Food & Drink The bar tab
The lights are dim, the stage is set I know a dark secluded place, a place where no one knows your face. A glass of wine, a fast embrace, it’s called … Hernando’s Hideaway … OLÉ. With its chunky gilt-framed paintings, the bar at Circa 1900 is surely more luxe than Richard Adler and Jerry…
Arts A contract with life
Why bother? A mystery ably tackled by two stunning graphic novels Graphic novels can be draining to read: The action is usually fast-paced and the reader must knit the narrative by correctly interpreting the visual cues in the panels. When the stories are emotionally fraught already, the sense of drama is heightened and personalized because…
Food & Drink All you can eat
News and notes from the San Antonio food scene Sing it now: You’re gonna cry, 96 beers “Is it glowing?” my drinking companion asked, warily eyeing his Shiner 96 as if it were coolant from a nuclear reactor. An iridiscent amber, Shiner’s new Märzen-style ale is not radioactive, but did seem to shimmer in the…
Screens Small screen
Last respects – In La Tragedia de Macario, a young filmmaker recognizes undocumented immigrants who die crossing the border On May 14, 2003, 19 undocumented immigrants from Mexico died of dehydration, hyperthermia, and suffocation when the refrigerated tractor-trailer they were crossing the border in became an airless oven. The driver had abandoned the sealed trailer…
Arts The Machinima mushroom
A DIY guerrilla art form takes the film industry by storm(troopers) Dick Simmons is trapped in the middle of a box canyon, with no way in or out. Standing guard with his weapon drawn, he wonders out loud about the futility of his struggle. “Why are we out here?” Simmons asks. “The only reason that…
Music Squeezebox heaven
In its fifth year, the International Accordion Festival travels to Central Europe The recent German hit film Schultz Gets the Blues centers on a polka-playing accordionist who becomes depressed about his monotonous life. At his lowest point, Schultz hears a Louisiana zydeco tune over the radio, feels a surge of inspiration, and decides he must…
Arts Classical attitude
News and notes from San Antonio’s other music scene Defining contemporary classical music can be a sticky business. With popular culture and musical forms filtering in through the experience and musical vocabulary of composers and performers, the lines of stylistic distinction often become blurry. When the relative values of live performance and recorded products are…
Music After Sunset
Running for covers at Broadway Bar Friday afternoon had been long in coming, and I made plans to meet a friend at Broadway Bar to celebrate my one-year anniversary in San Antonio. My friend and I had discovered the bar while waiting for my car to be fixed at the Alamo Body and Paint shop…
Screens Lies, damn lies, and movies
Tony Scott’s take on Domino Harvey is more fiction than fact, but so was the lady herself Daughter of a movie star and a Vogue cover girl. A Ford model. A bounty hunter. Domino Harvey’s life was the stuff of great fiction, mostly because that’s exactly what it was. As the movie version of her…
Music CD Spotlight
Ghost of the ‘machine’ Those who grew attached to the internet-bootleg version of Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine probably gnashed their teeth the first time they heard the new, officially sanctioned Machine. It’s not that the differences are so radical. In fact, Apple sings several of the songs almost exactly the same way she did on…
Music Sound and the fury
A week on the scene Nail biter Nine Inch Nails’ October 16 show at SBC Center comes only nine days after the live debut of the group’s temporary drummer Alex Carapetis, an Australian journeyman with a wide range of touring experience. Carapetis was brought in after NIN drummer Jerome Dillon encountered persistent problems with an…
Music Current Choice
Strayhorn of plenty As a kid, Larry Strayhorn had little sense that his uncle, Billy Strayhorn, was one of the singular figures in the history of American music. “He was a wonderful uncle, but that was about it,” says Strayhorn, a Pittsburgh native who moved to San Antonio in January of this year. “When he…
Screens Armchair Cinephile
Web Exclusive First tastes of Halloween, reheated In David Cronenberg’s magnificently icky The Fly (just issued as a 2-disc Collector’s Edition by 20th Century Fox), a scientist invents a transporting machine intended to zap a person in one location and replicate him in another. When he tests the device, of course, the teleported version of…
News The wild ones
Activists say trapping, fixing, and returning feral cats to their colonies can curb overpopulation Faithann Schmidt is breaking the law. She almost dares San Antonio police to arrest her – she wouldn’t mind the publicity anyway. Many people in San Antonio agree with Schmidt, and they, too, are violating an ordinance that City officials don’t…
Screens Waiting
Web Exclusive Trash talk and potty mouths make for a tiresome time in the restaurant biz are you being dished? Waiting Dir. Rob McKittrick; writ. McKittrick; feat. Ryan Reynolds, Anna Faris, Justin Long, David Koechner, Luis Gúzman, Chi McBride, John Francis Daley (R) The “New Job Dream” is proof that we all have a little…
