It's also a day when many may reflect on the civil rights leader and his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. It is one of the most memorable speeches at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. More than 200,000 people were reported to have watched it by the end.

The day is designated National Day of Service and encourages Americans to volunteer to improve their communities. Some organizations, including the city government, will be inspired to use the day to do service projects for their communities.

Here is a closer look at what to expect on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, including Monday's closings.

Are banks closed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day?

Yes, banks are closed. However, ATMs and online banking services will still be available.

Is the U.S. Post Office closed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day?

Yes. The U.S. Postal Service observes 11 official holidays annually, including Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Post offices will be closed on Monday, Jan. 20, and the Postal Service will not deliver regular mail or packages on that date.

Are shipping services, like UPS and FedEx, open on MLK Day?

UPS pickup and delivery services are not available on Monday, Jan. 20, and UPS Store locations may be closed, according to the company's website. Customers should check with their local stores for specific hours of operation.

Are supermarkets open on MLK Day?

Supermarkets in New Hampshire will be open on Jan. 20, though they may have reduced holiday hours. Be sure to check with your local store.

Will Target, Walmart be open on MLK Day?

Most major retailers — like Target, Walmart and Costco — remain open on MLK Day.

Some locations could have modified hours for the holiday.

Will Walgreens, CVS be open on MLK Day?

Pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS should be open on MLK Day, but some locations may have adjusted hours. Check with the local location to confirm.

Services closed Monday

· All El Paso Municipal Court locations.

· City of El Paso and El Paso County offices.

· All La Fe facilities. Facilities will resume regular business hours on Tuesday. Information, La Fe Administration Office, 915-534-7979.

· Doña Ana County administrative offices. Emergency services will not be affected and regular business hours for administrative offices will resume at 8 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 21.

· Lower Valley Water District. Monday's pickup will move to Tuesday.

Are schools off on Martin Luther King Jr. Day?

Yes, students have the day off.

The Anthony, Canutillo, Clint, El Paso, Gadsden, Fabens, Ysleta and Socorro independent school districts will be closed for the holiday, as well as Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso and the University of Texas at El Paso.

San Elizario School District does not have classes on Monday.

El Paso Community College (EPCC) will not offer services (except for online registration for current students at Self Service Banner). The holiday coincides with the beginning of the spring 2025 semester. The first day of classes will be Tuesday, Jan. 21.

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María Cortés González may be reached at 915-546-6150, [email protected] and @EPTMaria on Twitter.

USA Today Network contributed to this report.

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EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — The potential ban of TikTok in the United States could have significant implications beyond just losing a popular social media platform, according to an El Paso business owner.

Antonio Esparza runs a TikTok shop called "Sabores de Mexico" and he has been using the app to sell Mexican candy and other items to customers nationwide and internationally.

"So I started selling on Amazon first before I started selling on TikTok," Esparza said. "I've been selling on Amazon for about three years now, but I started selling on TikTok about a year, a little bit over a year now. I started in November of 2023. I joined TikTok shop because I was unemployed at the time and I was just looking for additional income. I joined because I was like, 'why not, you know, I have nothing to lose. I'm already selling on Amazon. Let's just see what happens.' And within the first month of joining TikTok, I went viral and sales just exploded."

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Esparza has since taken steps to mitigate the potential impact of a TikTok ban by launching a website and opening a brick-and-mortar store in El Paso.

However, he expressed concern about the broader economic effects of such a ban.

"Yeah, so not only is it affecting me as a small business owner that's on TikTok shop, but there are other businesses here locally like Mexican Candy Lady, Nibble Munchies Market that's in Las Cruces, and there's another border town, I think they're in the Rio Grande Valley, Chilito Loco," Esparza said. "And there's also other influencers and creators that are on TikTok that blew up on TikTok that are here locally, that their livelihood depends on this. So it's not just like entertainment, but it's also people's livelihood that they use to pay, you know, their groceries or rent, their utilities, all that."

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The future of TikTok remains uncertain as the Supreme Court deliberates on whether to uphold the ban.

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Movies and TV shows casting in El Paso

The glitz and glam of Hollywood captures the attention of Americans starting from an early age. Beyond celebrities’ Instagram Stories and red carpet poses, there are actors out there paying their dues and honing their craft in pursuit of a sustainable career or a fulfilling sideline. Submitting to casting calls is a big part of that journey.

Whether you’re a working actor or an aspiring one, you might be curious to know which movies and TV shows are casting roles near you. Backstage compiled a list of projects casting right now in El Paso, nearby cities, and nationwide, and which roles they’re looking to fill.

