Food & Drink Grapefight at the Pinot Corral
Current Online news politics culture Value vino – great wines for under $15 I am now the proud, if somewhat worried, possessor of a shoot of Dijon clone 115 pinot noir on a phylloxera-resistant root. It’s not the phylloxera, a root louse that has devastated the vineyards of entire countries, I’m worried about, but the…
Arts – festival The Texas Folklife Festival
Savor a world of flavors with ethnic food, live entertainment, and family fun as the Institute of Texan Cultures hosts the 34th consecutive Texas Folklife Festival at HemisFair Park downtown. The four-day cultural celebration showcases Texas’ diversity through a rich and plentiful assortment of ethnic foods, diverse music and dance, arts and crafts, artisan demonstrations,…
Music – feature’Bubble’ heads
Pong serves up futuristic paranoia with its retro electro-rock There’s a recurring joke amongst the Rolling Stones that even after nearly 30 years in the band – more than twice as long as his predecessors combined – Ron Wood is still referred to as “the new guy.” In a sense, the Austin rock band Pong…
Screens New reviews
‘Layer Cake, Shark Boy and Lava Girl, and Lord’s of Dogtown’ Layer Cake Dir. Matthew Vaughn; writ. J.J. Connolly; feat. Daniel Craig, Colm Meaney, George Harris, Jamie Foreman, Sienna Miller, Michael Gambon, Kenneth Cranham (R) Freely roaming the worlds of sinister drug-dealers and remorseless murderers from the comfort of home or theater is a fascinating…
Arts Artifacts
Web Exclusive The Cultural Collaborative and ‘The Economic Impact of San Antonio’s Creative Industry’ The voting isn’t over ’til the The Cultural Collaborative passes … as far as Office of Cultural Affairs Director Felix Padrón is concerned, anyway. Pleading uncertain times, the City Council at its May 26 meeting tabled the TCC resolution, which would…
Election coverage Win or lose, they’ll always drink booze
Web Exclusive Hardberger’s cash bar triumphs over Castro’s beer kegs “I want to be home by midnight,” Elections Administrator Cliff Borofsky quipped as he slapped copies of the early voting totals from Tuesday’s mayoral race onto the counter. The numbers did not bode well for District 7 Councilman Julián Castro, who was in a do-or-die…
Screens Special screenings
SA Current Online Godzilla (the uncut original), La Malquerida, Blonde Savage, The Tour Baby!, and Camp cinema TPR’s Cinema Tuesdays Godzilla: The Uncut Japanese Original Dir. Ishiro Honda (1954) Once upon a time Godzilla was not a campy icon of far-out Japanese culture. He was a scaly, fire-breathing, anti-H-bomb allegory. The original 1954 Godzilla, co-written…
Music Current choice
Texas troubadour Open-mic nights across America are surely littered with the debris of mediocre young songwriters who idolize John Prine, Guy Clark, and Townes Van Zandt. Few experiences in life are more painful than watching an earnest guy with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, vainly trying to match the wordplay of these master craftsmen.…
Election coverage A tale of two parties
Web Exclusive Elena Guajardo reigns in District 7 Pulling into the empty parking lot in front of Noel Suniga’s campaign offices, located in a small strip mall on Bandera, one would never know there was a party happening. At 7:30 p.m., the day’s last poll workers are straggling in, each one greeted at the door…
Screens That’s a wrap
SA Current Online The low-down on this week’s premieres – Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Shark Boy, the Honeymooners, and the Holy Girl Sharing the most common of all surnames, Brad Pitt (Fight Club) and Angelina Jolie (Girl, Interrupted) star as assassins in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Smith is only the alias of deadly husband-and-wife duo…
Music Sound and the fury
A week on the scene The Killith Fair Tour is an annual underground metal package conceived by M.O.D. frontman Billy Milano. A troublemaking loudmouth who looks like Rob Reiner and describes himself as “the rebel you love to hate,” Milano has carved out a niche for M.O.D. (Methods of Destruction) as a cochlea-crushing, brain-bruising outfit…
Election coverage Underdog reigns in District 6
Web Exclusive No money, no problem The day after the election, the giddy sound in Delicia Herrera’s voice was either elation or exhaustion. Although her opponent, Ray Lopez, had outspent her, and although San Antonio’s development lobby had targeted her as a (gasp) environmentalist, Herrera won the District 6 City Council seat by a 56-to…
Food & Drink All you can eat
Current Online News and notes from the San Antonio food scene Cheese for cake With crafts, live music, and dance performances, the Texas Folklife Festival, Institute of Texan Cultures in HemisFair Park, offers authentic cuisine from more than 40 ethnic groups, from Filipino lumpia to El Salvadoran pupusas and Turkish coffee to Alsatian sausage and…
Music All ears
Sheffield, NYC, Austin, and Oklahoma In his irresistible lo-fi anthem “Cubs in Five,” John Darnielle (aka The Mountain Goats) gleefully predicts that “Bill Gates will single-handedly spearhead the Heaven 17 revival.” Well, Bill’s got help. The new documentary Made in Sheffield (plexifilm) sheds light on a scene most of us never knew about – an…
Music CD Spotlight
Folds ‘n’ fluff Ben Folds’ best and worst trait has always been his smart-alecky streak. On the downside, it tends to reveal what a smug, revenge-of-the-nerds jerk he can be, as on 1997’s “One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces,” in which he giddily urged his chldhood tormenters to kiss his ass because he was…
Arts The art capades
Buttercup turns the table with performance art that’s all about you First Friday was kind of quiet last week. Where was everybody? At home with their feet in ice? Sure, it’s easy to love art during the good times, but what about when it’s hot as hell? How are you ever going to make it…
News feature Pins and needles
Despite failed legislation, a grassroots needle exchange tentatively launches in San Antonio Last month, Senate Bill 127, legislation that would have made it legal in Texas to exchange a dirty hypodermic needle for a clean one, died on the Senate floor. While legislators who supported the bill are heartened that for the first time in…
Arts – performance ¿Quién quiera café?
