San Antonio Current - April 3, 2024

Totality Tunes

Central Texas music festivals celebrate the coming eclipse

Not Just a Phaze

Phazez/Changez Reunion will celebrate 1980s club that brought goth to San Antonio Critics’ Picks

How one local woman is fighting to tame San Antonio’s stray problem

Takes Sylvia Gonzalez’s Supreme Court fight with Castle Hills is one worth waging 18

The McNay embraces maximalism with the De La Torre Brothers exhibition ‘Upward Mobility’

View Poetry collection Texas,Being offers exploration of ‘brutal and beautiful’ state

That Rocks/That Sucks

HHuman-rights advocates including police reform group ACT4SA condemned the San Antonio Police Department’s decision to participate in a SWAT competition hosted by the Dubai police in the United Arab Emirates last month. The competition included units from countries with records of human rights abuse, including Russia, the Philippines and China. The San Antonio and New York City police departments were the only U.S. participants in the event.

A Tarrant County-based appeals court last week overturned Crystal Mason’s conviction for illegal voting over a provisional ballot she cast in 2016 while on supervised release for federal tax evasion. Mason, who is Black, was handed a fiveyear prison sentence for her provisional vote and became an international symbol of Texas’ voting-rights crackdown. Through the process, she maintained she didn’t know she was ineligible to vote when she cast her ballot.

HAfter returning to San Antonio with an Amazon-style grocery delivery service in spring of 2022, Kroger last week ended the service here as well as in Austin and Miami. The company’s 67,000-square-foot fulfillment center, located on Interstate 35 and Loop 410, is shu ing down. Kroger hasn’t had a brick-and-mortar store in San Antonio since 1993.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week declined to allow Texas to enforce its “show me your papers” law while the legal ba le over its constitutionality plays out. Senate Bill 4, passed last year by the Texas Legislature, would allow state officials to arrest and deport people they suspect of being here without proper documentation. The Fifth Circuit’s ruling likely means the law won’t go into effect until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in on its legality.  — Abe Asher

Poisoning public discourse with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones

Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.

Austin-based Alex Jones, who was last year ordered to pay $1.5 billion in damages to the families of Sandy Hook victims for talking out of his ass about “what really happened” in Newtown, is now promoting a conspiracy theory about the solar eclipse visible over San Antonio next week.

The batshit theory goes something like this: the total solar eclipse has something to do with the ancient Assyrians and is a sign of the pending New World Order. Further, we common folk will be forced to repent for our sins — and the sins of our enemies. And, oh yeah, Homeland Security has something to do with it one way or another.

It’s all laid out in an eight-minute video posted on Jones’ InfoWars online accounts earlier this month. Naturally, the clip ends with Jones promoting his $9.95 fluoride-free toothpaste.

Hey, he’s got to pay off that se lement somehow. To most level-headed folks, Jones is a conspiracy-bellowing blowhard — something apparent since his 1999 launch of InfoWars. Fast forward to today, though, and he’s only one voice in a deafening chorus of shrill a ention seekers who seem to think the truth is what you make of it.

“I’m not going to kid you, I don’t have all the facts on that to answer that question right now.”

—  Marc LaHood Pro-school voucher Texas House candidate when the Express-News Editorial Board asked him about a budget crisis in Arizona attributed to that state’s voucher program.

A clutch of Texas GOP officials passed resolutions last week condemning Charles Bu , the 86-year-old chairman of grocery giant H-E-B, for “advocating for policies contrary to the Republican Party of Texas platform.” The resolutions from Brazoria, Harris, Trinity and Tyler counties criticized Bu for trying to compromise election integrity, sponsoring “drag queen shows for children” and working to stop school-voucher legislation. Bu ’s political action commi ee has funneled more than $1 million to anti-school voucher Republicans this year.

Need proof? Spend five minutes on X, formerly known as Twi er.

The Baltimore Bridge Collapse? Controlled demolition. Drownings at Lady Bird Lake in Austin? Serial killer. And don’t even get them started on what really happened to Kate Middleton.

Not only has social media, especially billionaire Elon Musk’s X, given others a platform to emulate Jones, it’s allowed them to profit from the insanity. For self-described “citizen journalists” or “real news” accounts, the crazier the tweet, the more followers and, the hope goes, the more subscribers.

Assclown Jones walked so these morons could run. And society’s collective mind is being fried as a result.

