News Speed reads
No new street names In the flurry of proposals to change downtown historic street names, the San Antonio Conservation Society is putting its foot down. In a recent statement to San Antonio City Councilman Roger Flores, Society President Barbara Johnson explained the group’s opposition to changing Laredo Street to Goodwill Way. Society records show that,…
Food & Drink First course
The Center for Foods of the Americas prepares its pilot culinary arts program It’s late afternoon at the Pearl Brewery, and with all the churned up earth and piles of old railroad ties and track, the site resembles the closing scene of Once Upon a Time in the West. There’s no harmonica, but an excavator,…
Feature Life at the bottom
Nationally, Texas ranks among the lowest in funding for mental-retardation services. What does that mean for the future of state schools and community programs? Editor’s Note: This is the second in a two-part series about the social and fiscal dilemmas of caring for people with mental retardation. In Part One, parents, advocates, and caregivers discussed…
Food & Drink Elephants on parade
Why does Citrus sit empty while V Bar is packed? The V Bar at the Valencia Hotel on the River Walk is reputed to be one of the Alamo City’s current hot spots for the swell set. Must be the slinky chain curtain that divides the bar from the second-floor lobby. Or maybe the lure…
Feature Matt’s dream
Dressed in a gray T-shirt, baseball cap, and cotton pants, Matt looks like anyone you might see at church, the grocery store, or on a riverbank, relaxing with a fishing line in the water. The previous day he had returned from a week-long trip home to Cleveland, Texas, where he celebrated his 44th birthday by…
Food & Drink The bar tab
Clowns to the left, jokers to the right There comes a time when one has consumed enough of that raspberry stout brewed somewhere along the northwest passage and a new kind of thirst develops. When this happens, many people will find solace at a local dive bar, where cold, cheap, flavorless American beer comes standard…
Feature Armando: love and happiness
When Brenda, then a physical-therapist technician at the San Antonio State School, began caring for Armando in a rehabilitation program, she didn’t know that someday she would be his foster mother and legal guardian. But in May, Armando, who had lived in state schools, including San Antonio’s, since he was 4, moved in with Brenda.…
Food & Drink All you can eat
Current Online news politics culture News and notes from the San Antonio food scene Cool beans The downtown area will have a new kid on the coffee block this fall. Austin-based Ruta Maya Coffee Co., known for its fair-trade, shade-grown, organic coffee, will open on the River Walk, 107 E. Martin, in early October. Although…
Feeling negative
Photography has never been more widely accepted as an art form. So why is it having trouble with the digital revolution? Given photography’s red-headed stepchild history in the fine arts, you’d think Photoshop and similar technologies would be welcomed as liberators, tools that allow photographers to demonstrate once and for all that they are full-fledged…
Music Open-road warrior
On new album, Austin songwriter Guy Forsyth professes his complex love for America You can tell a lot about somebody by the way they handle hate mail. Take Guy Forsyth, for example. The rootsy Austin singer-songwriter recently received an e-mail flogging from a self-described “fourth-generation Texan” who had grown infuriated after repeatedly hearing Forsyth’s song…
Arts I hate it! I’ll take two.
A counterintuitive guide to FotoSeptiembre Oh, you slovenly creatures of habit, who make living in a rut an art form. You’ll smugly cocoon yourself in your comfort zone and go to see Rick Hunter’s photographs (on display everywhere for FotoSeptiembre) because you know you love Rick Hunter. And Rick Hunter’s good. I’m not worried about…
Music All ears
Dance around the world If The New York Times Kelefa Sanneh is right, the next sensation in world music could well be a husband-and-wife team who wear their sunglasses at night: Amadou & Mariam have taken France by storm with Dimanche A Bamako (Nonesuch), the irresistible record they made over a year ago with Manu…
Arts Some subjects can’t be framed
PR maven Sasha Solomon spins art, sex, and the truth in The Belen Hitch There’s a ghost in the train yard. She lingers in the old Harvey House, floating down its elegant staircase and peering out of dark, lifeless windows. If you visit, a man with a jangling ring of keys will offer to show…
Music CD Spotlight
Fugitive’s escape Singer-songwriter Amy Rigby is back with Little Fugitive and while the album is wildly uneven (the first half sparkles, the second half fizzles), the good is so good that the bad seems like nothing more than a minor transgression. With 1996’s Diary of a Mod Housewife, Rigby began her solo recording career with…
Arts Southern discomfort
The giants of Texas politics are gone, but their memory malingers on in Waterloo The word “Austin” appears only once in Waterloo, concluding an author’s note at the back of the book: “And thanks to all the good people of Austin, Texas.” Otherwise, Karen Olsson’s wistfully mischievous first novel is set entirely in a place…
Music Current Choice
Adrian Belew Twang bar king Everyone has their favorite musical what-if questions: What if Buddy Holly had taken the bus that January night instead of the plane?; What if Brian Epstein hadnt downed those sleeping pills?; What if Eddie and the Cruisers had finished Season In Hell? Near the top of my list is this…
Arts It’s all centro
