5 Things You Have to Do This Week
Mon 8/25 One Republic A staple of Starbucks checkout CD catalogs, OneRepublic came to fruition in the Myspace era, gaining traction on the now-irrelevant site as a top unsigned act. That title didn’t last too long, however; by ’03 the Colorado quintet signed with Sony BMG and poised themselves for a major commercial breakthrough. With their…
What I Ate: SA Restaurant Week, Alamo City Provisions and then some
Growing up means not watching the MTV VMA’s and instead going to a ridiculously fabulous dinner. At least it does for this gal. I capped off a week’s worth of San Antonio Restaurant Week meals (you can check out extensions here) by attending Alamo City Provisions’ first dinner of the fall inside the Josephine Theatre…
Green Party Candidate also running for Texas HD 123
Paul Ingmundson is a San Antonio sleep disorder specialist running as a Green Party candidate for HD 123. Photo via Alamo Sleep Disorders Center website In my efforts to explain the intricacies of Texas’ special-election law last week, I regretfully overlooked the fact that State Rep. Mike Villarreal does in fact have an opponent for…
Exclusive: SA’s Mr. Composition Releases ‘Just(US)’
Local rapper Kevin Prince (aka Mr. Composition) “We’re not all without sin But that gun should point the other way If you’re trying to rid the streets of the bad guys today” In the weeks since the August 9 shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer, the nation has been…
SA Food Pics: 7 bites we’re drooling over
A few local foodies whipped out their phones and snapped some quick pics at Lick (312 Pearl Pkwy, Ste 2101), Garcia’s Mexican Food (5511 San Pedro) and Bella On the River (106 River Walk), El Tropico (3941 Fredericksburg), Sustenio (17103 La Cantera Pkwy), and Green (200 E Grayson) this last month and we couldn’t help but…
Restaurants Week Extensions to Check Out
Yes, you can still enjoy Restaurant Week at Boiler House after this Saturday. (Courtesy Culinaria) With more than 75 restaurants participating in this year’s San Antonio Restaurant Week, there’s a likely chance you weren’t able to make a dent on the list. You can keep up the valiant foodie efforts as some of the restaurants…
Some of SA’s Best ALS Ice Bucket Challenges
Whether you’re over the ALS ice bucket challenge or not, San Anto is really getting into challenging each other and raising funds and awareness for an excellent cause so that’s always great. Hopefully they’re doing it over plants and lawns and only during allowed watering windows. Dan Patrick // (function(d, s, id) { var js,…
5 Shows to See this Weekend
Hooked Rugs, Massiver (Friday, August 22) It is challenging, to say the least, to make electronic music with organic sensibilities-with soul. All four bands on the stacked bill, however, manage to pull this off with create aplomb to spare. At the top of the bill, Houston’s Hooked Rugs crafts delightfully fuzzy synth jams that incorporate…
Jimmy Fallon on the Pros and Cons of a Juice Cleanse
It’s a case of late night TV imitates life, or something like that. Just days after I’d closed out my juice cleanse experiment (you can read more about that here), Jimmy Fallon aired a Pros and Cons segment on the merits of going on a juice cleanse. The Tonight Show host dips a bit too…
NDO News: AT&T Opposes Release of Audio Recordings
NDO debate at city hall. Photo by Mary Tuma. The City of San Antonio wants a Texas attorney general opinion on whether it has to release audiotapes from the first case filed under the non-discrimination ordinance and AT&T is opposed to the tapes, as well as any other documents, being released. Sam Sanchez, publisher of…
New Owner for Cockasian Food Truck
(Via) Do you know how difficult it is to not use the word boner while writing about Cockasian Food Truck getting new owners? Fans of naughty puns and Asian food truck snacks might get pumped when they learn who has taken over the tongue-in-cheek mobile eatery. First opened by Candie Yoder, the truck wasn’t allowed…
SA Councilman Proposes ‘Hands-Free’ Cell Use While Driving
District 10 Councilman Mike Gallagher proposes amending the city’s texting while driving ban ordinance to include a hands-free cell use policy while driving. Photo courtesy of City of San Antonio website San Antonio banned texting while driving in 2010, but District 10 Councilman Mike Gallagher wants to take that law to another level, proposing that…