A 26-foot statue of an Indigenous man that formerly stood at San Antonio’s McCombs Superior Hyundai dealership has reappeared at a high school in Jourdanton. The statue, colloquially known as “The Chief,” was removed from the dealership last summer after Hyundai said it no longer met marketing guidelines. Now, despite criticism from Indigenous community members, the statue is on display at Jourdanton High School — whose sports teams are known as the “Indians” and the “Squaws.”

Prosecutors last week agreed to a deal with Texas A orney General Ken Paxton to drop the securities fraud charges the Republican elected official has faced for nearly a decade. Under the terms of their agreement, Paxton must perform 100 hours of community service, complete 15 hours of legal ethics education and pay restitution to victims that could amount to nearly $300,000. The deal allows Paxton to avoid entering a plea. His trial was set to begin April 15. —  Abe Asher

At Your Service

Is San Antonio keeping up with residents’ basic needs?

As a May 2013 rainstorm inundated the North Side’s Shearer Hills neighborhood, a torrent running down Dellwood Drive nearly swept away a woman and her grandchildren as she tried to navigate the flood-prone street in her car.

Neighbor Erika Noriega spo ed the vehicle as it came to rest against a telephone pole. Her husband and brotherin-law risked their lives to rescue the three occupants, ba ling water so deep and strong that enough that Noriega remembers it churned along chunks of asphalt.

After the near tragedy, the City of San Antonio undertook a $34 million drainage project in the area. However, even once its third and final phase is complete, the upgrade will stop short of the street on which Noriega and her husband’s parents, Linda and Mike Taylor, live.

Noriega’s garage still floods during rainstorms, and the Taylors installed a concrete barrier to keep runoff from washing through their backyard. The neighbors across the street spent $17,000 of their own money to change the slope of their driveway and keep floodwaters at bay, she added.

“Someone else could be swept away,” Noriega said. “It just depends on how bad the situation is.”

As Linda Taylor discussed the improvements installed by neighbors, she pointed out that the curb in some places was as low as two inches, providing li le protection from rising water. The repeated flooding also eroded soil around driveways and sidewalks.

“I appreciate that the city has a massive amount of things that need to be fixed, but they need to do it the right way,” Taylor said. “We’ve been here since 1989 and we’re asking for help.”

In recent years, San Antonio’s city

leaders have trumpeted efforts to more equitably deliver services while keeping up with a massive influx of new residents. In 2022, voters approved the city’s $1.2 billion bond — the city’s largest yet — which promised major investments in parks, streets, sidewalks and drainage.

However, headlines over the past two years suggest San Antonio still grapples with plenty of urban ills:

• A surge in brutal dog a acks led to the revelation that Animal Care Services was drastically understaffed and couldn’t respond to calls.

• Older neighborhoods continue to experience flooding problems despite significant bond spending on sewer upgrades.

• City officials and environmentalists waged a bi er ba le over a Parks Department plan to raze trees in Brackenridge Park due to a lack of upkeep on vegetation and structures.

• Delays and contractor mishaps during construction projects shut down major business districts including downtown’s Broadway corridor and the North St. Mary’s Strip. Some residents argue that, taken together, those troubles suggest San Antonio is slipping on its promise to deliver be er and more equitable city

MLeticia Sanchez stands by the pool at Cassiano Park, which has been out of commission for the past three summers.

services.

Experts said that without more data it’s hard to quantify whether city services are deteriorating. Even so, San Antonio is playing a constant game of catch-up as it struggles to overcome decades of neglect in spending on public infrastructure, they added.

No ma er how large the city’s current flurry of bond projects, no ma er how ambitious the work appears on paper, the efforts are seeking to undo profound damage caused by earlier leaders’ failure to equitably fund the city, said Char Miller, a professor at California’s Pomona College who’s wri en extensively about the Alamo City’s history.

“Overall, San Antonio is still poor. The city’s historically poor neighborhoods and dispossessed communities are still historically poor, dispossessed and unempowered,” Miller said. “So, that’s a frustrating dynamic that puts San Antonio in a very difficult place — a difficult place that it hasn’t figured out how to get out of.”

What the polls say

Miller points to the formation 50 years ago of Communities Organized for Public Service, now COPS/Metro, as a turning point in the city’s willful neglect of low-income, non-Anglo neighborhoods. The grassroots group organized residents to demand drainage, sidewalks, curbs, libraries and other basic services which wealthy parts of town appeared to have an easier time accessing.

