A visit with international fashion line, ‘Niche,’ created in San Antonio
Story by Desiree Prieto Turkish-born designer, Nilgun Derman, and her daughter, Ayse Derman, are the proud owners of Niche, a modern women’s clothing line carried in high-end boutiques and departments stores throughout the U.S. and Canada. In 500-800 stores at any given time, and in almost every state in the U.S., Niche happens to be…
Q & A with Gloria Rodriguez
San Antonio is about to come onto hard times, given major budget cuts at the state and federal level. What programs do you think can be trimmed back? What should we not touch? Every program and City Department needs to be evaluated. Programs, services, and projects that can be trimmed back would be those that…
Legend of the Haunted Railroad Tracks
San Antonio is a city steeped in great history and perhaps not coincidentally, many perplexing mysteries. Amidst the centuries old Missions and brushy hollows there exist tales of inexplicable happenings and spooky haunts galore. But, conceivably the Alamo City’s most notable saga centers around the so-called haunted railroad tracks on the city’s Southside. Featured on…
“Where There’s Smoke” by Pablo Miguel Martínez
Introduction This concise and evocative story/poem by Pablo Miguel Martínez uses connotation, metaphor and image (even an objective correlative at the end) to fantastic effect. Enjoy the richness: read it more than once. What do you pick up on the second reading? On the third? Send in your stories, your prose poems, your objective correlatives.…
Sky watchers: chemtrails and San Antonio
I don’t have the opportunity often to watch the grids being lain at 20,000 feet over our city, but I’ve observed and read just enough to make me curious when I catch a glimpse of a lingering aerial plume. So when a fellow on the Northside (north of San Antonio International, to be more precise)…
Bexar County Democrats try to move past Ramos
In an unprecedented move, the Bexar County Democratic Party voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to kick Dan Ramos from his short-lived post as chair. Amid cheering, many insisted the 104-5 vote to oust the embattled Ramos, just one year after his swearing in, marks the first step in moving the party past its recent rocky history. The…
Walk Like MADD-Don’t Drink and Drive
Meet Mark and Donna McCain, Honorary Family Chairs for this year’s “Walk Like MADD,” a fundraiser for the local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). The McCains, like many of their volunteers, have a very personal reason to support MADD. I met Donna and Mark for a conversation outside the Bexar County Courthouse where…
Up the Road — August: Osage County in Austin
Last weekend, I tricked a carload of San Antonians into seeing August: Osage County at the Zach Scott Theatre in Austin—I accomplished this by cannily neglecting to mention that the play was three-and-a-half hours long. (Details were finally squeezed out of me as we passed New Braunfels; the subsequent mutiny was squelched without significant loss…
WildFest
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-05-04 Organized by the San Antonio Parks Foundation, WildFest aims to increase awareness of nature in and around San Antonio, which has been described as sitting “at the crossroads of four diverse ecosystems.” The outdoor fun kicks off on Friday when the San Antonio River Authority and the San Antonio River…
Art opening: Tethered & In All that I Remember
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-05-04 Memories get stacked and spliced in two partnering exhibitions opening at UTSA Satellite Space this week. The daily rituals of H. Jennings Sheffield ? a self-described artist, student, mother, and wife ? find a conceptual platform in “Tethered,” a project that compresses three months of life via reconstructed photographs and…
Kumamoto En Day
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-05-04 Presented by the San Antonio Botanical Garden and the Japan America Society of San Antonio, Kumamoto En Day celebrates the Japanese version of Children’s Day with a slew of hands-on activities and demonstrations. Eager young minds can take an “instant” Japanese lesson, make a kabuto warrior hat out of paper…