10 Things You Have to Do This Weekend
Wed 8/20 – Sun 8/24 Tanyalee Davis Photo by Dan Verscha If you grow tired of getting all your chuckles from people who look, think and act just like you and your group of friends, Tanyalee Davis might have the laughs you’re looking for. Standing 3-foot-6, Davis’ perspective is necessarily different from most, but the…
UTOPIAfest Announces Daily Lineups
UTOPIAfest at night (via Festpop) The eccentric and one of a kind UTOPIAfest has announced the daily lineups for their 2014 festival. Featuring Austin’s Golden Dawn Arkestra, the big band vibes directly from the cosmic big band sounds of jazz innovator Sun Ra. On Friday, indie-folker Father John Misty and Wu-Tang’s GZA, performing with Austin…
Topless Rally Planned For Sunday
Image courtesy of GoTopless. This Sunday, the girls are coming out. August 24 marks the 7th annual GoTopless Day, and 60 cities around the world will bear witness to a wave of demonstrations in the name of female equality as women march in protest for the right to air out their areolas. For those who…
7 Ways to Get Your Drink/Grub on this Week
Alamo City Provisions is a collaborative dinner series featuring San Antonio’s most talented chefs. (Courtesy) Wednesday, August 20: If missing a screening of The Princess Bride is what you might consider inconceivable, then get your ass down to The Friendly Spot. The amiable icehouse will post up their giant screen with the 1987 classic starring…
Marijuana, Marriage and the Republican Liberty Caucus
Republican Liberty Caucus logo. Courtesy. Medical marijuana almost made it onto the Texas Republican Party platform during the GOP’s June convention. Teresa Cleghorn, who founded the Bexar County Republican Liberty Caucus six weeks ago, said the language was tossed out of the platform by a 60 percent vote from delegates who were opposed to medicinal…
Shot of the Week: Fernet-Branca
(Via) There’s a reason we named Fernet Brancas as our best specialty shot in this April’s Best of San Antonio issue. This shit is delicious. I recently celebrated an afternoon off with a shot of the Italian herbal liqueur at Barbaro. While I may have sampled Fernet in a slew of cocktails, I had never…
Gov. Perry Shows Up Smug for Mug Shot
Gov. Rick Perry’s mugshot, taken in downtown Austin on Tuesday evening. Behold, everyone, our Texas governor’s mug shot. Yesterday afternoon, at what sounded vaguely like a campaign rally rather than a self-surrender, Gov. Rick Perry turned himself in at the Travis County Justice Complex after being indicted over the weekend on two felony counts of abuse of power…
SA Sound: Pop Pistol Remixes and Mount Sherpa Psych-outs
Listen loud and carry good headphones: Mount Sherpa’s Tabor’s Head “I really do recommend you listen to this at around 85-90 percent volume through good headphones and the whole way through because it’s a Floydian kind of listen,” said Geoff Arias, guitarist of Mount Sherpa, when he gave me their EP Tabor’s Head. It was…
SAPD warms to ride-sharing
From sinister public-safety threat to an it-can-work attitude, the San Antonio Police Department has changed its tune on ride-sharing companies. In an August 13 Public Safety Committee meeting, Chief of Police William P. McManus and SAPD Assistant Steven Baum recommended changing Chapter 33 of the city code to add a Transportation Network Company permit, which…
Voters will decide who replaces Mike Villarreal at the Capitol
Earlier this month, mayoral front-runner Mike Villarreal clarified that he would not resign from his House District 123 seat before the November 4 general election. Instead, he’ll step down some time between then and the start of the 2015 legislative session, which begins January 13. Villarreal’s move sets the stage for a special election, allowing the nearly 89,000…
Glitter Political: Frankly, My Dears, Stephani Walsh Gives a Damn
Stephani Walsh has read Margaret Mitchell’s 1936 novel Gone with the Wind near a dozen times. And each time she gets to the scene where the manipulative Scarlett O’Hara is ashamed that her blistered hands reveal her tryst with hard labor on the plantation, Walsh is perplexed anew. “Are you kidding,” asks Walsh, whose family comes…
Mayoral Horserace: Lone candidate continues raising cash