While COPS/Metro’s organizing power forced the city to correct course, there’s still work to do, Miller said. Complicating ma ers, San Antonio’s flooding problems are only likely to worsen due to the climate crisis.

“Even with the amount of money San Antonio has poured into drainage since then, the city still floods,” Miller said. “The larger system in which San Antonio operates — a natural system of climate — probably is going to accelerate some of that flooding, and we’ve got to get ahead of that. Otherwise, it’s game over.”

Officials with the City of San Antonio said they strive to be responsive and transparent about how they carry out infrastructure improvements. They point to the launch of an online portal called the Road to Progress, which lets residents drill down on specific construction projects, including those involving streets, sidewalks and stormwater drainage. The site provides progress reports on the work and how money is being spent.

What’s more, city officials argue, San Antonio’s most recent community satisfaction survey, an annual poll conducted by an outside contractor, shows residents are content with city services.

“In 2022, San Antonio was the highest ranked among large Texas cities in overall satisfaction with delivery of services,” the city said in an emailed statement. “San Antonio is also among the highest ranked nationwide with levels of satisfaction that are 34% above the national average.”

In the poll, residents also said the city is moving in a positive direction — the highest overall satisfaction rate since the survey’s launch 14 years ago.

The 2023 survey won’t be out until later this year, and its results could tell a different story, observers note. For example, the high-profile dog a acks that prompted scrutiny of ACS occurred in 2023, and the delays on the St. Mary’s construction project also

reached their flashpoint early that year.

Big-city struggles

As co-chair of the Historic Westside Residents Association, Leticia Sanchez has seen what it’s like to fight for improvements in a long-neglected neighborhood. While her group has won some hard-fought victories, it’s still struggling to get its infrastructure up to the level of more affluent areas.

“As we speak out, we get some funding for our neighborhoods,” she said. “It helps some, but you’re trying to make up for how many years of ignoring our infrastructure needs?”

She points to the area’s Cassiano Park as an example. Although the city’s 2022 bond includes money for its refurbishment, including a new pool, Sanchez said the damage has already been done. The park’s pool sat drained for the past three summers because the city said it couldn’t find lifeguards.

“There’s no shade anywhere at the pool,” Sanchez said. “It’s not a pool anyone would choose to work at, that’s for sure. … We need very basic things here like affordable housing and drainage.”

Pomona College’s Miller said all big

cities struggle to make the most of limited resources, and parklands are frequently the first casualties of cuts. That’s a problem because urban canopies like those provided in Cassiano and Brackenridge are essential to mitigating the effects of climate disruption, he added.

While all major urban areas struggle to keep up with residents’ needs, San Antonio’s problems are intensified not just by past neglect but also by its limited ability to raise money. The Alamo City has long lagged not just coastal cities but also Dallas, Houston and Austin in corporate headquarters. That diminished tax base makes it even harder to keep up, Miller said.

Negative trends

Trinity University urban studies professor Christine Drennon said metros across the country are struggling to address infrastructure needs as federal funding for projects diminish. That also comes as the private sector continues to grow at levels that outstrip the capabilities of existing public resources.

She points to the collapse of Balti-

MErika Noriega (right) points out curbs that allow yards to flood as her mother-in-law, Linda Taylor, looks on.

more’s Francis Sco Key Bridge as an example. The cargo ship that struck the bridge was so massive that the structure, built when considerably smaller ships were the norm, simply couldn’t withstand the impact.

“In the public sector-private sector race, the public is losing,” she said. “Our cities are underfunded and we’re starting to pay the price.”

Drennon said leaders in San Antonio and other cities also tend to think of their investments as individual projects instead of stepping back to consider improvements that work across the entire metro. They need to shift that paradigm if they want to undo deep segregation or make it worse.

“It’s not just San Antonio,” she said. “We really have lost the ability to look at the big picture and see things in a systematic way. It’s a sign of the times.”

The current environment is made all the more difficult by Texas’ Republican leadership, which is hell-bent on pun-

ishing big cities for electing progressive leaders while balking at spending money on programs such as education or Medicaid expansion, which would help the urban poor, experts argue.