Solar Fest 2011
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-05-04 Solar San Antonio’s “Run on the Sun” 5K kicks off the award-winning nonprofit’s Solar Fest: “Texas’ only 100% renewably powered event.” The kid- and pet-friendly day in the park offers live music on a solar-powered stage (The Saturday Night Satellites, Peacefield, and Slick Dickens are all on the bill), resources…
Wolfgang Gartner
Release Date: 2011-05-04 Austin resident Wolfgang Gartner (born Joey Youngman in San Luis Obispo, Calif.) doesn’t even have a full album to his name, but he’s already making big noise. Ranked 70th in DJ Mag’s annual world DJ poll, his debut album is expected in coming weeks on Ultra Music, but there are a few…
Gron’s Mobile Foundry
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-05-04 Experience is said to be the foundry of character, but what is a foundry? This Thursday — Cinco de Mayo — you have a rare chance to find out in person at a live iron pour. For $20 you can have your own sculpture made of molten metal by Jack…
Art opening: Susan Philipsz: Sunset Song
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-05-04 As an Artpace resident in 2003, Berlin-based Scottish artist (and Turner Prize-winner) Susan Philipsz created Sunset Song, a sound-based installation that uses the 19th-century murder ballad “Banks of the Ohio” (which has been recorded by Joan Baez, Olivia Newton-John, Johnny Cash, Porter Wagoner, and others) as a platform. A recent…
Texas Ski Ranch Cablestock Wake & Music Festival
Critic’s Pick Release Date: 2011-05-04 The Texas Ski Ranch, a 70-acre sports park in New Braunfels, kicks off its ninth-annual Cablestock Wake & Music Festival with a Cinco de Mayo celebration at onsite Wahoo’s Fish Taco (8 p.m. Thu, May 5). Part wakeboarding competition, part music festival and “beach” party, Cablestock attracts industry pros (who’ll…
Book review: ‘Dissenting Views: Investigations in History, Culture, Cinema, & Conspiracy’
A short glossary preceding author Joseph Green’s collection of essays and reviews focusing, for the most part, on conspiratorial readings of U.S. assassinations, concludes with Green’s favored definition for the word “thinking.” It’s one worth revisiting in light of recent breathless reporting on the death of Osama bin Laden, and requisite reimaginings of the so-called…
Galactic: The Other Side of Midnight: Live in New Orleans
In the tradition of all great jam bands, you can’t really get Galactic unless you hear them live. On the surface, the latest album by this New Orleans eight-piece does seem to get everything right: killer band, enthusiastic crowd, great energy. But if a great live album makes you feel like you’re at the show,…
Book review: ‘One-Way Tickets: Writers and the Culture of Exile’
For leading modern artists — James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, George Balanchine — abandoning home seemed a prerequisite for excellence. But exile did not begin with Victor Hugo railing against the tyranny of Napoleon III from the safety of England’s gloom. Jeremiah wept by the waters of Babylon, singing the Lord’s…
Live & Local: Ashram 5 Monks at G.I.G. on the Strip (with video)
The Hare Krishnas have mellowed out. Long gone are the fundamentalist pointing fingers, the stalking at the airports, the scandals. And from the beginning of their call-and-response percussion-led chants, or kirtan, the night of May 1 at the G.I.G. (the second monthly installment of the devotionals they’ve been presenting along with several other local, secular…
Cine File looks at a low-budget American horror classic and a Japanese gangster film
Genre filmmaking and auteurship seemingly have nothing to do with each other. Genre suggests both story and studio constraints, while auteurship implies individuality and freedom. But when the two are mashed together, there can be inexplicable, surreal results. Two perfect examples of this unlikely combination are found with the low-budget American horror classic Phantasm (1979),…
Ask a Mexican!
