Best of 2006 PLACES part 1
Best of ’06 PLACES – part 1 It grows on you For transplants and natives alike, the city is full of slowly unfolding surprises READER’S PICKS Best Place to See the Fiesta Parade Without Tickets: 1. Television 2. Market Square 3. Broadway Street Best Gym 1. Gold’s Gym 2. Spectrum Health Club 3. Bally’s Total…
Best of 2006 FOOD part 2
Best of ’06 FOOD – part 2 Best New Restaurant Bin 555 555 Bitters (at Artisans Alley), 496-0555 Chef and restaurateur Jason Dady opened Bin 555, his second venture, with his brother, Jake, in Artisans Alley on Bitters. Pictured here, a dish of grilled Texas Bob White Quail with pancetta, baby arugula, and sherry vinaigrette.…
Best of 2006 PLACES part 1
Best of ’06 PLACES – part 1 It grows on you For transplants and natives alike, the city is full of slowly unfolding surprises READER’S PICKS Best Place to See the Fiesta Parade Without Tickets: 1. Television 2. Market Square 3. Broadway Street Best Gym 1. Gold’s Gym 2. Spectrum Health Club 3. Bally’s Total…
News Counterpoint
So, what is an impeachable offense? I like to think of the Bush Administration as the negative-space presidency because it’s been so instructive in what is not an impeachable offense. Fabricating an imminent threat to justify taking the country to war? Nope. Lying about fabricating an imminent threat to justify taking the country to war?…
Music Lost in space
Coheed and Cambria’s ambitious epics can leave even band members scratching their heads Despite an upgrade from indie label Equal Vision to the Incredible Hulk-size Columbia Records, Coheed and Cambria — probably the strangest band of the new century (well, besides Captured! By Robots) — hasn’t wasted any time trying to churn out more emo-tastic…
Feature Lonely land
Jobs and housing are up in SA, but romance seems as elusive as ever It’s springtime in San Antonio. Where’s the love? Every late spring or early summer since 2001, Forbes.com — notorious “best-of” list purveyor and self-styled sometime arbiter of hip — canvasses 40 of the country’s largest metropolitan areas and dispenses to its…
Music CD Spotlight
Pretty in pink Pink is back and, as the title of her fourth album insists, she’s not dead yet. I’m Not Dead is a 14-song argument to that effect, and while the new Mrs. Carey Hart’s overlong opus has plenty of highlights, it would’ve better made her point at 10 songs. It’s hard to fault…
Media That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres No horror film — or any genre for that matter — is safe as Scary Movie 4 takes jabs at everything from The Grudge to War of the Worlds. Anna Faris (Just Friends) returns as Cindy Campbell, the answer to Neve Campbell’s Scream character, and attempts to save the…
Arts Framed
Losers and laffs It’s not exactly shocking for a non-superhero* comic to revolve around, well, a loser. That’s practically a genre of the medium, from Charlie Brown to Rusty Brown, the hardback, self-published book that is the most recent installment of Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library. (The volume also offers a small installment of Ware’s…
Music Current Choice
Where there’s a will Will Sexton is a couple of years younger than his brother Charlie, and it’s often seemed that they’ve followed the same path, separated only by a couple of years. Both brothers spent their pre-pubescent days accompanying their mom to rock clubs and both became highly proficient on the guitar at an…
Media The Christmas truce
Aided by journals, a film recreates a forgotten scrap of WWI sanity If you’re going to make a picture called “Merry Christmas,” conventional knowledge would seem to suggest that it’s wisest to start with a fairly mild template — a kid who wants a BB gun, perhaps, or a fellow with some sort of cutting…
Arts Serenity now
Art and nature are peaceful neighbors at Guadalupe River Sculpture Ranch Art in all its forms is an oasis, but art in an idyllic landscape is doubly good. So, I headed for Canyon Lake and the Guadalupe River Sculpture Ranch; I heard tell there was art in them thar hills. And let me just say…
Arts Ranger Ray speaks
On August 1, 1966, an off-duty Austin police officer named Ramiro Martinez ended a 96-minute shooting spree on the University of Texas campus, an event since dubbed the city’s darkest hour. Charles Whitman, a 25-year-old University student and ex-Marine, began shooting from the observation deck of the UT Tower at noon, killing 17 people and…
Media i want
Sonogram cookies Out of context, eating the image of one’s unborn child sounds like some kind of demonic ritual, but apparently hip young mothers everywhere are saying iWant, iWant, iWant sonogram cookies. Strange yet true: For $27 you can buy 12 graham-cracker cookies, enrobed in white chocolate and printed in edible ink with the image…
Culture To be young, rich, and wired
A San Antonio student joins the gamers who are going pro The names Fatal1ty, Team 3D, and Zid may not mean much to the casual video-game player, but for those who consider themselves true gamers, they are superstar monikers. Professional gaming, or e-sports, has grown exponentially since the Cyberathlete Professional League held its first tournament…
Media Special screenings
Decalogue 8: Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor Krysztof Kieslowski (1988) A chapter from Kieslowski’s film series influenced by the Ten Commandments, Decalogue 8 portrays the effects of deep-seated hatred. The story follows a Jewish-American Holocaust survivor who returns to Poland to confront the woman who refused to help her escape the…
Arts The ‘Lion’ Queen
Julie Taymor’s Broadway beast is anything but Disney-fied I don’t know who coined the phrase “theme-park musical,” but that descriptor was more than appropriate by 1987 when Andrew Lloyd Weber imported to Broadway his pinheaded, pinball paean to railroads, Starlight Express. With its cast of fearless actors-singers-dancers zooming around the Gershwin Theater on roller skates,…
Food & Drink All you can eat
News and notes from the San Antonio food scene There’s a great story about Tim Zagat, who along with his wife is the founder of the eponymous, on-line, diner-driven restaurant guide. Apparently, Zagat owns a telescoping fork, which he uses to surreptitiously spear samples from his neighbor’s plates from across the table. I suspect it’s…
Media Quiet Steve
Buscemi talks about directing Lonesome Jim and the honor of being whacked on-screen Steve Buscemi has the enviable talent of being able to transform poorly drawn characters into palpable, nuanced personalities onscreen. He’s become infamous for stealing scenes, turning throwaway lines into quotable hilarity, and upstaging the A-list actors to whom he’s forced to play…
Food & Drink Can too
The Cantu is a Tex-Mex prodigy Mario Cantu was a legend in his own time. His eponymous restaurant on the near West Side, now the site of the downtown UTSA, was a Tex-Mex icon, and the photos of the Mexican revolution adorning the walls only added to an air of cultural and political exoticism. Cantu’s…
Media Armchair Cinephile
From giallo to the gallows As promised last column, here’s a quick jaunt through recent releases from France and Italy, those sibling rivals of world cinema. Next time out: We stop testing the number of titles we can fit in one paragraph. The small, whiny, “I hate subtitles” contingent can ease into Italian film gently…
News Why not Wi-Fi?