“I think the embedded racism in San Antonio’s physical-built environment is no less glaring today than it was a century ago,” historian Miller said. “It’s still an anti-union town, but that’s true of the state. And I think one of the crippling things for San Antonio is that the recent political dynamics in Austin do not favor a city that is majority-minority. [Gov.] Greg Abbo doesn’t care about those who live in San Antonio that don’t look like him, and that makes it difficult to maneuver within the city.”

Miller argues that the Alamo City’s race to play catch-up is likely to be a losing one until leaders engage in a paradigm shift that includes shu ing off public funding for projects like sports arenas and developer-driven schemes couched as economic development.

Even if San Antonio hasn’t emerged as an economic dynamo like some of its Texas neighbors, it’s long prided itself as having a sterling quality of life. That will change if it’s unable to keep up with infrastructure priorities and basic services, he warns.

“If you’re underfunding the very things that make it possible to live healthy, productive lives, if the streets and drainage poses a dilemma for your house or apartment building, that’s a

Mproblem,” Miller said. “If animals roam, as animals do, and that poses real, serious health risks to people, that’s not a particularly generous environment in which to raise children and grow a family.”

Sanchez of the Historic West Side Residents’ Association said continued underfunding of neighborhoods undermines residents’ trust in city government and their willingness to take part.

“Our residents are tired,” she said. “They understand the politics, and they understand that money talks.”

Shearer Park residents Taylor and Noriega said they haven’t given up on the public process. Over recent years, they have a ended neighborhood meetings, met with city staff and reached out to the District 1 City Council office, including current occupant Sukh Kaur.

They haven’t given up, but Noriega said their frustration is mounting.

“I’d like for my garage to not flood, but I’ve got four kids who I can make squeegee it out,” she said. “What concerns me is that I could have lost my husband and brother, and the problem still isn’t fixed.”

CENTRAL CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL

THURSDAY, APRIL 25, 2024

5 PM - 11 PM

CENTRAL CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL FANGDANGO

The 5th Annual FangDango event is on Thursday, April 25 at the campus of Central Catholic. This event is now part of Fiesta®

For information on sponsorships, tickets, and parking, visit:

San Antonio and includes Food Booths, Live Music, Kid's Area, and Entertainment for the entire family! ¡Viva Fiesta! CCFANGDANGO.COM

Herding Cats

How one local woman is fighting to tame San Antonio’s stray problem

Athree-acre ranche e nestled on a hillside in the Texas Hill Country town of Bulverde is full of survival stories.

One of its residents, Jerry, an orangeand-white speckled cat, was injured when someone tied a firecracker around his neck and lit the explosive. Fortunately, a good Samaritan found Jerry, and his wounds have since healed.

Lucky, a brown cat with black stripes, was abandoned by his owners after they vacated their apartment, while Helen, who suffers from a neurological disorder that hinders her ability to walk, was on the kill list at San Antonio’s Animal Care Services.

The felines are among the neglected, abandoned and “ugly” cats ge ing a second chance at the Bear Den Cat Sanctuary.

The homespun rescue facility, whose rescue and fundraising videos have garnered thousand of likes on Instagram in recent months, is the brainchild of Blake, 51, an aesthetics nurse. Before launching the facility in 2021, she’d pondered her legacy.

“I got to a point where I started to question, ‘What am I doing with my life?’” said Blake, who asked that her last name not be used for privacy reasons since she and her daughter also reside at the sanctuary. “How am I going to leave the world a be er place than when I got here?”

After soul searching and the loss of a beloved pet, she decided the solution was to give homeless cats a place to live out the rest of their lives in peace.

And in San Antonio, there are plenty of cats in need.

The Sanctuary

So many, in fact, one of Blake’s primary concerns is folks dumping animals at her property.

“We’ve had issues with dumping. It’s a serious problem,” Blake said, pointing to Dog, a mu who exhibits mannerisms more reminiscent of a cat. The canine is among the animals abandoned at her property since she opened the shelter.

Blake, who moved to San Antonio in the 1990s from Austin to a end nursing school, got the idea to open the sanctuary after her beloved indoor-outdoor cat Bear went missing. She made posters and followed every lead, zig-zagging San Antonio in search of her pet.

“I went all over the place,” Blake said. “And although it was never Bear [I found], it was a homeless cat. So that opened my eyes. Like, oh my gosh, who in the world would think there’s this many homeless cats?”

