The Problems With “100-Year Floods”
They seem to happen a lot more often than once a century, for one thing.
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.
Articles by John Nova Lomax
49 Experts Agree: That Third Photo of Robert Johnson Is Not Authentic
But the real mystery is, why are we still so obsessed with this particular Mississippi Delta blues legend?
Three Feet High and Risin’
After ravaging the Hill Country, the Memorial Day rains played havoc on Houston.
Wild Berry Season Is Upon Us. Partake!
Picking dewberries (and making cobblers, pies, jams, or jellies) is a time-honored foraging tradition.
Louisiana “Witch Doctor” Jailed For Aiding Texas Cocaine Cartels
A Nigerian-born Louisiana man says he’s a chief and not a “witch doctor,” and his case recalls a far more horrible one from 26 years ago.
From UTMB to the Deep Blue Sea
Leaving her Galveston desk, computer, and academic job far behind, Roxanne “Rocky” Hadler now makes her living traveling the world over aboard tall sailing ships.
They Are Called Doodlebugs, Dang It
A rant about the proper Southeast Texas name for the little armadillo-like critters in our backyards.
Are the One-Way Streets in Our City Centers Killing Neighborhoods, Causing Crime, and Depressing Property Values?
And could converting streets to two-way revitalize blighted sections of Texan inner cities, especially Houston’s still-moribund downtown?
Wrestling With My Confederate Texan Heritage
My great-great-grandfather James Avery Lomax was a plainspoken racist and illiterate slaveholder, but he was still a man worth honoring. As were many other former Confederates. Their Lost Cause, on the other hand, can go to hell.
Coming Soon: A Large Confederate Memorial on I-10, Just Inside the Texas State Line
The Confederate Memorial of the Wind in Orange will remind 55,000 motorists a day of the rebel heritage many Texans would just as soon forget.
Shaka Smart Signed on to Coach the Texas Longhorns Basketball Team
Meet the Longhorns’s erudite, innovative, and fatherly new hoops coach.
Another Day, Another Proposal to Save the Astrodome
Or perhaps a more fitting and respectful fate is to just let the structure crumble, to go the way of the ancient ruins.
True Tex-Mex Cuisine’s Long Adios
Beset by high-end interior Mexican, mid-range fajita-and-’rita chains, budget taquerias, and taco trucks—and whatever Torchy’s is—Houston’s old-school Tex-Mex is fading away.
Highlights From Robert Durst’s Houston Years
For the past ten years, the notorious, newly minted documentary superstar has been relaxing in affluent obscurity in Houston’s most fashionable areas, not creeping people out at all—most of the time.
Glass Frat Houses
In the aftermath of the racist Sigma Alpha Epsilon video, Texas is in no position to throw stones at Oklahoma. And we are not alone in that, sadly.
Three Pies in the Houston Skies
Houston Redditors makes wishes that will probably never come true.
A Cattle Heist of Epic Proportions
More than 1,100 calves have vanished into thin Panhandle air. Poof, gone. Looking at the numbers of this landmark cattle theft.
No, Sharpstown, Texas, Did Not Fire its Police Force and Bring About a Huge Drop in Crime
There’s no such town, no cops were fired, and the drop in crime is debatable. The rest is spot-on.
Is Texas Southern, Western, or Truly a Lone Star?
Despite a century of homegrown rebranding efforts, some historians believe Texas remains as Dixie as ever.
The Rules of Engagement Rings
You bust up before you two say “I do.” Who gets to keep the rock?
Once a Travesty, Houston Now Texas’s Leader in Rape Kit Testing
Early results from sifting through a backlog of more than 6,600 evidence lockers include fresh convictions and hundreds of matches with the FBI’s national DNA database.
Bun B on Faith, Sin, Integrity, and Hip-Hop as Religion
The veteran rapper won’t perform his music at Rice for any amount of money. School is for teaching.
The Butterfly Crisis
Monarch numbers are way, way down, and what you’ve been planting to help them might be doing more harm than good.
Eight Reasons Grackles Are Awesome
Maybe it’s time we kick the mockingbird off its perch as the state bird and replace it with an avian friend with even more personality and visibility.
Lance Armstrong Does It Again; Enhances Position Among Texan Sports Disgraces
With the cyclist attempting to let his girlfriend take the blame for an alleged Aspen hit-and-run, he distances himself from the pack of fallen athletic heroes.
A Closer Look at the Texas High School Student-Teacher Sex Epidemic
In most states, as the old saying goes, fifteen will get you twenty. In Texas, twenty can get you twenty, if you are employed by a school district in any capacity.
You Call That Texas Chili? Get A Rope.
The New York Times’s latest stab at authentic Texas cooking is even weirder than most.
Music
Remembering Bobby “Blue” Bland
In their sixties Houston-based prime, the music of Bobby “Blue” Bland and his musical director Joe Scott was every bit as good as that of Frank Sinatra and Nelson Riddle.
An Evening With Mr. Cub
A Texas couple dines with the late Ernie Banks at Harry Caray’s Steakhouse in Chicago, talking about everything but baseball.
An old friend says Houston’s Benthall, the alleged administrator of online drug emporium Silk Road 2.0, is an even unlikelier drug lord than Austinite Ross Ulbricht, who is currently on trial for running Silk Road 1.0. Which is not say that she thinks Benthall is innocent...
Five of the Riciest Things That Rice Ever Riced
A few of our brainiest school’s most brazen assaults on common sense, good taste, and sacred Collies.
A Year After Houston’s Flower Man Died, His House Will Join Him in the Great Beyond
One of Houston’s most cherished art landmarks can’t survive the ravages of the climate or the loss of its hyperkinetic, ever-improvising creator.
State Moves to Seize Cash in Spousal Hit Plot
A Cypress man is accused of paying $5,000 to take a hit out on his wife, and now the state is attempting to seize that money—money that presumably also belongs in part to the woman who was the intended victim the crime.
Randy Weber Backtracks From Tweet Likening Obama to Hitler
The representative from Texas apologized for a tweet that said, “Even Adolph Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris.”
Billionaire Fund Manager Fayez Sarofim Weds Son’s Mother-in-Law
After the New Year’s Eve nuptials of their mom and dad, Phillip and Lori Sarofim are now step-siblings as well as spouses. Fifteen years after his second messy and expensive divorce, has Fayez Sarofim found true love at last?
Finally, Thanks to Craig Biggio, a Cooperstown Bust Will Rock an Astros Hat
On his third attempt, former Astros catcher, second baseman, and center fielder Craig Biggio has gained entry into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
RIP, Little Joe Washington
When Little Joe died last month, Houston lost a link to its rich blues history.
Roll Over, Ike Turner
How a little-known Houston singer, songwriter, and guitarist named Goree Carter invented rock and roll.