Dear Mexican: Please settle a dispute. I’m an Anglo living and working in Mexico for years, in Culiacán, Sinaloa (I married one of the famous Sinaloa beauties). My Spanish is passable and I live and function in Spanish. Where I live, there are virtually no other North Americans, other than English teachers at the university.…
‘Winter in Wartime’ is what movies are for
There are movies that hit all the right notes, and there are movies that hit all the right notes in the sense that you find yourself leaving the theater thinking entirely in movie-poster clichés. A coming-of-age tour de force. Breathtaking, heart wrenching. A new classic. Winter in Wartime, if the somewhat presumptuously generic/timeless/epic title doesn’t…
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Imagine this scene, as described by Seattle-based video artist Michael Douglas. “Sometimes a tree falls down in a field of cows, and the cows walk over to it and stare at it. It used to be standing and now it’s on the ground. There’s something different in the field and the…
‘Super’ a failed con job
At the tail end of a lively two-and-a-half-minute crayon animation that kicks off the dark comedy Super — the opening-credits montage features bad guys breathing fire and feasting on bunnies and a dance sequence rivaling anything out of Bollywood — we watch as the entire cast of entertaining cartoon characters stands with fists held high.…
Memphis Grizzlies teach Spurs about natural history
Excluding the zoo, are there actually any grizzly bears in Memphis? That was the initial question I asked myself in 2001 when the expansion Vancouver Grizzlies moved to Memphis. Admittedly, I don’t know a lot about bears. Everything I thought I knew I learned from the National Park Service. The feds advise those caught in…
Critic’s Diss: ‘There Be Dragons’
It seems like a lifetime ago that two-time Academy Award-nominated British filmmaker Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields, The Mission) created a historically significant drama as riveting as the stories behind the Cambodian genocide in 1975 and the Christianization of indigenous South Americans in the 18th century. Despite an early flourishing career, Joffé, whose last film…
Value Vino: Bonarda & Torrontés — from Italy to Argentina to local glasses
Welcome back to Value Vino — new, improved, and now twice monthly. In search of value we’ll pay attention to select wine regions (and sometimes entire countries), we’ll investigate local outlets, we’ll talk to wine vendors and comb restaurant wine lists … and we’ll take suggestions, too. Want to know about the best cheap (or…
Samuel Adams education packs, Shiner squeezes summer, and Alamo City Cerveza Fest winners
Samuel Adams education packs Boston Beer Co. is rolling out two new mixed 12 packs of Samuel Adams brews that offer some teachable moments. First up is the summer seasonal pack with two new additions to the lineup. The Rustic Saison is a very accessible Belgian-style farmhouse beer. The style brings a spicy character along…
Cabo Seafood + Bar: Mexico City restaurateurs open first San Antonio venture
A festive and inviting seafood restaurant has opened in the former digs of Ciao, Damien Watel’s short-lived venture on far Stone Oak Parkway. Cabo attempts to combine the laid-back atmosphere of the Mexican beach resort with the elegance of an after-hours club — and thankfully the risk of sunburn is minor and the ambient music stays…
Coco is a temple of Western decadence, and we love it
Rednecks and racists, be warned: stay away from Coco. Sure, all races and creeds are welcome at this modern, red-velvety chocolate lounge and bistro, but the browns and the blacks rule the place. Actually, the only real prerequisite to partying at this far-northside racial melting pot is pride in appearance, a passion for pleasure, and…
San Antonio Tootie pie-sicles to debut on Food Network’s Candy Store
Sure, Guy Fieri makes waves every time he comes to San Antonio. Last time we teased a visit by the bleached blonde, the Current’s website lit up like sparklers on a nursing home birthday cake. But for those who are most serious about the last course of a proper sit-down dinner — the dessert —…
Sushi Zushi’s secret drinking potential
If you think about it even briefly, a sushi bar is a natural forum for cocktails: The sushi itself is perfectly packaged for noshing while drinking, and there are typically dozens of other light options that don’t break the bank. And though sake and beer are obvious choices in this environment, cocktails crafted to complement…
Taste this: Fish Seviche at Sandbar
Not too terribly long ago, the concept of eating ceviche (which can also be spelled cebiche or seviche) at the Pearl Brewery would’ve sounded far-fetched. But with the addition of La Gloria and Sandbar, ceviche options at Pearl are plentiful, and some are even hearty enough for a light meal. Possibly the best example of…
Happy anniversary to ‘The Garage,’ Egshan raising funds to record new album, Monte Negro returns to SA, and Pedicab Confessions return to the Pedicab
Congratulations to Christina Rodríguez and The Garage, the local music webcast hosted by WOAI (Channel 4). It’s been one year already? The first anniversary bash will be at the Limelight (2718 North St. Mary’s) on Saturday, May 7, at 9 p.m. (21 and over, $5). The lineup is impressive: Pop Pistol, the Heroine, Yes, Inferno,…
Cornering Planned Parenthood, legislature fights to protect natural gas, and the San Antonio Lightening strikes at Elisa Chan
Cornering Planned Parenthood Last month, Texas House Republicans took a hammer to the state’s family-planning funding, splintering out nearly two-thirds of the original $99-million pot. The damage was so fast and furious that even state Senator Bob Deuell, a Greenville physician and loud Planned Parenthood opponent, worried that the plan might have been too reckless,…
Mexicans with Guns’ ‘Ceremony’ is ready to make fans pound the ground
Love it or hate it, the name Mexicans with Guns is as provocative as a salmon-colored suit at a funeral. And middle school educator/Exponential Records owner/MWG original ego Ernest Gonzales is okay with that. Though the name makes him question many things (like why many people might think of Mexicans-with-guns as menacing up-to-no-good-ers and not…
Is John Joseph’s Alamo Heights Neighborhood Association doing the dirty work for local developers?
