Hard drinkers rejoice! After serving it's audiences measly draft brew, wine and 5-beer buckets for the last 10 years, The Alamo Drafthouse at The Ritz has finally obtained a TABC liquor license (which has been serving Austin for the last 70 years) and will be offering up a plethora of newly-crafted beverages to enhance Austin's movie experience!...

Still from The Public Enemy The Public Enemy w/ White Ghost Shivers LiveWednesday, December 05Alamo Drafthouse Downtown (320 E 6th Street)9:30pm, $12, 21+[info] | [tickets]Calling all boozehounds! December 5th is your day to party 1930s style, as we celebrate the ratification of the 21st amendment to the U.S. constitution. You know--the end of prohibition! On December 5th 1933, the Twenty-first amendment was officially ratified, out-amending the sucky, unpopular 18th amendment which outlawed the sale of......

Last year, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Texas (BBBS-CT) provided over 82,000 hours of mentoring to 1,588 children in Travis, Williamson, McLennan and Brazos counties. This year, they've teamed up with the Neighborhood Longhorns Program (NLP), and are currently recruiting and pairing UT students with children at AISD elementary schools for a one-on-one mentoring relationship. Volunteers are needed to provide educational and social support through mentoring and tutoring for kids ranging from 6 to......

Doctors plugged an Italian tourist into a drip-feed of vodka to save him at a hospital in Australia that ran out of the medicinal alcohol it would normally have used for treatment. Plants chatter amongst themselves to spread information, a lot like humans and other animals, new research suggests. Actor Nick Nolte is a father again at age 66 after his British girlfriend of several years, Clytie Lane, gave birth to the couple's first......

Three of the ringleaders behind the now-defunct UT fraternity Lambda Phi Epsilon pleaded no contest to misdemeanor hazing charges today, nearly two years after freshman pledge Phanta "Jack" Phoummarath died of acute alcohol poisoning. Fraternity president Benny Chan, pledge captain Andrew Nguyen, and "Hellmaster" Kamal Pulukuri got off with little more than a slap on the wrists — according to the Statesman, each will serve two years of probation, "pay a $1,000 fine, perform 100......

M.I.A.'s Friday ACL performance felt so seductive because it was both spicy and sweet; but what else can you expect from a girl who salts and peppers her mango? She burst onto stage wearing pink pedal-pushers, white trainers, wrap-around glasses and war paint, all the while shimmying her heart out to Kala's "Bamboo Banga." Her dancing seemed confounded by tentative limb placement, and it marked her as one extremely sexy dork. (Hawt!) It's this......

UT Austin dropped from its much-heralded top spot in this year's rankings of the country's Best Party Schools, published in The Princeton Review's annual "Best Colleges" survey. Based on input from over 120,000 students across the nation, the rankings are a decent barometer of general public opinion among the notoriously fickle college set. Students were asked to rate universities based on "use of alcohol and drugs, hours of study each day, and the popularity......

As part of their ongoing investigations in the death of UT fraternity pledge Tyler Cross, who died last November after falling from a fifth story balcony at the University Towers, authorities are ">taking their search to the internets. The Travis County District Attorney's office recently filed a search warrant demanding access to the Google Group archives of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fall 2006 pledge class. In the affidavit, as described by KVUE News, investigators interrogated......

Two news items coming out this afternoon relate to Chester's, the East Austin nightclub near where a fatal shooting occurred earlier this summer. First off, Sgt. Michael Olsen has been cleared of any possible charges related to the shooting; the grand jury decided that Olsen's killing of Kevin Brown was not criminal. Brown had been patronizing Chester's before being shot as he raced from police. Secondly, and perhaps more damning to the club and......

Overweight girls are half as likely to go to college as non-overweight girls, claims a sociology professor at UT Austin. In a new report published in this month's Sociology of Education journal, associate professor Robert Crosnoe goes on to say that obese girls are even less likely to enter college if they've attended a high school where obesity is uncommon, suggesting that this disparity may be caused by various mental health and behavioral issues. Furthermore,......

At the upcoming August meeting, the city council will discuss an ordinance placing rules and regulations in place for BYOB businesses. If customers are allowed to bring in their own alcohol to a club/restaurant/place of business, that business will be required to obtain a permit. To obtain the permit, businesses must: provide security guards, close at or before 2:15am, and not allow alcohol in the parking lot. This is most likely a response to such......

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. Before coming, and even when you first arrive here, it’s easy to worry that South Korea is nothing more than an abyss of karaoke (here called norae bong), and watered down imitations of Western culture…and many times it is exactly......

You may have gotten an email requesting that you PLEASE HELP SAVE THE MEAN EYED CAT! Alack and alas, you may have thought, another Austin institution is falling prey to evil condo developers! Those bastards! Not quite. The Mean Eyed Cat was spared in the development of 5th Street Commons (which did not spare Austin Furniture Consignment or Pok-E-Jo's, although Pok-E-Jo's may get space in the new development). However, as a result of the......

Talk about getting a bad reputation for no reason! Zinfandel is the quintessential American grape: author Mark Oldman calls it the "great American wine" and describes it as "a varietal with mouth-filling heft and massive alcohol...which offers a lovable, jammy excursion built for immediate gratification." Unfortunately, many casual wine drinkers only associate the word Zinfandel with the horrible pink blush wine that comes out of a Franzia box. To help combat this misguided idea,......

Authorities will be holding a press conference later this afternoon to discuss the explosive device placed in the parking lot of the Austin Women's Health Center yesterday. The package was found about 2 p.m. Wednesday in the parking lot of the Austin Women's Health Center at 1902 S. Interstate 35, north of Oltorf Street. The clinic provides services including abortion. The southbound feeder road remained closed much of the evening, and I-35 was closed briefly......

