There's been a smoking ban in city parks since April (whoops), and we learned yesterday that it will indeed extend to Austin City Limits music festival this weekend. Zilker Park is included in the Austin park department's list of parks that are banned, but as the Statesman points out, there's not really much in terms of consequence for those who ignore the request. Since the ban is more of a directive (read: not an ordinance), police officers can't actually issue a citation if you're caught. The plan is for officers and park rangers to ask smokers to extinguish their cigarettes, and if smokers refuse, they'll be asked to leave. If they refuse to leave, police will get more involved and potentially issue a trespassing citation. Smokers can leave the festival grounds and smoke outside the park, but they'll have to pass through security again. Single day pass holders won't be allowed to enter again if they've left the park, so that offer is only good for the three-day ticket holders. Read more about it here. more ›

KLBJ DJs suspended after making repeated racial slurs. Austin man's death likely to be heat-related. Our troops need their smokes. Oh Paris, we don't need your stinkin' smiles. Je t'aime! Meghan, just come out of the closet...as a Democrat. 50 million and counting. Who needs health coverage, really. Obama and his mom jeans (video). more ›

Young guy, wearing sunglasses inside of Quack's Bakery in the middle of the night, talking to a girl sitting near him:Do you reside here frequently? At I Luv Video on Airport Blvd., a female customer holding a DVD case: Is Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle any good? Dreadlocked Male Employee:Uh, that depends. Do you smoke weed? Female customer: I guess I could make a stop on the way home. DME: There's a... more ›

Photo of Z. Bechtol from statesman.com Man found dead under car at a Round Rock Walgreens. Zenobia Bechtol, 14, has been missing since last night around 10pm. More than half of the state's school districts pass on the teacher merit pay plan. Smoking ban started today at some Central Texas hospitals. The two suspects who broke into McBrides earlier this week weren't after guns. State Rep. Dawnna Dukes receives a $10,000 donation from Bob Perry's... more ›

Waller Creek Design Workshop. Image from City of Austin News Austin Music Commission's Town Hall Meeting Notes AMD Sued Over Birth Defects Plant a Tree for Freedom Waller Creek Design and Vision Workshop At This Rate, We're Having Our Next Happy Hour in Cancun Pangaea: It's For Real, Y'all UT Biologists Propose Biodiversity Institute Save BookWoman! Austin Music Commission Considering Plan to Stop the Rock They've Got the Lasers... Now All You Need is... 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 ›

Prefuse 73 - Preparations Electronic musician Guillermo Scott Herren, a.k.a. Prefuse 73, has spent years building some of the most elaborate and abstract hip-hop productions on the market today; thing is, they’re aren’t really on the market. Rather than auctioning his wares to the highest bidder, Herren weaves his tracks together into loose instrumental albums, bringing in a guest MC if he feels like it. Preparations, his latest, features plenty of vocals, but barely any... more ›

Band of Horses Cease to Begin (Sub Pop) Editors Note: This review reflects the personal opinions and experiences of the writer and does not necessarily reflect those of the Ist network as a whole. Enjoy! In your typical southern suburban town of Irmo in Columbia, South Carolina is where Band of Horses singer Ben Bridwell and I went to high school. Among the strip malls and neighborhood watch signs, between high school football games... more ›

Director Jason Reitman and Screenwriter Diablo Cody have just been confirmed as panelists for this year's Austin Film Festival. Reitman and Cody are the team behind the brilliant new comedy Juno, which is screening as the festival's centerpiece film (and which we highly recommend seeing). Jason (son of legendary comedic director Ivan Reitman) is best known for his critically adored feature film debut Thank You For Smoking, but he has also directed several shorts, including... more ›

The new head of EMI apparently gets it. Study: "War on Terror" is spawning legions of terrorists. Texas investor to help fund the International Space Station with the hope of saving millions of lives. Campaign by Blackwater to further embarrass our country continues to be a great success. Parisian vandals destroy valuable piece of art, trot away laughing, smoking cigarettes and looking absolutely fabulous. Article about students getting it on during class at a... more ›

Editors’ note: The opinions and ideas expressed in this opinion piece are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the outlook and belief of anyone else in the Ist network. I hadn't initially planned to attend The Flaming Lips show at La Zona Rosa this past Tuesday, opting to avoid possible run-ins with any "Furries", but a last-minute ticket to a Lips show is not something to turn one's nose up... more ›

Weird: Finding a human leg in a smoker you bought at auction. Weirder: It wasn't from a murder, the owner of leg was too attached to let it go. Woman gives birth to 17-pound baby. And no, she's not American. SHOCK! Parts of the Patriot Act are unconstitutional. Not only was he making dogs kill each other, but he was smoking weed too. The U.S. Citizenship test just got a little bit harder. Not... more ›

By now, the media buzz surrounding blogger darling and dance party curator Dan Deacon has made his upcoming gig at Mohawk chatter-worthy (after his performance at Emo's earlier this summer, party animals who missed the event started marking their calendars) and his career absolutely viable: he's toured with Girl Talk, and only needs to press 'play' to get a news item on Pitchfork. Rather than remind you (again) to go check him out, we'd... 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 ›