Last week District 8 Councilman Ron Nirenberg was sworn in as mayor pro-tem. So when Mayor Ivy Taylor isn’t around, Nirenberg will play the role of mayor. Nirenberg, who said the full council should debate ride-sharing and has urged the council to move on from VIA streetcar issues to more important ones, like the budget,…
Big Hops Gastropub Brings Beer-centric Eats to the Northside
On a recent Sunday, my wife and I drove up 281 and into the heart of San Antonio’s ever-expanding Northside suburbs to try out Big Hops Gastropub, the most recent addition to Rob and Kylie Martindale’s stable of craft-beer establishments. Taking over the location that formerly housed the Tap Exchange, this location augments Big Hops’…
Value Vino: Finding sangrias that don’t suck
I didn’t know this: sangria, that often-sludgy glass of fruit salad irrigated with schlocky red wine and even-worse brandy, made its first, large-scale U.S. appearance at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. I also didn’t know that another name for sangria (think “bloodletting,” for obvious reasons) in Spain, along with Portugal the countries of…
What to Know Before You Go On A Cleanse
It’s been a year since I’ve taken up this gig of eating and drinking across San Antonio. Since then, no fewer than seven juice shops have opened in the area. And this gaggle of juicers is of a slightly different breed than, say, Jamba Juice. Urth Juice, One Lucky Duck and two Juice Central locations…
Flavor File: Say.She.Ate’s SoHo kitchen, Tre Trattoria Downtown’s last hurrah and ‘Bon Appetit’ taps two local joints
Turns out tasty things come to those who wait. After several months of building and what nots, the Say.She.Ate kitchen inside SoHo Wine & Martini Bar (214 W Crockett, (210) 444-1000), launched this past weekend. Brandon McKelvey’s menu is an exercise in knowing what the imbiber wants to eat, be it one or several ’tinis…
Savage Love: Object Transference
I’m a twentysomething genetic male. I thought for a while that I might be trans, but I ended up deciding that while I hate my masculine features and like girl clothes and want to be “cute,” I have no desire to be female and don’t want to have breasts or a vagina. I also don’t…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): An American named Kevin Shelley accomplished a feat worthy of inclusion in the Guinness Book of World Records. While wearing a blue satin martial arts outfit, he smashed 46 wooden toilet seats over his head in just one minute. Some observers may be inclined to dismiss his efforts as frivolous and…
Brendan Gleeson Carries Pitch-black ‘Calvary,’ Weighed Down by the Rest
Father James (Brendan Gleeson) sits in a confessional, waiting. An unseen man enters the box and says, “The first time I tasted semen, I was seven years old.” Father James’ expression—something akin to dispassion, but maybe just fatigue—barely changes. He asks whether the parishioner has anything to confess, and after an uncomfortable back and forth,…
SA’s Gritty PuroSlam is Feared, Respected in National Slam Poetry Scene
See, there is this place where people participate in a ritual derived from the verbal tradition of telling and retelling stories to a room of bodies, barstools and emptying bottles until the stage is a pulpit. Some call it prayer. These people keep calling it slam poetry. Slam is conventionally defined as the art of…
Poetry Open Mic Round-up: 8 spots around town to share your words
Open mic nights generally stand in contrast to slam, wherein poets approach the mic at their own peril. They offer artists a chance to grow in their craft without the horror of scorecards. The audience can then enjoy without the soundtrack of whooping and hollering coloring the whole experience. It is a place to inspire…
Hip-hop’s Clown Prince Biz Markie Has Got What We Need
** Update: We learned after going to press that the show at the Korova was cancelled. Unfortunately, rapper and beatboxer Biz Markie’s pop culture headstone will highlight just one track: “Just A Friend,” a karaoke mainstay that holds the laudable distinction of being the worst-sung hit song of all time. “Just A Friend” eternally banished Biz to…
SA R&B crooner Eddie B. returns with new EP ‘Melodies for a Goddess’
For San Antonio R&B virtuoso Eddie Brickerson (better known as Eddie B.), failure is not an option. In fact, his last solo project, F.I.N.A.O., a 2007 mixtape consisting of a whopping 21 songs, spells it out with its abbreviated title. He followed up on F.I.N.A.O. with a stunning string of hooks, appearing on tracks with…
