avid tennis player and native Texan through and through, Dr. Mark Sweeney is one tall drink of water committed to making a difference in people’s lives.

A cosmetic dentistry pioneer, Dr. Mark has won numerous national awards for his Smile Makeovers. Known for his calm, easygoing manner and trademark sense of humor, Dr. Mark helps patients relax and experience the best dentistry has to offer. With his associate Dr. Jordan Slagter (known for her expertise in dental implants, grafting, cosmetic, and restorative dentistry), he’s created a nurturing, spa-like setting for his team to care for their patients.“Safety and the health, wellness, and comfort of our patients is always our top priority,” says Dr. Mark, “and even more so during these challenging times.” Come experience what everyone is talking about! “Change Your Smile, Change Your Life” with Dr. Mark Sweeney and Austin Dental Spa.

The Face of URBAN REAL ESTATE

KRYSTLE COPULOS THE PLATINUM GROUP | COMPASS

Krystle Copulos, principal of the Platinum Group, has been a real estate broker for 20 years specializing in condo living in Central Austin. As a top-producing agent in the downtown real estate market, Krystle utilizes her extensive knowledge of the existing condo inventory, future developments, and real estate trends to identify the ideal community for her clients. The Platinum Group storefront is conveniently located in the heart of downtown off of West. 3rd and Nueces, allowing them to gain maximum exposure for their listings. Whether you’re an empty nester looking to downsize and purchase a condo or an urban dweller ready to make the move to the suburbs, Krystle and her team of professionals have all of your real estate needs covered.

512-659-9329

COMPASS.COM/AGENTS/KRYSTLE-COPULOS

360 NUECES ST., STE. 40, AUSTIN, TX 78701

The Faces of BANKING

BROADWAY BANK

For over 82 years, Broadway Bank has been an integral part of Central and South Central Texas, evolving into one of the largest independently owned banks in the state with more than $5 billion in assets and $3 billion in wealth management assets. Broadway Bank offers a full range of financial services including personal, private, business, mortgage banking, and wealth management. Broadway Bank is committed to enhancing the banking experience through leading edge technology. With financial centers across Austin, the Hill Country, San Antonio, and now Dallas, Broadway Bank delivers modern banking that’s locally sourced and personally delivered.

Pictured from left to right: Gina Anderson, VP, Area Sales and Services Executive | Ryan Hutson, SVP, Senior Regional Credit Officer | Kari Johson-Taylor, SVP, Commercial Real Estate Lender | Jon Morgan, SVP, Senior CRE Manager | Blake Absher, Austin Market President

The Face of EAST AUSTIN REAL ESTATE

ED HUGHEY MORELAND PROPERTIES

Soon after moving to Austin in 2003, Ed Hughey was drawn to East Austin’s unique character and vibrant energy. For more than 15 years, Ed has called East Austin home and has developed an intimate knowledge of its varying neighborhoods and their distinct characteristics. Ed lives in the East Cesar Chavez/Holly neighborhood, where he and his wife found and restored a classic 1930s bungalow, ensuring its history is honored while adding their modern twists.

Ed enjoys sharing this love of East Austin, working with an array of clientele whose real estate goals are wide-ranging, including historic preservation, fixer-uppers, new construction, investment and development, and first-time buyers. As one of Austin’s top-producing Realtors and a longtime architect, Ed’s well-rounded residential background grants him a unique advantage in providing exceptional service to his clients. Ed looks forward to helping Austinites, both new and old, find their place in this great city.

512-940-0950

EDHUGHEY.COM

ED@MORELAND.COM

The Faces of CUSTOM CLOSETS & STORAGE SOLUTIONS

CLOSET FACTORY

We are Austin’s premier custom closet company. The motto of our closet design team is to treat each client as if they are their only client. Our award-winning designers collaborate with you to focus on each of your unique storage needs, helping transform your space from a vision to reality. We promise to listen to you and create the perfect organizational solution from an endless array of materials, finishes, and accessories to match your style, space, and budget. From start to finish, we provide our clients with excellent customer service, value, and a product they will love for years to come. Design consultations are complimentary. We look forward to meeting you very soon!

