June 2000 Archives

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Great Escapes

From a boutique hotel in hip South Austin to a bed-and-breakfast across the Mexican border, from fly fishing on the Llano River to bathing in the Chinati Hot Springs, 33 getaways the guidebooks don’t tell you about, courtesy of our intrepid staff of weekend warriors.

By Patricia Sharpe, Anne Dingus, Jordan Mackay, Pamela Colloff, Paul Burka, Suzy Banks and Garrett Weber-Gale

Features

Feature

John O’Quinn Objects

“When a corporation does something that results in the death of people, what prison do you put them in?” asks the plantiffs lawyer Texas business loves to hate, and he’s just getting warmed up.

By Evan Smith

Politics & Policy

The Case Against John Cornyn

If it pleases the court, the question before you is whether the attorney general of Texas has served his constituents or, as his critics charge, only his own political interests. What is your verdict?

By Paul Burka

Travel & Outdoors

Great Escapes: Lodging

Austin Street Retreat, 408 W. Austin Street (one block north of Main), Fredericksburg (830-997-5612, fax 830-997-8282; www.fbglodging.com). Double occupancy $125 (breakfast not included). No telephones in some rooms; no televisions; hot tubs with handheld showers only. Children allowed in Maria’s only. No smoking indoors, no pets. AE, DS,

By Texas Monthly

Travel & Outdoors

Great Escapes: Points of Interest

Alamo Village, 7 miles north of Brackettville on FM 674 (830-563-2580; www.alamovillage.com)Alibates National Monument, 419 E. Broadway, Fritch (806-857-3151; www.nps.gov/alfl)Alley Oop Fantasyland Park, 1000 Parkside (on the west side of town), IraanBarnard’s Mill Art Museum, 307 SW Barnard Street, Glen Rose (254-897-7494)Big Rocks Park, 1020 NE

By Texas Monthly

Feature

The Evolutionary

What do you do when you win a $295,000 MacArthur “genius” grant? If you’re biologist David Hillis, you keep teaching at the University of Texas as if nothing happened, and you keep chasing frogs.

By Karen Olsson

Sports

“I’m Not Lovable, And I’m Not a Loser”

So says Don Baylor, the Austin native now managing baseball’s lowly Chicago Cubs. His players hear him loud and clear, but history has a way of repeating itself.

By Michael Hall

Food & Drink

The Meating

Three friends, seven years, untold pounds of barbecue pork chops and prime rib, and a single tradition that elevates the experience above mere food.

By John Morthland

Feature

We want some texas history—but not a history lesson.

After spending the night in the Quarters at Presidio La Bahia in Goliad, I’m sitting on the northwest bastion of the presidio, sipping coffee and staring down the muzzle of one of Colonel James Fannin’s cannons. Across the courtyard, the sun rises behind the eighteenth-century Our Lady of Loreto

By Texas Monthly

Feature

We’re going to a touristy spot, but we’d like the place we stay to be a haven.

Dust and cobwebs are standard furnishings in old log cabins, but good luck finding any speck of grime at Fredericksburg’s Austin Street Retreat. The five tightly grouped structures are all more than a century old, but our cabin, called simply Maria’s, was immaculate—even the cracks in the ceiling had

By Texas Monthly

Feature

We’re stressed out. Where can we get away from it all?

For a restful weekend retreat, it would be hard to top the Red Corral Ranch. The rambling 1,100-acre spread—which lies halfway between Wimberley and Blanco in one of the prettiest and most solitary stretches of the Hill Country—boasts an organic farm, nature trails, and an abundance of wildlife. Only

By Texas Monthly

Feature

We’d like to spend some time on the water but without the hassle of crowds.

For those of you who thought you had to travel to the mountain rivers of Colorado or Wyoming to enjoy the lovely, archaic sport of fly-fishing, we take you now to, of all places, the Llano River in the Hill Country, where a stunning blond angler named Raye Carrington

By Texas Monthly

Feature

We’d like to get away to a small town with lots for the family to do.

With its limestone bluffs and juniper-covered slopes, Somervell County is a diminutive slice of Hill Country that somehow migrated to the rolling prairies southwest of Fort Worth. The state’s last undammed river, the Paluxy, winds its way through the hills, as does the Brazos, and they converge a mile

By Texas Monthly

Feature

We’re going to big bend but we don’t want to stay in the usual places.

If you want something really different, I’d suggest that you stay in one of the inns just across the border in Mexico. Let’s start with a place that could generously be described as, well, primitive. Across the river from Rio Grande Village, at the southeast edge of the park,

By Texas Monthly

Feature

We’d like to get out of the city and still eat well.

At least one morning of your stay at the Inn Above Onion Creek, get up early and walk a few hundred yards to the overlook. The air will be cool and the grass spangled with tiny wildflowers; foraging cottontails will freeze as you pass. Your reward will be a

By Texas Monthly

Feature

We’re looking for a wonderful boutique hotel for an urban getaway.

There is no better way to experience the hipper side of Austin than by staying at the recently renovated San José Hotel, located about half a mile south of downtown on thriving South Congress Avenue. The San José is nestled among the city’s better vintage-clothing and kitschy antiques shops,

By Texas Monthly

Feature

We want to get back to nature but we don’t want to sleep on the ground.

On the delightfully isolated north shore of Lake Buchanan, the biggest and least populated of the Highland Lakes upstream of Austin, you’ll find Canyon of the Eagles Lodge and Nature Park. Texas’ first large, publicly developed eco-resort, it opened last fall as a partnership between the Presidian Corporation of

By Texas Monthly

Biz

How I Made It

Katherine Hammer

I didn’t really get academia. I liked teaching, but I wasn’t a good scholar. I like to connect a lot of different things and drive a strategy, and that’s not what most scholarship is about. Most scholarship is about having absolute depth in one or two areas and pushing

By Patricia McConnico

Business

Splurge! Merge! Purge!