Screens From here to interminable
‘Screen Door Jesus’ makes a putatively holy moment feel like a lifetime The Alamodome might never sport the logo of a permanently resident NFL team, but about 20 years ago San Antonio acquired its own holy icon. For several summer nights, the image of the Virgin Mary appeared to appear on the wall of a…
News Party lines
A bone for campaign watchdogs Belated congrats goes to new City Attorney Michael Bernard, billed as an agent of change who jumped across the street from the Bexar County Courthouse to City Hall. Bernard will earn an annual salary of $152,000, apparently enough of an incentive to leave the district attorney’s office. Interim City Manager…
Screens Playing with fire
‘The Big Buy’ spent two years tracking Ronnie Earle as he built his case against Tom DeLay Texas filmmakers Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck planted themselves on history’s doorstep two years ago when they started filming Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle as he investigated Congressman Tom DeLay (R-Sugar Land) and his Political Action Committee,…
News People power
Public pressure influenced bond proposal Editor’s Note: This is the first of several stories about the upcoming special election. Alamo Community College District officials, recovering from a stinging defeat of their previous bond issue proposal, have returned with a new-and-improved version of a $450 million bond that reflects more closely what the community representatives say…
Screens Special screens
Screenings on the Slab A Bucket of Blood Dir. Roger Corman (1959) Prolific producer of TV hash and campy horror movies Roger Corman helmed this late ’50s flick about a nerd who finds social redemption through dead bodies and sculpture. Think House of Wax meets Plaster of Paris. The film screens at 9 p.m. Thursday,…
News Briefs
Hardberger would have voted no Developers of a proposed Lowe’s store withdrew their petition for a re-zone for a site at Loop 1604 and Bulverde Road reportedly because they couldn’t get enough City Council votes. One vote the developers couldn’t count on was that of Mayor Phil Hardberger, who, in a September 27 letter, told…
Screens That’s a wrap
The low-down on this week’s premieres In his first film since 2001’s Vanilla Sky, director-screenwriter-producer Cameron Crowe journeys into a small town in Kentucky known as Elizabethtown. Back home for his father’s funeral, Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) begins to fall in love with cheery flight attendant Claire Colburn (Kirsten Dunst), who helps him through the…
News Speed reads
SAC students snubbed under Miers’ watch In 1997, as chairwoman of the Texas Lottery Commission, Harriett Miers, now President Bush’s nominee for Supreme Court justice was of no help to local statistics students who found errors in lottery ads. San Antonio College math professor and Lotto watchdog Gerald Busald said that under Miers’ watch, the…
Food & Drink Mercury rising
Group urges grocers to advise customers on mercury and fish Last week, Michael Bender, the head of the Vermont-based Mercury Policy Project, was trekking toward the peak of Hunger Mountain to take in the breathtaking fall leaves. Closer to sea level, Bender is concerned about a public hungry for facts about their fish consumption. While…
Feature Beyond damage control
A grand-jury indictment may be too big for DeLay to spin Minutes after the news hit that a Texas grand jury had indicted House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on one count of criminal conspiracy in a case of alleged campaign money laundering, I was in a Washington power-lunch restaurant for a prearranged encounter with Eric…
Food & Drink Sidecar of corn, anyone?
Brindles Ice Creams serves up strange and wondrous by the scoop The Strand shopping center on Huebner at I-10 packs a fatal one-two punch: a Half Price Books outlet adjacent to Brindles Awesome Ice Creams, Gelato. Buy a book, take it next door, order a couple of scoops, and plunge into both creative worlds. Brindles’…
Arts Lush be a lady
The proclivities and passions of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their muses Full disclosure: In my teens, I was the kind of girl who regularly visited Renaissance Faires, wrote airy-fairy poetry in my “Unicorn Notebook,” and emulated Stevie Nicks. At 16, I went to London on a class trip, where I visited the Tate Gallery and…
Food & Drink Pie high
Pizza makers and acrobats make spinning, stretching, and kicking dough a sport Although it’s hard to find a person who doesn’t like pizza, few know that the pie is well on its way to becoming the world’s next Olympic sport. The U.S. Pizza Team is a group of pizza makers and dough acrobats whose goal…
Arts Terminal anxiety
Airspace maximizes the dislocation of our anonymous travel hubs Folks in the local art world employ a kaleidoscope of different skills. Jennifer Davy is known in San Antonio as an art historian, curator, writer, and teacher – and since there are only so many hours in a day, you may not know that she also…