Centro Cultural Aztlán celebrates its 28th birthday Friday, August 26, with a silent auction. Centro, whose programs include the ViAztlán journal, the Lowrider Custom Car and Truck Exhibit, and the upcoming Día de los Muertos festival, has outgrown its home in historic Las Palmas Mall. Proceeds from the event will support the organization’s move to…
Music Family tradition
Chris Scruggs If any young country singer can lay claim to following in the family tradition, it’s Chris Scruggs. The son of Nashville singer/producer Gail Davies, and grandson of bluegrass’ greatest banjo innovator, Earl Scruggs, this 23-year-old revivalist could almost qualify for country music’s hall of fame on the strength of his bloodlines alone. Fortunately,…
Arts Artifacts
News and notes from the San Antonio art scene Put your money where their mouths are Welcome to Destination:SA, where the St. Augustine is always green and tourists who came for Sea World and the Alamo stay for the McNay and the Lyric Opera. That, in a nutshell, is the goal of Councilman Roger Flores’…
Music Sound and the Fury
SA Current Online A week on the scene Contest run Local country trio 10 City Run has been a ubiquitous presence on the local airwaves lately, and with good reason. The band, which formed a year ago with the concept of combining elements of surf- and garage-rock with mainstream country, is a semifinalist in the…
Screens All that glitters is not Gilliam
Studio meddling may have made The Brothers Grimm a lesser film, but it’s still a bright spot in Hollywood If there’s a great screening room up in the sky, where giants look down upon the mortals who walk in their footsteps, it’s a sure thing that Orson Welles spends a good deal of his time…
Music The sound sculptor
Web Exclusive Editor’s note: Bob Moog died August 21 at age 71 of a brain tumor. This story originally ran in October 2002. To be in Lyons, Indiana, is to be about as far from anywhere and still be somewhere. Yet somehow, in the band room of Lyons Elementary-Junior High School, there was Bob Moog.…
Screens Ars longa, vita brevis
A lifetime of cinematic masterpieces seems too little as Bergman bids farewell with Saraband With Fanny and Alexander (1983), Ingmar Bergman bid adieu to cinema and determined to devote his remaining energies to writing and directing for the theater. Yet two decades later, the venerable filmmaker returns with Saraband, which derives its title from a…
Arts Social intercourse
Web Exclusive The busy girl’s (and guy’s) guideto being seen in all the right places In case you haven’t heard, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean likes Mexican food. My mother and some friends went to dinner at Mi Tierra and upon sitting down, recognized Dean — in town for a speech and fundraiser at…
Screens Testing positive
Bill Murray’s playboy reaps what he sowed in Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers It is not uncommon for the media to treat the arrival of a new Jim Jarmusch movie as if his films were so strange, few filmgoers could be expected to enjoy them. Judging from the number of times the adjective “quirky” is applied,…
Screens Armchair Cinephile
Walking The Thin Blue Line It’s good to see the press giving so much attention to Werner Herzog’s latest comeback, Grizzly Man. After six years of inattention (since 1999’s My Best Fiend), one of the world’s truly singular filmmakers has found the spotlight again. Hopefully the timing will benefit New Yorker Video, which has just…
Feature Life at the bottom – Part 1
Nationally, Texas ranks among the lowest in funding for mental-retardation services. What does that mean for the future of state schools and community programs? Editor’s Note: This is the second in a two-part series about the social and fiscal dilemmas of caring for people with mental retardation. In Part One, parents, advocates, and caregivers discussed…
News Ball of confusion
Title IX advocates brace for a new round of threats to the gender-equality law Long-time supporters of Title IX face a dilemma these days. They know they have cause for concern, but they’re not sure whether to worry more about the education department or the imminent ascension of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. Title…
Screens Special screenings
SA Current Online Play at Artpace Artpace presents a special screening and lecture for the documentary Play, which premieres on the award-winning PBS series Art:21 this fall. Contemporary artists and former Artpace residents Arturo Herrera and Oliver Herring are featured in the film. Assistant Curator Kate Green will introduce the screening, and educators who attend…
Feature Life at the bottom – Part 2
It’s been nearly 160 years since the first institution for people with mental retardation opened in the wing of a state school for the blind. Over the next century, families who could not, or would not, care for their mentally retarded children sent them to these facilities, which were initially thought to protect the vulnerable…
News Reading, writing, and acid rain
Environmentalists urge East Central school board to challenge CPS coal plant The East Central School District administration office sits nearly in the shadow of the smokestacks at the Calaveras Lake power plant, so it seemed the proper venue for a presentation on the health risks that the coal-burning plant may pose for children who live…
Screens That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres From Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam, who hasn’t been credited for anything since his psychedelic 1998 film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, comes The Brothers Grimm. The film puts a fictional spin on the lives of Jacob (Heath Ledger) and Wilhelm (Matt Damon) Grimm, the fairy-tale-writing brothers, who…