Bookended with tall buildings and high-rises just outside each of its Broadway Avenue boundaries, affluent Alamo Heights has become a pre-election battleground pitting residents intent on preserving their sleepy town’s character against outside development interests working to block a building height-restriction ordinance that more than 620 petition-signing registered voters put on this month’s ballot as…
Crossroads of Hope to benefit the American Diabetes Association
To see them now — strong, smiling, determined — you’d never know the hell that Jeff Hull and Tammy Pérez had just returned from. A couple since the day they met (April 19, 2010), they’ve overcome their respective battles and have now joined forces in Crossroads of Hope, a music/comedy/art event that benefits the American…
Reveley vs Joseph
After receiving a particularly nasty email from AHNA founder John Joseph on April 7, one-time mayoral candidate Sarah Reveley filed complaints with the Alamo Heights Police Department, FBI, and the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office. All told her the same thing: as there was no physical threat, they could not be considered criminal. But she…
Fleet Foxes: Helplessness Blues
The second record is always a bitch (see: Interpol, Bloc Party, etc.). So as the scrapped sessions, shifting studio locations, and delayed release dates marked the follow-up to Seattle’s Fleet Foxes’ universally adored 2008 debut full-length, the writing certainly seemed to be on the wall. And yet, there is Helplessness Blues, a record so effortlessly…
Avoiding a post-bin Laden quagmire
Ding, dong, the witch is dead. Osama bin Laden, the author of the 9/11 atrocity in the United States and various lesser terrorist outrages elsewhere, has been killed by American troops in his hideout in northern Pakistan. At last, the world can breathe more easily. But not many people were holding their breath anyway. President…
Beastie Boys: Hot Sauce Committee Part Two
Last outing found the Beasties silently admitting several things. First, they were no longer occupying a decade they helped musically define (that may happen when you take six years off). Secondly, they were sliding into band adulthood (To The 5 Boroughs was more about refinement than reinvention, unlike most of their body of work). With…
Jade Walker’s ‘Quadri-Poise’ at Blue Star
Jade Walker’s installation Quadri-Poise at Blue Star Contemporary is queasy-making, filled with foreboding. Something is wrong, but stifled — mute as the dead silence that announces a predator. Strewn across the small room of the exhibit is a collection of abandoned things. A tufted cane coupled to a pipe and wrapped with buttoned strapping is…
Local review of Mexicans with Guns’ Ceremony
Rocking the nicest hip-hop moniker this side of N.W.A., Ernest Gonzales, aka Mexicans with Guns, returns to the fold with a record about as eclectic as it is electronic. Having established himself as a proper re-mixer and perhaps San Antonio’s premier sound alchemist, Gonzales posits 14 transcendental tracks that reach beyond the luchador mask. Unburdened…
The allure of ‘Magnetic Fields’ at Southwest School of Art
On view in the Navarro Campus galleries of the Southwest School of Art through May 15 is “Magnetic Fields,” paintings by Barbara Kreft, Richard Martinez, Kim Cadmus Owens, and Dan Sutherland. The four artists meld traditions of hard edge abstraction with elements of representation in explorations of space, the uncanny depths found within the picture…
Local review of Apaso’s Illaments
After being in and out of the rap game for more than 10 years, Apaso’s return in late 2009 marked a new, more serious period for the SA rapper. Illaments is the work of a veteran now coming into his own. Apaso casts himself as a mirror of his colleagues and neighbors in SA, but…
Healthy eating with basil (and recipes)
Here we go again with the weather. Just when I feel like I’m behind on gearing up for summer, I’m digging my sweater out of the back of the closet. By this time of year, most people’s gardens are in full swing and luckily the recent temperature dip wasn’t severe enough to tamper with that.…
Q & A with Fred Rangel
San Antonio is about to come on hard times, given major budget cuts at a state and federal level. What programs do you think can be trimmed back? What should we not touch? According to Senator Leticia Van De Putte, the $27 Billion dollar shortfall in the State of Texas was not based on last…
