If your phone hasn’t already reminded you, tonight the W will play host to the April edition of Austin Tech Happy Hour. Starting at 6 p.m., tech-minded people from around the capitol area will be wearing nametags(as they often do), having a drink(as they often do), and meeting some of the people they have friended, added, and maybe squeezed into a hashtag. more ›

• Ivory Coast on "brink of genocide," UN ambassador reports.
• Mississippi guv lets sisters out of jail on strange condition.
• Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away. . .

Tito's Vodka, Austin's award-winning liquor distillery, pleaded no contest today on a charge of illegally draining industrial wastewater into a Southeast Austin creek. more ›

• Governor Perry issues a legal challenge contesting the idea that greenhouse gasses are bad for people.
• The Texas Supreme Court will be hearing the case about how “exotic dancing” is free speech. If so, then a $5 tax (per strip-club patron) violates the First Amendment. (Maybe they’re thinking that the Constitution includes the right to bare anything you want?)
• Austin's ubergamer Richard Garriott launches a new social-networking game company!

Now that you have voted (and picked up your freebies rewarding you for participating in our democratic process), perhaps you are wondering where you can watch the election results with people of like mind. Here are some options for you: more ›

In Austin, it is hard to find quality French fare at low prices, but Péché may now be here to fill that void. With a menu of rich and savory dishes all under 20 bucks, and touting the claim as Austin's first absinthe bar, Péché is definitely worth the trip. more ›

photo by Rikke Iversholt from dragcity.com Alasdair Roberts, CharalambidesTonightThe Mohawk (912 Red River)doors at 9, all ages, tickets at the door[info]What is it about Scotland that produces such hordes of mope-addled songwriters? The moors? The drink? Their everlasting proximity to the Irish? Anyhow, Alasdair Roberts has been recording mostly solo acoustic tunes since the mid-'90s, first as Appendix Out and recently under his given name, and it's all first-class mope material--not as poppy as that... more ›

Promotional still from Alamo website Lord of the Rings Trilogy Hobbit FeastSunday, November 25thAlamo Drafthouse Downtown (320 E 6th Street)$100, 10:30am-11pm; includes all three films, food, and wine[info] | [tickets]According to national legend, this is a week--nay, a season!--for tryptophan-laden wretched excess and communion with loved ones. Hey, if you've got it like that, family-style communitas can be nice and fulfilling, yes, but can your family hang for TWELVE HOURS of Lord of the Rings... more ›

Photo by jetalone on flickrThe third Thursday of November (one week before Big American-Style Thanksgiving) marks Beaujolais Day - setting off a sort of Cannonball Run of wine, with distributors racing to get wildly celebrated bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau, the red wine made exclusively from Gamay grapes produced in the Beaujolais region of France, to market. We were busy drinking some middle-of-the-road Sauvignon Blanc last night or we would have totally reminded you yesterday. According... more ›

Poster by City On Fire Stitch AfterpartySaturday, November 10thThe Mohawk (912 Red River)10 pm, $5[info] If you attend The Stitch Fashion Show and Guerrilla Craft Bazaar at the Austin Convention Center you're gonna leave with a bellyful of terrific Austin homemade couture. You're also gonna be sad that it's over. To extend the experience, sometime tomorrow around 10pm you should find your way over to the Mohawk for the afterparty. DJ Abominatron (Indirect/Blue Noise) and... more ›

Photo courtesy Jessica Plymate StitchSaturday, November 10Austin Convention Center [map]Doors at 4pm, Fashion show 9:30pm, Tickets $10[info] | [tickets]Jessica Plymate revives the art of appliqué in super rockin' way with Aorta Designs. Gone are the days of mom's innocent poodles sewn on skirts. Jessica's animals are hardcore; drinking wine and smoking cigarettes. What is your design/art background? This is where I have to confess I have no formal training in design, art or anything. I've... more ›

Brunch: the perfect weekend meal. You sleep in, roll out, and eat the best kinds of foods at a different and superior hour than the rest of the week. Anything that involves the illicit acts of consuming loads of carbohydrates and drinking firewater before noon while not at a sporting event has our votes. There are a number of places that one can find such a wondrous meal, ranging from holy-fuck-that's-expensive to the hey-sure-bring-your-dog. We've... more ›

Emo’s presents a southern style country-rock bonanza tonight. The wonderfully named Whiskey & Co. kick things off at 10 p.m. with authentic country sounds and impressive song titles such as “Nightlife” and “Happy Hour”, streaming readily on their MySpace page. When we last spoke with one of Nashville’s favorite sons, Bobby Bare Jr., we learnt of the upcoming Bare Jr. reunion in November, as well as Bobby’s desire to possibly incorporate the banjo in his... more ›

Back in August, we told you a little bit about the Dismember the Alamo Zombie Film Fest happening at the Alamo Lake Creek this week. And because we love us some zombies (who doesn't?), we figured we'd remind you about it, and quickly run down the programming, which is mostly focused on intentionally goofy flicks, but still looks pretty great. Check it! Pathogen with Writer/Director Emily Hagins Live! Tuesday October 23rd, 7:30pm We're kind of... more ›

One of Texas' most popular and oldest independent craft breweries — Saint Arnold Brewing Company — is hot off a gold medal win at the Great American Beer Festival. Judges at the annual festival in Denver awarded Fancy Lawnmower Beer the gold medal in the German Style Kölsch/Köln Style Kölsch category. This is the first gold medal win for Saint Arnold's. Lawnmower beers, for the uninitiated, are light, crisp, and ideal for hot weather drinking.... more ›

