
Did you know "Margaritaville" is actually set in north Austin? Er, sort of.
John Nova Lomax has been an oyster shucker in Tennessee, a landscape gardener and British Telecom mail clerk in Lancashire, and a field hand on a kibbutz in the Arava section of the Negev in Israel. He is also the author of Houston's Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the Bayou City, a guidebook to Houston dive bars, and co-author of Murder & Mayhem in Houston: Historic Bayou City Crime, a compilation of notorious Houston crimes.
Lomax has been a full-time journalist in the Bayou City since 2001. He spent eleven years at the Houston Press as a music editor and staff writer and is proudest of helping discover Hayes Carll, rediscover Lil’ Joe Washington, and winning an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award in 2008. With future Marfa city councilman and justice of the peace David Beebe, Lomax walked a total of more than 200 miles of Houston streets on about a dozen different trips, writing about the adventures as part of the “Sole of Houston” blog series. After leaving the music beat, Lomax covered crime, courts and culture for the Press. His work has also appeared in Spin, the New York Times, the Village Voice, and LA Weekly. He has been a senior editor with Texas Monthly since January 2015.
Jan 20, 2016 — By John Nova Lomax
Did you know "Margaritaville" is actually set in north Austin? Er, sort of.
Jan 19, 2016 — By John Nova Lomax
San Antonio seems poised to support Los Raiders, but what about Jerry Jones?
Jan 14, 2016 — By John Nova Lomax
Lanier was in the Confederate Army, but that wasn't his legacy. So why is Sidney Lanier Middle School's name on the chopping block?
Jan 7, 2016 — By John Nova Lomax
Inside Stanley Drug Company, the last hoodoo shop in Texas.
Jan 5, 2016 — By John Nova Lomax
The University of Houston has had a helluva football season, but will the program be able to keep its rising star coach?
Jan 4, 2016 — By John Nova Lomax
After years of trying to find out about the subject of this photo, clues emerge in an unlikely place.
Jan 4, 2016 — By John Nova Lomax
As the price of crude keeps plunging and the oil and gas layoffs mount, more and more bad news is coming from Houston’s residential real estate market, even as some developers are building or planning still more luxury condo projects.
Dec 22, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
“Day for Night wants to be a festival no one has ever seen before” thundered a Houston Press blog headline earlier this month. I don’t know if I would go quite that far, but Houston has not seen an event quite like this since 1986, when Jean-Michel Jarre uplifted…
Dec 21, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
A definitive analysis of the last six coaching changes and the talent (or lack thereof) each of them left behind.
Dec 17, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Yeah, it sounds pretty tinfoil hat-y, but it isn't without precedent in the UT football program.
Dec 8, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
How SEC wargaming and Aggie fears got in the way of a much better postseason matchup.
Dec 3, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
The green anole is being displaced by its faster, fiercer relative, the brown anole.
Dec 2, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
As Cypress loses one of the oldest dance halls in the state, we look at what's causing the decline in their popularity.
Nov 30, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
More specifically, Houston might be not be a world-class medical center, Austin might not be the Live Music Capital of the World, and the Aggies might not have that recent Heisman Trophy-winning alum.
Nov 18, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
An (extremely) amateur ornithologist’s examination of the monk parakeet and its time in Texas.
Nov 4, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Proponents of HERO used reason to get their point across, but they should've used dollar amounts.
Oct 30, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
With early voting closing Friday and election day looming on Tuesday, supporters of the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance have good reason to be concerned about its survival.
Oct 28, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Quarterback woes, public staff bickering, and an injured Arian Foster shredded any hope for the Houston Texans, but those are the least of their worries.
Oct 23, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Although we trail such medieval wonderlands as Spain, Bavaria, and Wales in castles per square mile, Texas is studded with crenellated, turreted strongholds, ranging from the kitschy to the magnificent.