Six months after the merger of Exxon and Mobil, a tally of the winners and losers.

By Kathryn Jones

High Tech Answer Man

Reality Bites

Why dot-com investors shouldn't be so nervous.

By Peter Lewis

Y’all Street

Clear Channel Communications

The Texas stock to buy right now.

By Alexandra Biesada

Biz The List

Sand Dollars

The economics of beach tourism.

By Joe Nick Patoski

Columns

Education

Out Man In

UT regents want their next chancellor to be an academic? Whatever. At Texas Tech, a politician is the one in charge, and he's more than making the grade.

By Patricia Hart

Health

Rx for Trouble

As surgeon general—the nation’s top doctor— C. Everett Koop was much beloved and undeniably respected. So why is the Web site that bears his name in such disarray?

By Alexandra Biesada

Politics & Policy

The Attack

The New York Times versus Texas: It’s only the beginning.

By Gregory Curtis

Sports

Winter in L.A.

Whether coaching the Chicago Bulls to six NBA titles or leading the Lakers to their best record in years, Phil Jackson has had one constant: Wellington native Tex Winter at his side.

By Joel Reese

Music

Chaps Schtick

How Lubbock’s Legendary Stardust Cowboy stays legendary after all these years.

By Katy Vine

Reporter

Music Review

Places in Between

Visualize Sheryl Crow in overalls, or maybe Ani Difranco with a down-home Texas perspective: that’s Terri Hendrix, the singer-songwriter-entrepreneur-czarina, in a nutshell. Born and raised in San Antonio and now living in San Marcos, Hendrix is a walking advertisement for sunny confidence and boundless enthusiasm, qualities that she’s been polishing

By Joe Nick Patoski

Music Review

Greyhound Blues

If not for this CD, which was recorded last year, most Texans would never have been aware of Beaumont’s Ervin Charles, who died on April 1 at age 68 with little more than two credits on 1999’s Lone Star Shootout CD to show for a storied, fifty-year career. The ferocious

By John Morthland

Music Review

All the Falsest Hearts Can Try

If you haven’t heard of Centro-matic, it’s certainly not for lack of effort on the group’s part. All the Falsest Hearts Can Try is the Denton band’s third CD in little more than a year; it dates back to a 1998 recording session that produced more than sixty songs, completing

By Jason Cohen

Book Review

Shutdown

As a novelist, Austin’s R. J. Pineiro is a great computer engineer—but that’s not necessarily bad since his thriller Shutdown (Forge) relies on his knowledge of chip manufacturing. You wonder, though, if Texas Instruments expected its chip to be blamed for a fictional train crash that tosses 164

By Mike Shea

Book Review

Galveston

“It doesn’t get any better than this” is the motto that graces the entrance to Stewart Beach Amusement Park in Lubbock native Sean Stewart’s phantasmagorical Galveston (Ace Fantasy). But during Mardi Gras 2004, those words acquire droll irony after a tidal wave of magic inundates the Island and wreaks insidious

By Mike Shea

Book Review

World of Pies

Some authors dream up bizarre murders and other aberrations to thicken their plots. World of Pies proves that even the simplest of stories can leave readers fully satisfied. The first novel by Austinite Karen Stolz, World of Pies is about coming of age in a small Texas town—specifically

By Anne Dingus

Face

Ray Sexton and April Alford

Good neighbors, good fencers.

By Katy Vine

Texas Classics

Rain Man

The Time It Never Rained.

By Don Graham

Music Review

Live At Antone’s

It’s the beginning of a new decade, so like clockwork, it must be time for a new Joe Ely live album. Live Shots (1980) chronicled his tour with the Clash; Live At Liberty Lunch (1990) was a career snapshot that captured the power of his performances. Live At Antone’s, a

By Luann Williams

Politics & Policy

Executive Ranch

Life around the town of Crawford sure was slow until George W. Bush bought a ranch there.

By Joe Nick Patoski

Low Talk

The Temp

Meet our governor . . . Rodney Ellis?

By Evan Smith

The Ex Files

Annette O’Toole

Dancing with Annette O’Toole

By Patricia McConnico

Music Review

Figure 8

In recent years Elliott Smith has owned up to his fear of playing the kind of music he wanted. A bit of a mope, Smith avoids discussing his Dallas boyhood and has veiled much of his earlier work in an obtuse cloud of hipness, resulting in pop Chinese food. Yet

By Jeff McCord

Web

Recipe

Filo-Wrapped Sea Bass

Filo-Wrapped Sea Bass on Mustard-Braised LeeksTomato Jam1 tablespoon brown sugar 1 tablespoon cider vinegar 1 pinch each of cinnamon, cloves, and cumin 1 twelve-ounce can tomatoes, drained, seeded, and chopped 1 tablespoon honeyCook sugar, vinegar and spices for about a minute. Add tomatoes, cook for about 30 minutes, then add

By Texas Monthly

Miscellany

State Fare

Will you enjoy the wrapped sea bass at San Antonio's Biga on the Banks? That depends on how you filo.

By Patricia Sharpe

Around the State

Those jeans! That hat! George Strait returns to Dallas and Houston. Plus: Wichita Falls heats up the gridiron; San Antonio discovers Lebanese kibbe; Round Top sings James Dick's praises; and the Houston Comets tip off.

By Texas Monthly

Roar of the Crowd

Making sense of the Aggie Bonfire.

By Texas Monthly

Texas Primer