512-265-7023

CLOSETFACTORY.COM

8112 FERGUSON CUTOFF, AUSTIN, TX 78724

Owner Sarah Evans (center), along with designers Barbara Tatro (far left), Alicia Collins (second from right) and Briana Hill (far right). Not pictured: designer Cindy Morse.

The Face of JUSTICE

LAW OFFICE OF AMBER RUSSELL, PLLC (LOAR)

Establishing her law firm has enabled Amber, a Texan with undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, to build a personal injury practice focused on justice. In addition to the clients LOAR serves, that emphasis on justice includes giving back to the community.

One big way the firm does this is through its nonprofit foundation: SOAR (Scholarship Opportunities and Relationships) Texas. SOAR Texas provides scholarships and mentoring to outstanding women who are also the first in their families to pursue college or graduate degrees or women who have overcome significant challenges. This year, SOAR Texas awarded 10 scholarships to students at the University of Texas, Baylor University, and Texas A&M University. Pairing funding with a strong mentorship program, SOAR Texas is honored to partner with these impressive women and future leaders on their educational journeys and beyond as they also work for change and justice.

512-777-3135

LOARTEXAS.COM

6500 RIVER PLACE BLVD BLDG. 7, STE. 250 AUSTIN, TX 78730

FACES

The

of SOUTH AUSTIN REAL ESTATE

GRAY & AIR REALTORS® | AUSTIN, TEXAS

Gray and Air are husband and wife Realtors who live and work in Austin, Texas. In the ever-evolving Austin real estate market, it is vital that you work with a team who has the experience and ability to navigate and successfully close deals.

Whether buying or selling, Gray and Air understand that every situation is unique to the property and individual. With their combined skills and years of experience, they work together to provide their clients with an efficient and successful experience. They have a special place in their hearts for South Austin and enjoy renovating properties, designing and completing home projects, and traveling with their two kiddos, Ivy and Ryder.

512-762-8187 GRAYANDAIR@KUPERSIR.COM @GRAYANDAIRHOME KUPER SOTHEBY’S INT’L REALTY

Faces

The Face of FURNITURE

HANK CRAVEY WORLD INTERIORS

World Interiors is locally owned and operated in Austin, TX. We specialize in furniture that doesn’t cut corners. Our solid wood furniture collections are manufactured by hand in India using traditional construction methods, such as floating tabletops, butterfly joinery, and dovetailing. We focus on superior craftsmanship, sustainability, and designing eclectic pieces built to last generation after generation.

We are proud of our furniture, and you will be too. Visit our showroom to see pieces from all of our collections, one-of-a-kind items, unique storage pieces, and handcrafted home accents. Located in East Austin, just south of the airport.

512-821-1302 WORLDINTERIORS.COM

8219 BURLESON ROAD, STE. 500 AUSTIN, TX 78744

FACES OF ATX 2022

TYLER HUGHES NMLS# 1025063 CMG HOME LOANS

Locally and nationally recognized as a Top Mortgage Professional, Tyler’s dedicated to making what can feel like an overwhelming process as smooth and effortless as possible.

His commitment allows clients to remain focused on the excitement of securing their new home and away from the stresses of the financing process. While Tyler has a Team of talented assistants and professionals behind him at CMG, Tyler still devotes his time to being hands-on for every client and every loan, ensuring a perfect experience.

512-777-8518

THUGHES@CMGFI.COM

1151668

The Faces of WESTLAKE REAL ESTATE

WILSON & GOLDRICK REALTORS

Your Austin real estate experts of almost 40 years. Wilson & Goldrick Realtors was founded by Cindy Goldrick and established in the heart of Westlake with a vision to create an experienced team of Realtors to act as ambassadors for new, incoming residents and those looking to relocate within Austin. Wilson & Goldrick Realtors use their knowledge to guide clients in buying, developing, and selling property, ensuring they meet individual needs. Wilson & Goldrick has developed into a well-respected real estate firm, recognized with multiple award nominations for committing to a quality of service that surpasses the competition. Their slogan—“Our Performance Will Move You”— stems from their longtime support of the arts. Wilson & Goldrick supports many local charities and nonprofits, taking great pride in their strong community presence. The boutique brokerage’s deep-rooted knowledge and high-touch approach will lead you every step of the way, whether you’re looking to buy, sell, or invest in Austin.