The City and AT&T are keeping their cards close, but some kind of wireless future seems likely If you’ve purchased a new personal computer in the past two years or so, chances are you have access to wireless internet, thanks to a manufacturing trend of embedding wireless cards within the hardware. And if you’re lucky,…
Food & Drink Happiness is a warm gun
Adventures in DIY Easter projects At some point, every do-it-yourselfer has to face the question: But why? Why would you make that when you can buy it cheaply at Wal-Mart? The answer is that the DIY mentality is only one part thriftiness-is-next-to-godliness to several parts handy-because-I-can-be. We do it ourselves because homemade projects look better,…
News Speed reads
CHIPped Teeth As of April 4, 2006, the government-funded Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) has expanded to include dental benefits with the services it already provides, including surgery, immunization, doctor visits and prescription drug benefits. The new dental benefits cover routine checkups, cleanings, X-rays, sealants, fillings, tooth removal, crowns, and root canals. A letter will…
Food & Drink Could you love this manatee?
Web Exclusive Rather than spending your tax refund on a fuzzy purple chick that eventually will turn into a cackling rooster and be sent back to the farm, why not put a manatee in your Easter basket? For $25 you can adopt a 10-foot-long, 1000-pound pet through the Save the Manatee Club at Blue Spring…
News Party lines
City gets street-wise San Antonio City Council didn’t exactly bang pots and pans last week (as everybody did when the HemisFair tower was topped in the late 1960s) when it voted to award contracts for more than $40 million in street repairs, but several council members pointed out that the city is putting taxpayer dollars…
Food & Drink Value vino
Web Exclusive Rothschild for the rest of us Mention Baron de Rothschild in wine circles and a reverential hush often prevails — not only for its princely Pauillacs but also for its alliance with Robert Mondavi, which produced the classy commoner, Opus One. But in classic, noblesse-oblige fashion, the Domaines Barons de Rothschild have also…
News It’s the culture, stupid
Mudcat Saunders wants to lead the Democrats out of the Northeastern wilderness Political strategist Dave “Mudcat” Saunders likes to say, “Inside every rural Republican is a Democrat trying to get out.” He has put his faith into action. The Virginia native was part of the team that engineered Mark Warner’s successful 2001 run for governor,…
Food & Drink No cattle left behind
Lawsuit over mad-cow testing could affect world meat market The latest battle over standardized testing has moved from the classroom to the slaughterhouse. Creekstone Farms Premium Beef is suing the United States Department of Agriculture because the USDA won’t allow the company to voluntarily test 100 percent of its herds for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, known…
News On the street
¡SÍ, SE PUEDE! “¡Sí, se puede!” the crowd chanted at the rally preceding San Antonio’s April 10 march for immigration-law reform. The multiracial crowd protested for the rights of the 10 to 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the nation by raising posters that read, “No human being is illegal,” and, “Who’s the illegal immigrant,…
Music Highway 281 revisited
Bob Dylan’s fascination with the border continues to impact his work On December 3, 1965, Bob Dylan held a televised press conference in San Francisco. Dylan was the talk of pop music at this time, and reporters eagerly sought his opinions on everything from European cinema to motorcycles. Along the way, one typically clueless writer…
News Subbing out Mother Nature
The EPA plans to make wetland mitigation good business Texas has lost 60 percent of its inland wetlands over the past 200 years, outpacing the country at large, which lost 50 percent of its wetland acreage in the same period. But proposed federal rules could create a small boom in the wetland-banking industry, a system…
Music Sound and the fury
A week on the scene Immigrant song At press time, Latin-funk eclectics Bombasta were set to take part in San Antonio’s April 10 rally on behalf of immigrant rights. Part of a nationally organized “Campaign for Immigrants’ Dignity,” the local gathering was scheduled to move from Milam Park (with Bombasta providing musical entertainment/impetus) to the…
