About
What McAllen has come to an end as of April 22, 2022, 10 years to the day of the website's official launch.
The Story Behind What McAllen
"The best place to find things to do in McAllen and across the Rio Grande Valley"
What McAllen launched April 22, 2012 with a party at Roosevelt's at 7.
The website was born out of necessity. In 2012, aside from The Monitor‘s weekly Festiva magazine, a few small publications, and the efforts of a few ambitious, hardworking individuals, it was difficult to find things to do in and around McAllen. There was no go-to website to see what was happening on any given day.
Everything you would expect to find in a big city was here, waiting to be found: art, music, restaurants, nightlife and endless ways to get involved in the community. But those big cities always had social media accounts, websites, alt-weeklies, apps and traditional media all getting the word out.
So together with some likeminded folks, I launched What McAllen to help support all the great artists, organizations and businesses in our community.
Our launch party featured live music by local acts, plus an interactive live art project where guests were invited to draw on beer coasters; I believe the prompt was “What does McAllen mean to you?” I had thought these were lost to time (and water damage) but most of them survived and are shown here for the first time since April 22, 2012.
Live Music at the Launch Party
Interactive Live Art Project from our Launch Party
All good things must come to an end
After ten years supporting McAllen and the Valley, What McAllen is closing.
RIP What McAllen
April 22, 2012 - April 22, 2022
It has been a privilege to be a part of this vibrant community, to see it grow so rapidly over the past ten years. There are more things to do than ever before in McAllen and throughout the RGV.
Instead of just deleting all of the social media accounts we’ve built and leaving this website barren, I decided to leave them up as a testament to the work that went into it and a heartfelt thank you to everyone who was a part of it.
Tom DeRosa
Co-Founder, What McAllen