From the looks on everyone's faces Saturday night it appeared that a very sad event had apparently transpired, although we are not sure what it might have been. In other news we have noticed a lot of great deals on tickets for next week's football game. We're just glad that it was a bi-week for the longhorns, no game for them whatsoever. Yep, nothing to see here, move along. On the bright side we're... more ›

Violent crime goes up in the US; so do arrests for pot. Apparently, nobody in Iran is gay. Even gay people. It's been fifty years since Little Rock, and now we have Jena. Progress... If Microsoft buys Facebook, will it become lame? Or don't the corporate kids care? India gets meta with the outsourcing. Kiefer Sutherland arrested for DUI. Maybe he's drinking to drown the guilt over his torture-show? Newest sex tape scandal features...Meg... more ›

It’s time to channel the patio-dwelling, agua fresca-drinking short film lover inside of you, for Nueva Onda restaurant will be serving up some Purely Austin Shorts tomorrow night free of charge. All you have to do is show up, sit down, and stuff your face. The synopses of all four films sound promising and the line up is eclectic enough to suit a variety of tastes. The night begins with Room of Ghosts --... more ›

On the eve of ACL Fest, we're gonna turn off our laptops, put on our drinking shoes, and head over to the Mohawk, because Austinist is hosting Local Music is Sexy IV. An annual tradition since its inception in 2005 (back when the 'hawk was the Velvet Spade, and folks were still arguing over the smoking ban), Local Music is Sexy showcases a bunch of promising young Austin bands and DJs that we're most excited... more ›

*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors I used to have a friend-in-drinking who worked with me, many summers passed. We were pretty tight cohorts. Stood up for each other at the work place, and then poured liquid disaster-hammer all over our livers after punching the clock. “He’s a good guy,” I’d say to anyone who tried to disparage... more ›

The Spicewood bar where an Austin Police commander and her husband, also an officer, were drinking before dying in a motorcycle crash was shut down by the TABC Today was the 41st anniversary of the UT Tower shootings Six cases of human West Nile Virus have been reported in Texas this year After the scandal earlier this year where UT's financial aid chief Lawrence Burt had improper dealings with a student loan company, the... more ›

Austin native Rebecca Rosenberg has been living in South Korea teaching English, and she wants to share her experiences abroad with all of Austin. Austinist believes that we could all use some Korean culture. The other morning I woke up with one of those hangovers belonging in a special class. I call it a please, someone, shoot me in the face morning. Sure, it was a Sunday after the Boryeong Mud Festival [dear lord,... more ›

Ready to make some connections and get into the summer swing? Grab the lawn chairs and fill up the coolers, the sun is out and it's time to take advantage of the Texas summer. We know that you're busy, so we're working hard to find the best of last week's Missed Connections... To the girl whose ass I slapped at Beauty Bar - m4w This is more of a connection that should've gone missed,... more ›

In a lot of ways, Trinidad, Colorado isn't so different from other small towns. They've got a population of 9,000, the local economy is transitioning away from once-prosperous mining and ranching, and Christ is Lord. But Trinidad, like many of its visitors, has a little something extra: Over the past forty years, six thousand people have traveled there to undergo sex-change operations. Dr. Stanley Biber secretly began performing genital-reassignment surgery, or GRS, in 1969, hiding... more ›

Dionysus is the god of wine; Dionysium is the wine of debate. Or something like that. In keeping with this weekend's Live Earth concert, which used only 357873 billion* kilowatts of electricity to promote green energy practices, Austin's infamous Alamo Drafthouse-housed (Drafthoused?) Dionysium debate/music/film/ drunken-intellectualism panel goes green tomorrow night. This latest installment of Dionysium will feature a presentation about Austin's Kill-A-Watt Challenge, a highly important debate about a still-nebulous topic between as-yet-undetermined individuals,... more ›

Go ahead and order that failure bowl at KFC and dig in with your spork of sadness, it might be the only thing that will smother the despair that will come with missing Patton Oswalt present Ratatouille tonight at the Alamo. That’s right kids, it’s sold out. In fact, it was sold out last Thursday. You will just have to wait until June 29th for your yearly dose of Pixar magic and Brad Bird brilliance.... more ›

Whenever we hear the word “pinball” all we can think of is drinking suicides in the game room at Mazzio’s Pizza and the lyrical wonderment of “that deaf, dumb and blink kid sure plays a mean pinball” from the Who’s Tommy. You may think of that one time, at Le Fun, when you pinged and flipped and bumpered your way to a tour of the Addams Family mansion, not knowing that you were conquering one... more ›

We're not sure if the Willowz are mourning or celebrating the death of rock, but we do know, they sound sort of like a souped up revival of the soundtrack to That '70s Show, which is probably for the best, as otherwise, their hairstyles would be gross misrepresentation, and they'd probably be way less fun to listen to. Think of the sound as the less synthetic side of glam rock – more tooled leather... more ›

Okay, okay—so it's not that big a deal that the Alamo Downtown is relocating. All it really means is that we have to walk a few extra blocks to get there, which, quite frankly, will be good for our waistline. Plus, there'll be more seating and bigger screens, so we guess we'll learn to cope. But we're definitely sad to see the old theatre go; we've spent a lot of nights eating, drinking, laughing, cheering... more ›