As Fiesta approaches, San Antonio blooms with brilliant blues, oranges, pinks and greens.
The colors come in the forms of papel picado, garlands, piñatas, halos and cascarones. For a few weeks they provide bright bursts and pops within San Antonio's landscape as the city celebrates.
And much of that color – the hundreds of thousands of confetti-filled eggs, yards upon yards of ribbon, tons of papier mâché – comes from a single source: Fiesta on Main (2025 N. Main Ave.), a rambling white-columned house on the corner of Ashby Place and Main Avenue, which has long served as one of the city's premier dispensaries of all things Fiesta.
The store was originally founded as an outlet for Mexican artisans to sell their goods in San Antonio, and it still does that. The vast majority of the store's products are handmade in Mexico, either by individual artists or by employees of the store's manufacturing plant in Mexico City, where they make cascarones, piñatas and other goods.
The store's busiest period is right now, according to Luis Pineda, the store's manager. Wholesale buyers start purchasing products in January, and individual retail customers start buying their annual stock shortly after that. From there, it's all about getting ready for next year's Fiesta, Pineda said.
"It's a year-round commitment," Pineda said. "I don't want to say we're ambassadors of San Antonio or Fiesta, but we can definitely say that a lot of people look up to us ... to define what Fiesta is by the products that we sell."