512-328-0022

WILSONGOLDRICK.COM 923 WESTBANK DRIVE, STE. 100, AUSTIN, TX 78746

The Face of LUXURY REAL ESTATE

ALAINA MARTIN GOTTESMAN RESIDENTIAL

Alaina Martin is known for her enthusiasm, work ethic, and ability to create a positive buying and selling experience for her clients who often become friends. Alaina has resided in the Westlake area, South Austin, and downtown, giving her a deep appreciation and knowledge of city living and Lake Austin’s lake life. Having relocated from New York City a few years ago, Alaina enjoys helping Austin newcomers navigate a competitive real estate market. She finds satisfaction in giving her clients a leg up on the competition by providing them with pre-market opportunities.

Alaina leverages her media background in her real estate career —she was chosen to host “Selling Texas” on American Dream TV, a national television show highlighting lifestyle and real estate. Alaina loves to exercise, travel, wake surf on Lake Austin, and spend time with her 5-year-old son Tucker. She is also an accomplished vocalist and can be seen singing with the worship team at LifeAustin Church Downtown.

512-777-8082

ALAINAMARTIN.COM

ALAINA@GOTTESMANRESIDENTIAL.COM 1501 ENFIELD ROAD, AUSTIN, TX 78703

FACES OF ATX 2022

The Faces of FAMILY DENTISTRY

DRS. ALYSSA & TRENTON DAWSON GROOVY DENTAL

Groovy Dental launched its first location in the Northwest Austin community along West Parmer Lane, focusing on providing top-notch dental care for patients of all ages and stages of life—a significant step for this husband-and-wife team, Drs. Alyssa and Trenton Dawson. Their shared goal is to deliver high-quality dental care to the Austin community in a comfortable, professional, modern environment. “We are extremely proud to show the Austin community our dream practice,” they say. “Being able to hand select state-of-the-art dental technology that we incorporate into our office allows us to provide exceptional care to our patients.”

512-648-9901

GROOVYDENTALAUSTIN.COM

8701 W. PARMER LANE, STE. 1124, AUSTIN, TX 78729

The Face of OLIVE OIL, VINEGAR, AND GOURMET GOODS

TABATHA CONARKO CON’OLIO OILS & VINEGARS

In 2009 Tabatha Conarko melded her passion for quality extra virgin olive oil and her desire to source international gourmet goods, to open Con’ Olio Oils & Vinegars, Austin’s first olive oil tasting bar. Now the owner of two stores, Tabatha focuses on offering fresh products, working with authentic producers and educating and giving back to the local community.

As a founder and CEO, Conarko earned her certification in olive oil sensory by the Organizzazione Nazionale Assaggiatori Olio di Oliva. She also received her Olive Sensory certification from the UC Davis Olive Center.

Importing the freshest extra virgin olive oils and balsamic vinegars from both the northern and southern hemispheres, all of the Con’ Olio’s extra virgin olive oils are chemically tested and sensory evaluated to ensure authenticity. Shoppers can sample a wide variety of flavored oils and vinegars straight from the tap. In addition, Con Olio offers a variety of in-store classes that delve deeper into the history, production, quality levels, health benefits and culinary uses of oils and vinegars, sharing the endless possibilities of truly fresh extra virgin olive oil and its ability to transform an variety of dishes. These unique events and more are available at two stores conveniently located in the Arboretum Shopping Center and in Bee Cave at The Gateway to Falconhead.