The San Antonio Feral Cat Coalition, a partner of the Bear Den Sanctuary, estimates more than 200,000 feral domestic felines roam San Antonio. ACS has

euthanized 75 this year alone.

After seeing the stray cat problem, Blake used a modest inheritance from her father to open the sanctuary. The money wasn’t enough to buy a luxury sports vehicle, but it was sufficient to place a down payment on the property and make her dream a reality.

The Bear Den sanctuary is now home to more than 150 cats. Some are healthy and eventually go to partner organizations for adoption. Others are chronically ill, while some just need to be spayed or neutered — the most important tool in fighting San Antonio’s stray cat problem, according to Blake.

“It’s absolutely the most fundamental process to end the suffering of homeless cats and dogs,” she said.

Community effort

The facilities at the Bear Den Sanctuary are nicer than some veterinary clinics, and the well-kept hillside is do ed with miniature cat homes, which cost $1,500 each. There’s also a new barn built of stained wood that provides shelter for cats at night and during inclement weather.

Blake doesn’t need to worry about payroll since Bear Den’s work is carried out by a “motley crew” of roughly a dozen volunteers, including college kids, a pharmacist and a Southwest Airlines flight a endant. She continues to seek volunteers and donors through

the facility’s website, beardensanctuary.org.

Even so, the costs are steep.

Between the ever-rising cost of pet insurance, medical bills and spay and neuter procedures, she spends roughly $4,000 a month to keep the operation going, at one point even taking out a personal loan to keep her dream alive.

“Donations have been a huge help. They helped build the buildings, they helped build the fence,” Blake said, referencing the anti-coyote barrier surrounding the property.

Indeed, the Bear Den Sanctuary has become a victim of its own success.

The sanctuary recently hit capacity and is longer accepting new pack members, and last week alone, Blake received calls about taking in 400 cats from other shelters, animal-care organizations and apartment buildings.

At this point, she’s looking for an animal-loving property owner to lease land to her nonprofit to help the cause — and, naturally, receive a tax rebate for their efforts.

“I really don’t want to box it in and say, ‘Hey, I think it needs to absolutely look like this,” Blake said. “But, I think it needs to be at least 20 to 30 acres. If someone has a big-ass ranch and they’ve got, I don’t know, 5,000 acres and could give us 20-30 acres of land, that would be fantastic.”

BENEFITING

Sylvia Gonzalez’s Supreme Court fight with Castle Hills is one worth waging

Editor’s Note: Bad Takes is a column of opinion and analysis.

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by pu ing those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” — Thomas Sowell, 2000.

It’s very easy to throw in the towel, you know, and say, ‘I don’t want any more trouble.’ I still live in [Castle Hills], I still have to deal with the city and the police. I mean, you don’t never know what they’re going to do next.” — Sylvia Gonzalez, 2024

There’s a good chance you have recently read about Sylvia Gonzalez, the former Castle Hills City Council member whose legal fight has made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although some media coverage has treated it as a legal curiosity, it’s more than that. It should make you mad.

In 2019, Gonzales, a grandmother in her 70s, ran for Castle Hills City Council and won on a campaign promise to raise a vote of no confidence in the city manager who, she argued, had failed to fix the municipality’s streets. Right or wrong, the freedom to petition the government for redress of one’s grievances without fear of reprisal is fundamental to this whole experiment in self-government we’re still trying to perfect after 230-some-odd years.

But, by all appearances, the Castle Hills power structure flunked basic civics. The mayor and other city officials tried to unseat Gonzalez on a technicality, and when that didn’t fly thanks to a judge reinstating her, they had her arrested and hauled off to jail for allegedly tampering with a governmental record.

As video of council chambers confirmed, she mistakenly placed a copy of the notorious petition in her binder before realizing the mistake. “You probably picked it up by accident,” she says Mayor “JR” Treviño told her at the time.

Two months later she found herself in the slammer.

Even though the county prosecutor

swiftly dropped the bogus charge, her mugshot made the rounds, and now — saddled with tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills — she ultimately retired from public office.

That would have been the end of this sad tale but not for some pesky libertarians. With the pro bono assistance of the Institute for Justice (IJ), a nonprofit law firm dedicated to constitutional accountability, Gonzalez sued the officials who wronged her and took her cause all the way to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments March 20.