Spring Break is over and the students at The University of Texas have reclaimed their city--things are slowly coming back together. However, before the break, one would assume that these future leaders of tomorrow would have saved up their energy for a vacation to Cancun, a road trip to Florida or, god forbid, staying in town for that music festival that you only gets you a wristband tanline. But just months, weeks and days......

Now in its thirtieth year, Carnaval Brasilero returns to Austin this Saturday. Over 6,000 Austinites are expected to attend the flamboyant Brazilian-style celebration of Samba-fuelled half-nakedness, funky costumes, friendliness and hedonism. This year will once again feature NYC samba band Grupo Saveiro and performers from local samba school Acadêmicos da Opera. The Carnaval web site notes that Grupo Saveiro was “twice voted ‘the best Brazilian group in the United States’ by the Brazilian International Press......

It was a dark night. The scene: A tanning salon, closed up for the night. The cats: An old man and a teenage boy, both dressed in black burglar outfits, only their eyes showing through their wool ski masks. “Jonesy, what’s the plan?” asked the youth to the old man. “Sheddup! And keep cool, Jack! We’re gonna score man, but first we gotta climb up through that window, dig?” He took the last drag......

Official Poster of First Night Austin 2007 by Peat Duggins After the tremendous success of last year's inaugural festival, First Night Austin returns to downtown this New Year's Eve with an all-day program full of music, art, theatre, dance, and more. Begun in Boston back in 1976 as a massive public gathering to ring in the new year through "art, ritual, and festivity," First Night events are now held all over the world, from......

- Who said student activism is dead? Remember when we told you earlier about how the students who study past 2am held a sit-in (peacefully) demanding longer library hours? Yesterday, the university announed that, starting in the Spring, the FAC will be open 24 hours. - One of the hundred-or-so bills filed for the next Texas Legislature will tackle locked-in four-year tuition rates. - For a minimum contribution of $2,000 (in addition to the......

Classes have ended at The University of Texas and winter is finally here, the time when girls trade short skirts for sweatpants and guys replace short-sleeve UT shirts with long-sleeve UT shirts. For the students at UT Austin, it's been a pretty tough year. West Campus construction has kept them up all night, their football team choked, APD won't let them party as hard, and now, starting tomorrow, it's final exam time. Where do......

Tonight at Castle Hill Cafe, the Texas Food and Wine Foundation is sponsoring an interesting discussion on Texas wines titled "Home On The Range: Texas Terroir." There will be food and wine, of course, but what makes this event different is the reflection on what is special about Texas wines when compared to California or Europe, along with some discussion (we hope) on things that haven't worked out in our area. They will also show......

This morning around 4a.m., a woman was walking her dog when she discovered the body of 18-year old UT freshman Tyler Cross (pictured right). The Texan reports Cross fell from the fifth floor of a University Towers' dormitory balcony onto the sidewalk of West 24th Street. The Towers is a West Campus dormitory known for its rowdy rooms and high freshmen fraternity occupancy. Cross, a Georgia native, was a member of a fraternity at UT......

Some people are just that desperate for inexpensive furniture. We hope you love your new Kaarten Caaffee Taable. From deep in the heart of West Texas, Amazon.com founder, Jeff Bezos launches his rocket. MySpace is worth an estimated $6 Billion. We wanted to be part of a prestigious organization but it looks like we'll have to rule this one out. Al Jazeera begins broadcasting in English today and is expected to draw at least......

Photograph of Rick Santorum conceding defeat with his family by Gene J. Puskar/AP The -ists this week had politics on the brain. And what goes better with politics? Partying-- that's two great tastes in one. Oh, and Kevin Federline...can't forget about Kevin Federline. That's three great tastes in one. -Bostonist discussed two big state issues-- what sort of math constitutes a marriage and what kind of alcohol can be sold in most grocery stores.......

Blood Brothers – Young Machetes The Blood Brothers maintain an unusually large and fabulous place in today's glutted art-punk market; where the majority of floppy-haired guitar-waifs wail about shards of glass coating their hearts over Punk 101 power chords, the Brothers are more apt to lace their post-hardcore slash and burn with Queen keyboards and falsetto vocals about car crashes. True to form, this record is shriller than a sack of drowning kittens, but unlike......

Had I been teaching a classroom full of expectant mothers, my number one forbidden topic would have been diapers: cloth versus disposable. This is such a hot-button issue that I hesitate to bring it up, but it's also a subject that has more depth than I ever imagined possible....

Iraqis are now in control of their own military. Cross your fingers. Global warming is making Siberian lakes belch methane, causing more global warming. Hey! You won't be giggling when the water starts rising! Marion Jones didn't dope. See, we told you girls are smarter than that. OH, HELL YEAH! Via LAist: Paris Hilton gets arrested. Luckily for her, apparently being rich acts as a powerful antidote to alcohol absorption.......

Is it a coincidence that one day after The University of Texas is named #1 Party School In The Nation, the school offers a campaign aimed at tackling drunk and inappropriate fan behavior? Because, in a few days when the defending National Champion Texas Longhorns take the field to defend their title against North Texas, you, your buddies and that obnoxious frat boy behind you will be asked to be a little nicer when a)......

In 1974, Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs) wrote, directed and produced arguably his bleakest film, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. It has been said that it was his favorite of the movies he made. The film chronicles the tale of Bennie, a down-on-his-luck piano player who sets out with his girlfriend to try and collect the bounty placed on the head of one Alfredo Garcia. Garcia has impregnated a rancher's daughter,......