Oct 20, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
You know you’ve seen it: condos multiplying, home prices tripling, realtors scrambling, buyers overbidding. Does our state’s fevered real estate craze make us the country’s best housing market—or the most overvalued? I went on a tour of our four largest cities to find out.
Oct 14, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
By the looks of it, McNair is more concerned with political influence than a winning team.
Oct 12, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
What a difference one game can make.
Oct 12, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
It's unfortunate, but the numbers don't lie.
Oct 1, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Don’t be fooled by claims of economic diversification—the city still runs on oil.
Sep 30, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
The UT-OSU game was never going to be a fair fight. Here's why.
Sep 18, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
How a nightly intruder became a semi-pet.
Sep 17, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
As Confederate names and statues disappear across Texas, we're still honoring a man with a hugely problematic history—just because he wasn't a Confederate.
Aug 31, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
The company's wholesome image doesn't match its current reality.
Aug 31, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Chronicling the rivalries of Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and Austin.
Aug 21, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Oh, you think it’s okay to put peas in guacamole, ’New York Times’? Let’s see how you like these Texan takes on classic New York City dishes. (The fourth in a series.)
Aug 14, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Oh, you think it’s okay to put peas in guacamole, ’New York Times’? Let’s see how you like these Texan takes on classic New York City dishes. (The third in a series.)
Jul 31, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Oh, you think it’s okay to put peas in guacamole, 'New York Times'? Let’s see how you like these Texan takes on classic New York City dishes. (The second in a series.)
Jul 27, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Further study of Spotify’s music maps shows Texas artists’ pockets of popularity outside of the state.
Jul 27, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
As the doors to Cuban travel slowly re-open, the author’s dad recalls his epic road/cruise ship trip to Havana just before Castro’s take-over, and we remember Castro’s hero’s welcome in Houston a few months later.
Jul 24, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Oh, you think it’s okay to put peas in guacamole, ’New York Times’? Let’s see how you like these Texan takes on classic New York City dishes. (The first in a series.)
Jul 23, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
The music sharing service shows how little Dallas and Houston have in common, how Austin loves critical darlings, and how much Aggies love Aggies.
Jul 17, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
As a San Angelo satirist proves, some people will believe any crazy thing you tell them in Texas drawls.
Jul 9, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
No, Business Insider, you can’t boil Texas down to just one movie, especially when that movie is Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Here are a few dozen more from across the state.
Jul 7, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Flag-waving rebels roll on Walmarts from Houston to Amarillo, an Odessa songsmith pens an anthem for the movement, and a Houston-area man’s banner is vandalized.
Jul 6, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Shipyard worker breaks every rule of gator safety and pays the ultimate price.
Jul 1, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
There are gators aplenty in East and South Texas, yet no Texan has ever been killed since records have been kept, despite close calls like what happened recently with a Chambers County boy.
Jun 30, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
With the sweets-stuffed effigies of the Big Apple mogul now on sale in the Valley, bashing the Donald just got that much easier.
Jun 25, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Everything weird that has happened the last two months happened for a reason, you understand?
Jun 25, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
An increasing number of Texans seem to think it’s sophisticated to call a group of people “you guys.” It’s not.
Jun 24, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Yes, the Confederate flag has to go. But what's after that? And what hopes are we pinning on the destruction of symbols?
Jun 18, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Mattress Firms are multiplying today as fast as chain pharmacies did twenty years ago, but how long can they stave off the future?
Jun 17, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Houston goes a bit nuts over a storm that was nothing like the Memorial Day floods.
Jun 11, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Our state flag kicks ass seven ways from Sunday. Maybe that’s why the vast majority of our city flags are terrible.
Jun 10, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
Proponents says it’s outgrown its small-neighborhood roots and that the move is indicative of the triumph of LGBT rights. Opponents say the event forsaking its soul in the name of dubious progress.
Jun 8, 2015 — By John Nova Lomax
According to a New York Times blog, our mid-seventies hockey prowess elevates us to only eleventh among cursed sports towns.
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