Trip Advisor Touts Las Canarias.
Tripadvisor.com rates hotels, restaurantsâ?¦you name it; “reviews you can trust” is their tagline. And though our kudos go out to Las Canarias for coming in at #1 on their survey of 1390 San Antonio restaurants (!), we suggest that a few words of caution are in order. (More on Las Canarias, a restaurant nevertheless worthy…
More local fundraising reports
Someday soon I will write a very thorough piece about why we should all pay attention to judicial elections. For today, I will just tell you that as a Bexar Co. voter, you’re going to have to wade through several of these elected positions as you pull the lever Nov. 2, so you might as…
And they’re off! Mid-year campaign finance reports kick off election season
Locally, LaHood follows fellow Dem White’s path of out-raising GOP establishment candidate. The Texas Ethics Commission website has been getting quite a workout today as journos, political operatives, campaign finance reformers and apparently everyone in between try to access the site’s mid-year campaign finance report filings, due yesterday. The strain of actual interest proved too…
Cap on BP leak; gag on Gulf scientists
Greg Harman gharman@sacurrent.com The gusher in the Gulf that led to one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history has gone quiet following three months of rushing crude from the sea floor. Whether that well stays silent depends on the results of the pressure test taking place today. If the well proves to be…
Despite questionable spelling, SA is ready to get “cyched”
Yes, “Get Cyched” is the media campaign tagline developed by Bexar County Metropolitan Planning Committee’sBicycle Advisory group. You can see it for yourself July 20 at 10 a.m. when the group kicks off a six-month long public education push in conjunction with the re-opening of bike and pedestrian-friendly Hays Street Bridge on Hays and Cherry…
Slab Cinema is back and crazier than ever
The rain went away for a while at least, so Slab Cinema’s setting up outside again. Tonight, at Hemisphere Park, check out Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, set to begin at sundown, which according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, will happen at 8:36pm sharp. Don’t be late or you’ll miss the monkeys. Bring the…
San Japan Slideshow
PHOTOS BY BRYAN RINDFUSS
Parse This: No Kill Is Dead
John Bachman, a subject of our June 30 story “Stray Bullets”, has been pondering writing this letter for some time. Earlier this week he sent it, in email form, to all City Council members, Mayor Julian Castro, City Manager Sheryl Sculley and those in the Sculley’s office who specifically deal with Animal Care Services. He…
Whiskey Ships w/ the Mechanical Walking Robot & Chris Gavito
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-07-14 ove Aqueduct, the debut release from local musician Mikey Chapa’s Whiskey Ships, has the sort of title you probably shouldn’t think about too much. The second definition for aqueduct in Webster’s is “a canal or passage in a part or organ,” but there’s a vast difference (get it?) between what…
Night Work
Night Work Composer: Scissor Sisters Conductor: Scissor Sisters Label: Universal Release Date: 2010-07-14 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording For their third album, Scissor Sisters work with an outside party for the first time, and it does them a world of good. The group apparently trashed an earlier version of Night Work and even considered calling it…
Streets of Gold
Streets of Gold Composer: 3OH!3 Conductor: 3OH!3 Label: Photo Finish/Atlantic Release Date: 2010-07-14 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording There must be something about the air in Colorado that makes so many of its bands such insufferable goofballs. Flobots, OneRepublic, String Cheese Incident — their names say it all. But none of these groups is as awful…
Inception
Inception Director: Christopher Nolan Screenwriter: Christopher Nolan Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard Release Date: 2010-07-14 Rated: PG-13 Genre: Film Fans of Chrisopher Nolan’s other mind-fondling films, Following and Memento, might reasonably worry he’s given in to studio pressure to explain the trick before he’s started shuffling the cards. Not only has…
Scream
Scream Composer: Ozzy Osbourne Conductor: Ozzy Osbourne Label: Epic Release Date: 2010-07-14 Rated: NONE Genre: Recording Any fears that Osbourne’s young new guitar player Gus G. wouldn’t be able to fill the shoes of the departed Zakk Wylde can be put to rest. The kid is a monster and further proof that Osbourne, who’s teamed…
Vagabond Swing & Bombasta All Stars
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-07-14 If Vagabond Swing can’t describe their sound in one word, it’s because their music — inspired by their native Louisiana’s rich musical tapestry — vacillates between ragtime, Afrobeat, rockabilly, swing, and blues. Whether folks in Mobile, Beaumont, or Hattiesburg (three of the stops on VS’s “Warrior Tour”) are ready for…
Environmental Film Series: Call of the Hummingbird
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-07-14 Solar San Antonio presents Alice Klein’s crunchy documentary about a motley crew of eco-radicals who’ve relocated to central Brazil to begin preparing for December 21, 2012 — the end of the Mayan calendar. Over 13 days, this intentional community (which includes Rastafarians, Hare Krishnas, and alternative-health practitioners) hopes to make…
Scenes from an Execution
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2010-07-14 Rather than celebrating the Battle of Lepanto’s Venetian heroes in the mural she’s been commissioned to paint, feisty Galactia (a character based on “bloodthirsty” 16th century painter Artemisia Gentileschi) decides to focus on the atrocities that helped secure the Mediterranean as a Christian sea. That’s the premise of Howard Barker’s…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Thou shalt not kill” is a crucial rule for you to follow, and not just in the literal sense. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you should also be extra vigilant as you avoid more metaphorical kinds of destruction. Please be careful not to unleash ill-chosen words that would…
Chisme y Chicle