Castle Hills, a tiny enclave of less than 4,000 residents, has already wasted $69,307 to protect its public officials from liability and $10,000 more on an insurance deductible for the case before it reached the high court, according to an open records request filed by News4 San Antonio.

If Gonzalez is at long last allowed to have her day in court, seasoned litigator Lisa Bla , who represents Castle Hills, claimed “this will happen in every case.”

“Every looting will be ‘I took a toothbrush’ or ‘I don’t know how that ring got in my bag’ or ‘I left the party as soon as the cocaine came,’” the a orney continued. “How can police enforce the law in this type of environment?”

Well, they can look at the evidence, and judges and juries can decide whether it holds water. Simply pu ing a political bumper sticker on your car and protesting that a cop pulled you over because they hate gun rights or Black lives is hardly likely to persuade anyone.

And the opposite hypothetical is far more compelling.

“Even if a city couldn’t pass an ordinance saying that Sylvia can’t say bad things about the city manager, they could just as easily arrest her under some pretextual crime like tampering with a government document or knocking pecans out of a tree,” Patrick

Jaicomo, senior a orney for IJ, said during a recent YouTube discussion of the case.

Jaicomo described Gonzalez’s ordeal as “a perfect illustration of something that we’re seeing all across the country ... small town governments becoming li le fiefdoms of pe y tyrants.”

Well said. It’s rare a column searching for bad takes gets a pitch like Bla ’s so squarely in the strike zone, and even rarer when it can let an arch-conservative like George Will hit one out of the park. The longtime right-wing commentator wrote that Gonzalez “is asserting a right the court should affirm: the right to sue officials who inflict retaliatory arrests. Affirmation would advance reconsideration of qualified immunity, the court-created doctrine that has evolved into a shield protecting disreputable officials who, carelessly or maliciously, violate individuals’ rights.”

Will also quoted Trump-nominated Justice Neil Gorsuch, who penned a scathing dissent against the precedent Bla is citing to get Treviño and company off the hook.

“History shows that governments sometimes seek to regulate our lives finely, acutely, thoroughly, and ex-

haustively,” Gorsuch wrote in 2019. “In our own time and place, criminal laws have grown so exuberantly and come to cover so much previously innocent conduct that almost anyone can be arrested for something. If the state could use these laws not for their intended purposes but to silence those who voice unpopular ideas, li le would be left of our First Amendment liberties. The freedom to speak without risking arrest is one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation.”

We live under lazy totalitarianism. If everybody who ever smoked grass or illicitly downloaded a song or movie or picked pecans illegally were suddenly thrown behind bars, we’d add countless numbers to our already nation’s current count of 1.2 million inmates and give the dystopias of Kafka and Orwell a run for their money.

The pe y criminals we lock our doors in fear of are, in actuality, much less of a threat to the prospect of a decent society than the corporate fraudsters and wannabe dictators we permit to operate with impunity.

Here’s hoping no warrants will be issued for my writing this column, nor you for reading it.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS NOTICE

Date: March 22, 2024

Request for competitive sealed proposal for bids for rental vans and non-CDL box trucks

The San Antonio Food Bank is soliciting bids to furnish the following rental vehicles:

Fourteen (14)Non-CDL Cargo/Panel Vans. These vehicles will be utilized by the San Antonio Food Bank staff members for our children’s feeding program and will be in service from 05/29/24 to 08/16/24 Please include all associated costs (i.e. mileage, physical damage, liability etc.) Awarded vendor MUST deliver vehicles to SAFB on 5/29 by 12PM. Only Non-CDL vehicles listed above will be considered for this solicitation. Any Vehicle maintenance will require a scheduled appointment and a replacement vehicle provided. Rental company responsible for vehicle break downs and roadside assistance and will require a replacement vehicle as well. Please note all bids and contracts are subject to review by TDA.

Bid Due Date and Time: Wednesday, April 17, 2024 by 10 AM

Central Time

Bid Opening Date and Time: Bids will be opened on Friday, April 19, 2024, at 10 AM Central Time, at the San Antonio Food Bank (address below). Bidding organization representative welcome to attend opening.