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‘Romance/Family Friendly Movie – Building a Love, Like Ours 2025’

– Project type: feature film– Roles: — Julia / Julian the Baker (supporting, 40-70)— Director of Photography (crew)— Lovely (lead, 22-40)– Average hourly rate: $94– Casting locations: El Paso, Texas– Learn more about the feature film here

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‘Florence (Short Film For Festivals)’

– Project type: short film– Roles: — Mateo D. (lead, male, 20-26)— Mateo’s Girlfriend (supporting, 20-26)— Maria D. (lead, female, 35-45)– Average hourly rate: $20– Casting locations: El Paso, Texas– Learn more about the short film here

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‘Untitled Feature Film’

– Project type: feature film– Roles: — Charlotte (lead, female, 21-40)– Average hourly rate: $44– Casting locations: nationwide– Learn more about the feature film here

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‘Lowball’

– Project type: feature film– Roles: — Jenna (day player, 18-30)— Max (lead, 25-35)– Average hourly rate: $125– Casting locations: nationwide– Learn more about the feature film here

This story was produced by Backstage and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

While El Paso has lots to be proud of — endless hiking in the Franklin Mountains, beautiful views along Scenic Drive, and a growing downtown with a new children's museum — the Sun City still managed to land on a list of the "The Most Boring Cities inAmerica."

Some El Pasoans have been known to utter the words, "there's nothing to do here," and a recent study by Solitard.com (a website where you can play solitaire for free) found that El Paso takes the number one spot for the midsized U.S. city with the "least variety of things to do."

El Paso also ranked 11 on the list of "most midsized boring cities in the United States."

The study said it analyzed over a quarter million Google Maps to find the fewest things to do per capita—it then listed the cities it found to have little variety in leisure and entertainment options. The cities were then separated by large, midsized and small categories.

El Paso had 266 unique things to do, the analysis claimed.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Other "boring" places in Texas to land on the list include smaller cities like Garland and Arlington, and bigger metros, like Dallas, Ft. Worth and San Antonio.

Cities that rank as the least boring on the lists include Las Vegas, Nevada and San Diego, California.

Despite what this study says, many of us native to the borderland have grown to appreciate El Paso's unique and rich culture, beautiful mountainous landscape and with a little bit of creativity, have found some pretty fun things to do.

Things to do in El Paso

By the way, here are some of the top attractions in El Paso, according to TripAdvisor:

Natassia Paloma may be reached at [email protected], @NatassiaPaloma on Twitter; natassia_paloma on Instagram, and Natassia Paloma Thompson on Facebook.

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Jose Contreras is one of only a handful of artisans who still make cowboy boots the old-fashioned way. Christ Chavez for Atlas Obscura

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On an otherwise quiet weekday morning in Segundo Barrio, a working-class neighborhood on the south side of El Paso, the tap, tap, tap of Jose Contreras’ hammer echoes from inside the blue warehouse on Cotton Street. With silver nails clamped between his lips, the 61-year-old uses a special pair of pliers to tug a shaft of red leather over a wooden shoe form and tap it into place.

At a workbench nearby, Victor Rodriguez squints as he coaxes one side of a boot top beneath the needle of an antique Singer sewing machine, creating a flame-shaped stitch in clean white thread. It’s a skill Rodriguez learned from his father more than half a century ago in their home on the opposite bank of the Rio Grande, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

“These guys are some of the best in the world,” says Joey Sanchez, owner of the boot company CABOOTS, whose family has employed Contreras and Rodriguez for more than 30 years. But when he looks around the tiny shop on Cotton Street—littered with scraps of leather and patrolled by a black and white alley dog called Chicho—he can’t help but remember the way it used to be.

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“When I was a kid, this place was loaded with bootmakers. We had four cutters there, two lasters there, and more finishers back there,” he says, recalling the racket created by their hammers, sanders, and sewing machines. “It sounded like a casino in here.”

Today, Contreras and Rodriguez aren’t just the only bootmakers in the shop—even in their early 60s, they’re among the youngest bootmakers left in the business. There’s a name for craftsmen like them, according to Sanchez. Agujas de oro, or Golden Needles, are artisans who still know how to make boots the old-fashioned way. Many have been doing it since they were kids, growing up near the United States-Mexico border.

