The 1839

08/13/2026

One Mardi Gras, Phở 20 was suddenly short a dishwasher on one of the island’s biggest weekends.

Anh spent four hours in parade traffic trying to get there. She arrived in a dress and high heels. There was no time to change, so she went straight to the sink.

That shift explains the woman who now runs the restaurant. As Anh puts it: “Phở 20 is the first Vietnamese restaurant on Galveston Island and has been in business for over 21 years.” People have offered to buy it. Anh keeps saying no.

Lauren Duckworth and I went back to Broadway for the story—and for the house-special pho, shaking beef and rolls that have kept generations coming through the side door.

Read “The Woman Who Wouldn’t Sell Phở 20”:

One Mardi Gras, Anh drove four hours through parade traffic to wash dishes in a dress and high heels. That shift explains why a restaurant most of the island drives past is still here.

08/05/2026

We wrote that downtown is having a moment.
The response proved it. The room we secured could not hold it, and so Tuesday's gathering has moved to the Scottish Rite Cathedral, 2128 Church Street. The evening and the hour are unchanged.

If you haven't yet, please read the story.

Downtown Is Having a Moment. It Has Had Them Before.
the1839.com/downtown-is-having-a-moment

07/29/2026

I love downtown most in the hours when it is not performing.

Within a few blocks, Galveston can be a working port and a courthouse, a home and a stage, a place to make art and a place to make payroll. Downtown refuses to become one thing. That is part of its beauty—and part of our responsibility.

The danger is not that nobody is working. It is that good work can happen beside other good work without ever becoming one good place.

This essay is about the seams: where preservation meets new use, public plans meet lived experience, culture meets commerce, and one responsibility becomes the beginning of another.

The future of downtown belongs to no single hand.

It will be made in the handoff.

—David Landriault

Read the new essay in The 1839—and tell us: What do you think this moment asks of us?

Downtown Galveston is entering a rare decision window. Its future depends on public, private and civic work adding up to one place.

07/28/2026

He knows the grass, the mud, and whether he can still get through. The Ghost Wolf survives because Galveston's marsh made room for a species the world declared extinct in 1980. But the marsh is losing ground, and whether Galveston finally chooses to protect it will decide the island's future. Read "The Oldest BOI" at the1839.com.

A cinematic nature essay about Galveston’s West End salt marsh and the Ghost Wolves carrying red wolf DNA.

07/10/2026

Somewhere on the island this month, a bat swept low over a backyard and a perfectly reasonable person came unglued.

She wasn't after anyone's hair. She wasn't after anyone's blood. She was after the mosquitoes, the very ones feasting on you, and after a summer this wet, she has her work cut out for her.

Our newest nature piece is a love letter to the most misunderstood neighbor on Galveston Island: the Mexican free-tailed bat. What she's really doing out there after dark, why nearly everything that scares us about her is wrong, and why the kindest thing you can do is simply let her work.

Give the Bat a Break, now at the1839.com

Editorial by Christy Landriault Give The Bat A Break A big colony can clear 250 tons of insects before sunrise — roughly two blue whales’ worth of bugs. Every summer evening, a Mexican free-tailed bat leaves her pup behind in the roost and takes to the sky over the island, hunting the mosquitoes...

06/27/2026

Dzago Chatsama once stood in a room in Dubai with dozens of other nationalities, each singing in their own language, all of them building a single song together, and honestly that's the whole idea of him in one picture, because he's always trying to connect people across whatever is supposed to divide them.

We talked with him for The 1839. The full conversation is there when you're ready for it.

David Landriault - Editor in Chief 1839

06/24/2026

Tomorrow, the council decides the future of 351 acres on the West End.
Before they do, we want to hear from you: if Galveston gets a real seat at the table, what's the ONE thing the island should ask for? Bonded drainage? Public bay access? An evacuation study? Height limits?
Tell us in the comments — we're gathering the community's asks ahead of the vote.

Exclusive Editorial with The 1839 Discovery Sands: The Two Paths The biggest land decision in a generation reaches the council June 25. The fight has been loud. The actual choice has barely been whispered. Written by David Landriault (Founder & Publisher, The 1839) Discovery Sands: The Two Paths Eve...

06/23/2026

Here's the part of the Discovery Sands debate almost no one has heard:
Voting it down may not keep that land open.
Under the rules already on the books, the marsh can be built "by right" — likely denser and plainer than the village now proposed, with no hearing and none of the conditions the island could otherwise demand. Council members and the city's own staff say as much, on the record.
So the real question isn't only yes or no. It's what Galveston gets either way.

Exclusive Editorial with The 1839 Discovery Sands: The Two Paths The biggest land decision in a generation reaches the council June 25. The fight has been loud. The actual choice has barely been whispered. Written by David Landriault (Founder & Publisher, The 1839) Discovery Sands: The Two Paths Eve...

06/22/2026

This Thursday, the council votes on the biggest land decision Galveston has seen in a generation.
If you read one thing first, make it this. Discovery Sands isn't the simple yes-or-no everyone's arguing — there are two real paths for these 351 acres, and hardly anyone is talking about the second.
We spent a week getting both on the record: the developer, the mayor, the city manager, four council members, and the people fighting hardest for the bay.

Exclusive Editorial with The 1839 Discovery Sands: The Two Paths The biggest land decision in a generation reaches the council June 25. The fight has been loud. The actual choice has barely been whispered. Written by David Landriault (Founder & Publisher, The 1839) Discovery Sands: The Two Paths Eve...

06/20/2026

Everyone's fighting about Discovery Sands. Almost all of them are fighting about the wrong thing.

Thursday, Galveston's council votes on the biggest development in a generation — 568 homes, a marina, a 120-foot lighthouse, on 351 acres of West End marsh that drains into the bay.

The fight is "approve it or kill it." That was never the real choice — and the decision that actually determines what gets built out there is one almost nobody is saying out loud.

So we put it on the record. The mayor. The city manager. Four council members. Artist Boat, Bayou City Waterkeeper — and the developer himself, eight hard questions, all eight answered.

The full story — and the second path no one's debating — is here exclusively on The 1839.

Exclusive Editorial with The 1839 Discovery Sands: The Two Paths The biggest land decision in a generation reaches the council June 25. The fight has been loud. The actual choice has barely been whispered. Written by David Landriault (Founder & Publisher, The 1839) Discovery Sands: The Two Paths Eve...