Gonzales Food Market, “sausage since 1959,” is coming to town from its home base in, yes, Gonzales. Local pitmasters beware, as GFM, among other accomplishments, is featured in Robb Walsh’s Legends of Texas Barbecue Cookbook. Sausage, brisket, and both pork and lamb ribs are among the traditional offerings, and the competition can only be good…
LaHood-ies, SWU collateral damage, Oil vs. Water, and more…
Fall fashion: LaHood-ie? In what could become one of the most significant races of the current election cycle, one-time bad boy (the impresario of Ecstasy?) Nicholas “Nico” LaHood is reporting campaign-contribution action that could put him in competitive territory with Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed, who’s also been lashed in the press for more…
Beating something besides the Bush
There aren’t many things one really needs to know about California’s cranky, high-pocketed, white-shoe-and-belt-wearing, prune-munching neighbor to the east. I know, I know, “need” is a strong word. As in, “your mother needs a hip replacement,” or “I’ll need another drink if I’m gonna have to carve the turkey.” But there are two things that people…
Parten ways
Jackson Parten, the creative center of Jackson Parten Catastrophe, doesn’t talk up the country roots of his forthcoming disc, Melody and Metaphor. He understands it to be the shoe-gazy, pop opus that fans will see it as. But he maintains that it’s a distant yet natural destination any Brit-rock lover would come to after nearly…
The empire strikes backhanded
On April 12 this spring, a young, idealistic double agent resigned his mission. “I worked very hard for the `Texas Green Party` because I believe in the GPTX and its core values and mission,” he wrote. “I worked so very hard because Texas is in a political crisis. We are in desperate need of courageous,…
Live & local
That name is clearly a bunch of bullshit. “We love you, Christine!” a group of ladies shouts at the drummer from the back of the crowd jam-packed around the performance area. True, the Mix is almost always preview-of-2060 overpopulated on Friday nights, but the draw tonight is slightly different: disproportionately female (So Unloved’s MySpace headline…
White & nerdy
In his last free minutes before soundcheck, funnyman “Weird Al” Yankovic wishes his wife a happy birthday and bids their daughter, 7, goodbye. The women in Al’s life traveled to see him here in Kettering, Ohio, after stopping at another concert in the Midwest earlier this week — Justin Bieber at Summerfest. But the ladies…
The sound & the fury
Two questions: Did you know Best Buy sells musical instruments? And who gives a rat’s ass? You do, kind of, if you’re into supporting the local music scene. The blue-and-yellow big box is joining forces with Epiphone Guitars and Local 782 to bring weekly acoustic in-store performances by local musicians to their location at 125…
‘Bone’ to pick
It could have been terribly depressing. But Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning Winter’s Bone, based on Daniel Woodrell’s novel of the same title, is just plain compelling. In an impoverished community of insiders in the Ozark Mountains, Ree spends her days caring for her virtually comatose mother and young siblings. But things become more complicated when…
Scripting real life
Doug Hawes-Davis made his first documentary in 1992 with a borrowed camera and zero film experience. “The Element of Doom,” a half-hour exposé on the damage a mining operation did to the wilderness of southeast Missouri, was the first of 25 films Hawes-Davis’s High Plains Films has released in the past 18 years. The production…
Under the influence
I totally admit I know next to nothing about anime or manga. I know Hayao Miyazaki, but he’s pretty mainstream. Many entries in my roster of known Japanese films star Toshiro Mifune. Worse, my video-game knowledge is straight-up, old-school Ms. Pac Man/Pitfall/Frogger era. And while I had seen a newscast about a rash of local…
World of the wars
The artists sit in the studio and talk about war. Not just the two we’ve got going, but the war on drugs, Vietnam, World War II, the military presence in San Antonio, the low-grade martial law we all live under, and the warrior imagery so important in framing little-boy culture. “War games” is Oscar Mike’s…
The chicken’s husband
At any given moment on our planet, some 10-12 billion chickens are clucking. Hens worldwide lay close to 700 billion eggs each year. Most chickens live on large commercial farms; a few live on small farms or rural homesteads; fewer still live in cities, suburbs, and towns. But this is changing, in my own neighborhood…
Dear Uncle Mat
Dear Uncle Mat, I recently walked into my usual downtown coffee shop where a new piece of art caught my eye: The subject of the photograph, who also happens to be the photographer, is an old friend from high school. I was stunned. Back then, I hurt her pretty badly. I was not exactly the…
Summerscotch
It’s 95 degrees outside, and the young imbiber’s fancies have not necessarily turned to thoughts of single-malt Scotch. The older imbiber’s fantasies are also elsewhere — especially given that single malts are normally tasted neat with perhaps only a drop or two of chilled water to release aromas and tame the alcohol. But crank up…
Back to the oak roots
American craft brewing died an unfortunate death from an illness that began with the hacking cough that was Prohibition and ended in the 1970s and ’80s with the pillow to the face that was mass production and consolidation. So it comes as no surprise that long-held traditions disappeared along the way. Marketing replaced the need…
Master Sergeant Pepper’s Healthy Hearts Club
At a certain point the royal we at Meatless in Steer City are going to run out of vegetarian restaurants to review. Actually, we may have already. But there are plenty of stealth vegetarian restaurants in town that appeal to a wide range of tastes and still deliver a healthy meal. It just takes time…
¡Ask A Mexican!
Dear Mexican, Most Mexicans I know (myself included) feel it’s a terrible act of disrespect to keep old photos around of you and your ex. I’d never keep pictures of me and an ex around to try and push my new/current boyfriend’s buttons; I guess I feel it’s a slap in the face. Still, when…
Two wheels good
Contrary to misguided opinion, the yellow jersey you see me wearing is not an indication that I’m a Lance Armstrong Wannabe. If you looked a little closer, you’d see that my bicycle has a rear rack on it, that attached to that rack is a bag stuffed to the gills and enough flashing red lights…