A San Antonio-area nonprofit is suing to have their chimpanzees returned from Louisiana Is someone trying to take down the Dollar General? The City of Austin has opted to extend the waterway ban on Lake Austin until Friday The Texas Department of Transportation begins inspections on possibly suspect bridges A 6-year-old girl in North Texas crashed her bike into a parked trailer and gets her head punctured by 4 inches of rebar Bars and... more ›

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a... more ›

It's the hot Astanga instructor at Yoga Yoga South, or the girl in the cutoffs at El Chilito. It's the smoking UPS guy or your favorite Lone Star Rollergirl. It's your local secret crush. Our column returns with an interview with one of Austin's local gallery owners and artists: E. Moises Diaz of Urban Roots Gallery. We received a request to interview him by a married lady (gasp!) who wrote not just on her behalf,... more ›

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with... more ›

WEDNESDAY [18] lecture • KLRU's SPARK Series Welcomes Douglas Rushkoff at The Paramount (7:30pm, Tickets are HALF OFF from Noon-7:30pm!) benefit/film • Friends of the Festival Anniversary Celebration (Cine Las Americas) at 2308 Fortune Drive ($100, 6-9pm) books • Poetry on the Plaza: Living Poets at The Harry Ransom Center (12 Noon) books • The Intimacies Group with Karen Kreps at BookPeople (7:00pm) books • Stephanie Elizondo Griest presents 100 Places Every Woman Should... more ›

SXSW 2007's music portion kicks off three weeks from today. We hope you are keeping hydrated, getting extra sleep, and listening to every MP3 you can find in order to plan your schedules. In an effort to help you, the festival goer, here are some great recent developments in the SX world: - Saturday brought the reveal of the SXSW showcase schedule and band bio pages. After a delayed start with the band list,... more ›

One would think that this would be the week to make connections, with people trying to find quick a hookup, even if just for that one evening. But there aren't many Valentine's Day desperate connections to be had--just a lot of normal desperate connections. So get out there and take a peek, as we bring you the best of last week's Missed Connections... Stupid Cad Girl Seeks Missing Purse. Lost During Debauchery Although Jim... more ›

Sen. Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) will soon present Senate Bill 368 in the Texas Legislature, a bill that would create a statewide smoking ban if passed. The bill is essentially the product of diligent efforts by the anti-smoking interest group Smoke-Free Texas, a health-minded group seeking to prohibit smoking in all “public places” throughout the entire state. S.B. 368, if passed, would circumvent all other municipal smoking bans, such as the one here in Austin. It... more ›

Whether you've just entered your twenties and are thinking about things like what to major in in College, or you can see 30 looming on the horizon (or fading behind you, for that matter) there's at least one thing that everyone has in common: parenthood. Wait, what? Seriously. Think about it: you are either a parent yourself, or you'll eventually become one, or your friends are parents or maybe you simply have parents (and the... more ›

Tarleton State University students are making national headlines for recent pictures they posted on Facebook.com after hosting an MLK Day Party, where guests wore gang apparel, drank malt liquor, carried handguns and ate fried chicken. One girl even dressed as Aunt Jemima. The Smoking Gun has the pictures. Donald Ray Elder, leader of the NAACP at the Stephenville, Texas university, found the pictures while browsing Facebook and sent an e-mail to party-thrower Jeremy Pelz.... more ›

We don't know about you, but it's friggin cold out there. Well, not for some of you. It seems as though places that are supposed to be cold are warm and places that are supposed to be warm are cold. Or maybe that's just us. Either way, we're freezing. Austinist said goodbye to their co-editor (sell-out) and played rumor monger on the SXSW lineup. And when dozens of dead birds littered downtown Austin, it's... more ›

TUESDAY [5] benefit • Holiday Mix and Mingle for AIDS Services of Austin at Firehouse Lounge (6-8pm, $10 donation with complimentary drink tickets) books • Annual Day of the Ninja books • The Utter Reading Series with Carrie Fountain and Steve Moore at BookPeople (7:00pm) film • AFS Essential: Millennium Actress at Alamo Downtown (7pm) film • Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels at Rounders Pizzeria (8pm, Free) film • Fuck: A Documentary at Alamo... more ›

Tomorrow marks the 30th year of the American Cancer Society’s day-long Smoking Cessation program, The Great American Smoke Out. The premise of the day is to get smokers to quit smoking for just one day. The hope is that with each passing hour, smokers will want to "Stay Quit," and resist the urge to light up until smoking addiction is no longer an issue. It doesn’t take a Rocket Scientist to tell you what you... more ›

And you thought Mr. Holland’s Opus made you cry…listen to Richard Dreyfuss talk Middle Eastern politics at the Texas Union Ballroom on Nov. 2nd, 7 p.m. Get tickets at Student Events Center Tickets Office (Room 4.300 of The Union). Smoking is BAD. You should quit. Attend the four-session Quitters Stop Smoking Class held every Friday starting Oct. 27 at noon. Sign up at SSB 1.106. Or, if you're not into group work pick up... more ›

The City of Austin intends to contest the ruling, issued earlier this month, that portions of the smoking ban were "unconstitutionally vague." As you might recall, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks didn't entirely overturn the ban, ruling instead that the consequences for smoking in bars were in the hands of the smokers themselves, rather than the establishments. Today's announcement was issued by the city law department, which declared, using somewhat circuitous reasoning, that it's appealing... more ›