If it’s 3 o’clock, then it must be time for coffee In Puerto Rico, languid mid-afternoons are perked up by the drip, drip, drip of hot, brown elixir. Over cups of steaming coffee, people share stories and histories, sustaining an oral tradition quickly being lost to the 60-hour work week, the 45-minute commute, and the…
News Days of glory revisited
City, UIW settle out of court on Miraflores Garden Motorists whiz past the pasture adjacent to the San Antonio River on Hildebrand Avenue. But in their haste, they’re missing something: a headless, winged statue that stands on what appears to be a front porch of a long-gone family mansion, where two sculptured lions guard the…
Screens We know drama (and this ain’t it)
TNT brings the famous monotony of rolling prairie grass to the screen How the West was dumb: TNT’s mini-series Into the West achieves the unenviable feat of sucking the life from one of the most exciting eras in American history. “It took him an hour-and-a-half to hack through the bone, but by that time Rachel…
News Unwelcome guests
SA journalist gets a visit from the feds When federal agents knock on your door, chances are they’re not bringing you a Publisher’s Clearinghouse check. Just ask San Antonio freelance journalist Bill Conroy: Federal agents visited his home and workplace trying to squeeze him for the source of a leaked Department of Homeland Security memo.…
Screens Heads off to Alexandre Aja
‘High Tension’ hangs on extravagant butchery and sexual anxiety It begins with a bleeding, panting woman staggering through a forest. The dimly lit, hand-held, grainy images could be an outtake from The Blair Witch Project, except that immediately following the opening credits Marie (De France) explains to Alex (Le Besco) that it was all a…
News Party lines
Gutierrez’ gift of gab During his last meeting two weeks ago, outgoing District 3 City Councilman Ron Segovia handed out accolades, commending the sitting and incoming council members for “continuing to serve the community.” Interim City Manager J. Rolando Bono chimed in with his own thanks: “You’ve treated us very royally.” Segovia also used a…
Screens Armchair cinephile
Faux Rick James, fictional radio announcers, and one real TV journalist He’s riiich, bee-yotch! The second season DVD release of Chappelle’s Show (Comedy Central) reportedly has had the best first-week sales of any TV series ever. Wow. Hard to believe Dave beat Jerry, Homer, Captain Kirk, et al; here’s hoping the good news brings the…
News Speed reads
Hell on wheels, You may kiss the bride, Activate your onStar, These colors do run Hell on wheels: Bikes and San Antonio don’t mix as any cyclist who’s been brushed by a Hummer – or a Geo – can tell you. A bike survey conducted by UTSA and the Texas Department of Transportion is soliciting…
Screens – Gaming ‘Big Brother,’ the console
Current Online news culture politics The three gaming titans prepare to change the market in ’06, one with depth and two with span Within a year’s time, a new batch of video-game consoles will be unleashed on the market. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are the major players in the video-game wars, with each vying for…
Feature Profiling the profiler
Local criminal investigator Dean Wideman tries to crack the coldest cases To detectives, it was a run-of-the-mill suicide. A Colorado woman had hanged herself in her shower. Case closed. But to the victim’s parents, their daughter’s apparent suicide didn’t make sense. She had been planning a church party for the holiday season. She had no…
Food & Drink Roux the moving day
Will a third venue be the charm for Ma Harper’s? She grew up in Algiers, Louisiana, which enjoys a reputation as one of the tougher neighborhoods near New Orleans’ Latin Quarter. Money was tight for her family of 15 siblings, and whoever did the cooking had to stretch the contents of the pantry to feed…
Culture feature Radio for someplace else
KSTX has built an audience by appealing to transplants, but maybe it’s time for some local flava Texas Public Radio doesn’t have an old-white-guy problem. The men who run the station aren’t all white. They’re not all old, either. But conversations with several of them leave a golden-years aura in their wake: complacent satisfaction tinged…
Food & Drink How does this garden grow?
Volunteers sow the seeds of community gardening in SA If you pass by a certain vacant lot in the cool of the evening, you might see several people kneeling in the mud, pulling weeds, or gently lodging tiny tomato plants into the ground. Near the corner of Ferndale and Keats on the South Side, volunteers…
Culture feature extra Under pressure
NPR under scrutiny for alleged bias While National Public Radio undergoes scrutiny over alleged anti-Israeli bias in its reporting, San Antonio’s NPR affliate, KSTX, has been largely untouched by the recent controversy. Joe Gwathmey, CEO of Texas Public Radio, says the station has felt “no pressure whatsoever” from NPR or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,…
Food & Drink Try everything once
Chef Garcia brings traditional Mexican food to the Central Market cooking school At only 32, Ana Garcia is the executive chef and co-owner of Reposado restaurant and hotel in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where she also runs La Villa Bonita School of Mexican Cuisine. Her recipes have been published in Bon Appétit magazine and her cooking school…
Arts – StageLess is more
When Jump-Start creates original work with marginalized voices, acting is not the primary ingredient “Too much acting,” is one of the notes the director is giving his cast late in the rehearsal process for Something Else, which opens at Jump-Start theater on June 10. Although seemingly incongruous, this piece of direction illuminates something very important…