CONOLIOS.COM

10000 RESEARCH BLVD, #130, 78759 & 3500 RANCH ROAD 620 S, F400, 78738

The Faces of WINE AND SPIRTS

MARGARET & DAVID JABOUR TWIN LIQUORS

Margaret and David Jabour, siblings and third-generation co-owners of Twin Liquors, are passionate about the wine and spirits industry. They have grown their Austin-born and -raised family business from one store in 1937 to now over 100 locations across the state. This year, they celebrate their business’ 85th anniversary and the hard work that went into making Twin Liquors what it is today.

In 1982, David and Margaret rebranded the family business as Twin Liquors in honor of their father, Theodore, who was an identical twin. They set a goal to elevate the liquor industry by introducing fine wines and premium spirits into the Texas market in refined, education-oriented retail stores. Margaret, originally poised to enter the fashion industry, brought the fine department store ambiance into the business. She and David, who worked in the banking industry for many years, were able to work synergistically to bring their shared vision to life.

At the core of it all, the Jabours believe the importance of relationships and giving back to their communities—values they have instilled in their entire team—is what has made Twin Liquors a special Texas family-owned company for 85 years.

FACES OF ATX 2022

The Faces of DYSLEXIA EDUCATION

RAWSON SAUNDERS

Rawson Saunders School and Rawson Saunders Institute have one goal: to rewrite the future of dyslexia education. Founded in 1997 and now celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, Rawson Saunders School, led by Head of School Laura Steinbach, M.S.Ed., is an Austin asset, serving dyslexic learners in grades 1-12 in a nationally recognized, award-winning, full-curriculum academic program. Under the direction of Jamie Nettles, M.Ed., CALT-QI, Rawson Saunders Institute, the school’s esteemed training arm, prepares teachers throughout Texas and beyond to teach dyslexic students to read, write, spell, and comprehend.

A model for what is possible in teaching and learning, Rawson Saunders—both the school and the institute—empowers, equips, and inspires students—children and adults to become confident, capable learners, leaders and extraordinary contributors to our world. The impact on dyslexic students and their teachers? Truly life-changing.

512-476-8382

RAWSONSAUNDERS.ORG 2614A EXPOSITION BLVD. AUSTIN, TX 78703

Laura Steinbach, M.S.Ed., Head of School, and Jamie Nettles CALT, QI, LDT Director, Dyslexia Services and Rawson Saunders Institute

Ace of Maids

With a stroke of luck, Madame Hipple went from cleaning classrooms to becoming the city’s greatest psychic. BY ROSIE NINESLING

A CHANCE ENCOUNTER in 1941 turned Augusta Hipple into Madame Hipple, Austin’s resident clairvoyant. While working as a janitor at the University of Texas, she was approached by a group of students with a problem: The football team had a crucial game against A&M, and they were seeking supernatural assistance. “A fortune teller?” she asked. “I am one.”

Without thinking, Madame Hipple conjured up an impromptu hex that consisted of a red candle left in a window overnight. When the Longhorns won 23-0, the cleaning lady was launched into campus-wide fame.

That week, she traded her work apron for kaftans and tied her cherry-red hair up in scarves. Using the money she began to make from her college-aged clients, she was able to leave her rundown apartment for a home in West Campus. With hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs cut into the picket fence, she aptly named it “The House of Cards” and conducted readings from a closet-sized space at the front of her home.

Decades passed, and the problems varied: Sorority girls wanted to know when they were getting married. The boys questioned life after graduation. And when Charles Whitman came to see her just weeks before the tragic UT Tower shooting in 1966, she allegedly advised him to “quit playing with his toys and grow up.” A permanent fixture on West 29th Street, she was a resource for anyone seeking direction up until her retirement in the mid-’90s.

Could there be truth in the magic Madame Hipple harnessed? Perhaps a secret is best kept secret. When her son sold the house in 2004, the new homeowners made sure to ask about his mother’s powers. He responded with a smirk. “Let’s put it this way,” he said. “My mother was always a very good businesswoman.”

The soothsayer in her West Campus residence, where she used playing cards to tell fortunes.