Situated along the route of westward cattle drives during the late 19th century, El Paso bootmakers had access to plenty of leather, as well as an abundance of customers—cavalry fighting in the Mexican Revolution and cowboys, both of whom valued the style for its sturdiness and a high, underslung heel that stayed put in a stirrup. During the 20th century, as cowboy boots found a new home in rock ‘n’ roll and on the runways of the fashion world, El Paso remained the Mecca of custom cowboy boot production in the United States, turning out shoes that were increasingly more work-of-art than work-a-day, with ornate inlays, complicated stitch patterns, and dazzling paint jobs.

“When people come to El Paso, they’re interested in two things,” says Jose Sanchez, Joey’s dad whose own father founded the boot shop that would one day become CABOOTS back in 1928, “eating Mexican food and buying boots.”

But as big boot companies turned to laser cutting and computer stitching to streamline production and reduce costs, manufacturers in El Paso—where celebrities like Taylor Swift, Kendrick Lamar, and Chris Stapleton still arrive to pick out their flashy footwear—are struggling to replace these artisans when they retire or pass away. In fact, agujas de oro are in such high demand around the Texas border town that many of them work at more than one shop.

At nearby Rocketbuster Boots, which looks more like an art gallery than a shoe shop, owner Nevena Christi says the finishers—the employees who stack and sand the boot’s leather heels—rotate around town like “guns for hire.” That part of the process involves pushing a completely finished boot—which can take six months to complete and cost more than a used car—into a power sander. “They can’t make mistakes,” Christi says. “They’re like diamond cutters.”

But some agujas de oro are permanent fixtures at Rocketbusters, like Pedro Sarmiento, who, like Jose over at CABOOTS, is a laster, meaning he attaches the upper part of a boot onto a last, a foot-shaped mold that gives a boot its final shape. It’s a job that requires the 77-year-old Sarmiento, hunched over on a low stool, to stretch and nail and shave the leather over and over as it slowly takes form, all the while ensuring the boot is straight and smooth on all sides. Each week, he finishes about three pairs of boots this way.

Sporting his own pair of lace-up, anaconda-skin boots, Sarmiento says he learned the trade from his brother, when the two were growing up in Juarez. “I just needed to work,” he remembers. “And I enjoyed the work.”

“Pete is a traditional craftsman,” says Christi. “He does it, and he does it right. He’s not looking for a shortcut.”

She’s as complimentary about Raul Chavez, a topstitcher who’s manned the same Singer sewing machine at the shop for almost three decades. “Raul is Rocketbusters. He’s the master.”

Chavez learned the trade growing up in Juarez, threading his first needle at just nine years old. “I could barely touch the pedals,” he says. Working on commission for bootmakers across the border, Chavez made about a dollar a week at first, but it wasn’t just the money that drew him. “I’ve always liked to sew, it’s one of my passions. I’ve left and done other types of work, but I always come back to this, because this is what I really enjoy.”

For Jose Gomez, who works next to Chavez welting—or closing—boots and adding decorative stitching, learning to make boots at age 12 was the continuation of a family tradition. “Three generations back, they’re all shoemakers,” he says. The 54-year-old touches hundreds of boots a year, but rarely wears them himself. “They’re too heavy,” he says with a smile, “you get tired.”

Across the table from Jose sits Manny, the Gomez family’s fourth generation to work in the boot business. Jose recruited his nephew to Rocketbusters after he finished high school. Today, Manny, 42, spends his days carving leather into every shape imaginable for the 350 or so custom boot orders the shop receives a year—steers, snakes, and lots of skulls among them—using store-bought blades he grinds himself. “They are different sizes for different tasks,” he explains. “One for cutting, one for scything.”

Twenty years in, Manny is still somewhat of a rookie in the boot world, but he doesn’t see a lot of younger people coming up behind him, he says. “I have two girls and three boys. None of them are interested in boots.”

Chavez, whose own children work in trucking and landscaping, agrees. “I’m not sure why young people are not doing it,” he says. “This is beautiful work.”

Rocketbuster owner Christi strikes a more optimistic tone. She’s heartened by the number of young women—who now outnumber the men in her shop—that are entering the industry, including Lizbeth McFarland. A Panama native who loves to work with her hands, McFarland describes her job as “all the little details,” adding the rivets, sequins, and rhinestones to nearly finished boots.

“In a world that keeps getting more and more generic, things that are unique stand out even more,” Christi says. “People want unique things.”

Back in the blue warehouse on Cotton Street, Jose Sanchez can’t help but eulogize. “Shoemakers are a dying breed,” he says, nodding toward Rodriguez and Contreras, each preoccupied by the bit of leather in their hands. “You just can’t find guys like these anymore. All the stuff they do by hand, other people do with machines. But machines just don’t do it as well.”

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