It’s December, baby. Where I am in Texas, that means enjoying iced holiday coffee drinks and reveling in the blissful two hours I get each morning to comfortably wear chunky sweaters before the temperature inevitably creeps upward and I change into a t-shirt. For me, December also means snuggling up on my parents’ couch with all the lights turned off, our Christmas tree glowing, and watching my ultimate comfort show: Gilmore Girls. While the show doesn’t have any Christmas specials, each season features a holiday themed episode. So, in honor of the show’s 20th anniversary earlier this year, here is…

Hollywood Western films are filled with archetypes. Tumbleweed and cacti. Campsites under the stars with cozy fires and cans of beans. In town, a saloon with a wily gunslinger and an analytical sheriff sipping on foamy mugs of beer. Center screen, a cowboy with a strong moral compass, an even stronger jawline and skin that is tanned but always white.

But that’s just Hollywood. In reality, cowboys worked long hours away from their families, driving cattle hundreds of miles. They calmly roamed towns, maintaining order. They rode angry bulls in rowdy arenas. In reality, many cowboys were Black men.

Larry…

It all started as a joke. My roommate and I were browsing Hulu on a Thursday or Saturday or maybe Monday night (they’ve all felt the same lately), when she said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we started watching Love Island?”

I laughed, but then I thought about it for a second. Why not watch it? It was something new, and lighthearted, and it would be a refreshing change of pace from rewatching Gilmore Girls like I always do. We picked season four of Love Island UK at random and dove in.

Love Island is a British reality dating series…

Today, young professionals are moving into East Austin, enticed by the proximity to downtown and the hip bars, taco trucks and coffee shops around each corner.

Meanwhile, Black residents who live in the same houses their grandparents lived in face higher property values, leaving them with few options besides moving out of the city.

One way the city of Austin has tried to curb this gentrification is through the designation of historic landmarks. When an old East Austin home becomes a historic landmark, it is protected. …

Once a month, Austin resident Patricia King drives 20 miles from her home to an H-E-B in Bastrop to buy groceries. She spends $200 on canned goods, pasta, grains, meat and cleaning supplies. If she runs out of something before the month is over, she goes to the Dollar General down the street from her home or simply goes without.

“The only thing I buy there in terms of fruit is maybe some apples because I know apples can last,” King said. “And if I run out, I just run out.”

King lives in Del Valle — an unincorporated suburb…

The first time Mo Fischer got into drag, she first went to the barbershop to cut her hair. She saved the trimmings, and used the pieces to make facial hair she attached with eyelash glue. She stuffed a sock in her pants — an old baggy pair from a thrift store to hide her womanly figure. She put on an old bowling shirt, “Dick” stitched on the front.

In her new disguise, Fischer walked through the streets of New York City to meet some friends at the now-closed lesbian bar Meow Mix. Then a group of men started walking by…