Bid Delivery Procedures: Sealed bids must be hand delivered by time and date listed above to Natalie Rendon or Heather Guzman. If mailed, bids must be sent via United States Postal Service Certified

Mail To:

San Antonio Food Bank C/O: Natalie Rendon 5200 Historic Old Hwy 90 San Antonio, TX 78227

Evaluation/Voting Members:

George Cox: Procurement Manager, San Antonio Food Bank

Natalie Rendon: Procurement Coordinator, San Antonio Food Bank

Heather Guzman: Director of Meal Programs & Compliance, San Antonio Food Bank

Questions on this communication may be directed via e-mail to: Natalie Rendon: Procurement Coordinator, San Antonio Food Bank nrendon@safoodbank.org until Monday, April 15, 2024 by 10 AM Central Time

THU | 04.04

COMEDY

HASAN MINHAJ

As a former correspondent for long-running late-night satirical news program The Daily Show and creator of his own Netflix political satire program The Patriot Act, Hasan Minhaj makes a point not only to incorporate stories about his Muslim identity and Indian American culture but also comment on the political landscape that underpins it all. That approach is part of the recipe that brought a ention to his breakout Netflix special Homecoming King in 2017 and his second special The King’s Jester in 2022. At the height of his power last year, Minhaj was set to take his biggest role yet — as permanent host for The Daily Show That is, until a controversial New Yorker piece exposing the fabrication of some of his strongest anecdotes derailed it all. His new standup tour, Off With His Head, tackles the fallout from the scandal — along with a mixed bag of other material, ranging from Taylor Swift’s boyfriend to immigrant family dynamics. $49-$100, 7:30 p.m., Majestic Theatre, 224 E. Houston St., (210) 226-3333, majesticempire.com. — Dalia Gulca

FRI | 04.05SUN | 04.07

THEATER

THE BOOK OF MORMON

The Book of Mormon’s bumbling black-tied missionaries are headed to San Antonio to deliver their gospel — along with plenty of laughs. After a successful eight-show run in 2015, The Book of Mormon will return to the Majestic Theatre this month for a one-weekend stint. From the creators of the television comedy South Park, The Book of Mormon follows Elder Kevin Price (Sam McLellan), a self-absorbed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of La er Day Saints, as he’s begrudgingly paired with socially awkward Elder Arnold Cunningham (Sam Nackman) for a mission trip to Uganda. Elder Price has waited his whole life to spread the Good Word across the globe, but he encounters momentous culture shock in the

process. The Elders and their faith are ridiculed by the Ugandan villagers, who face disease, famine and other perils the sheltered duo never could have anticipated. The Book of Mormon has grossed $750 million since its 2011 opening and earned an impressive array of awards, including nine Tony Awards, four Drama Desk Awards and a Grammy. Having received rapturous critical acclaim for its creative risk-taking and wi y critique of organized religion, the seminary satire isn’t without its share of controversy. Some have raised concern over its use of racial stereotypes in the depiction of its Ugandan characters. Such criticism led the production team to make substantive revisions to the script in 2021, but the musical is still recommended for mature audiences only due to strong language and sexual depictions. $45-$175, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Majestic Theatre, 224 E. Houston St., (210) 2263333, majesticempire.com. — Caroline WolFF

TUE | 04.09SUN | 04.14

THEATER

MIDSUMMER SUEÑO

San Pedro Playhouse and the Classic Theatre of San Antonio are bringing the Bard to San Pedro Springs Park this April for the debut of Midsummer Sueño. Director and playwright Paco Farias puts a South Texas twist on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one of William Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, by integrating contemporary English, Spanish and Spanglish, along with its original verse. The play — set at Hot Wells ruins on San Antonio’s South Side — takes some of Shakespeare’s original characters, including Hermia and Helena, and reimagines them with Latinx identities as the parallel characters of Ermida (Lucida Perez) and Elena (Amy Abrigo). General admission tickets, which run $25 per person for this production of Shakespeare in the Park, include general seating in a grassy area and access to food trucks and vendors. VIP tickets for adults start at $35 each and include reserved seating near the stage along with access to indoor restrooms, a VIP bar and more. Admission for those 18 and under is free. Free-$50, 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, San Pedro Playhouse, 800 W. Ashby Place, (210) 733-7258, thepublicsa.org — Amber Esparza

THU | 04.11SAT | 04.13

CLASSICAL MUSIC

THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE

OPERA San Antonio (OSA), in collaboration with the Classical Music Institute (CMI), will fill the Tobin Center with jaunty jigs and moving ballads in its two-performance run of The Pirates of Penzance (dir. Sean Curran). The Gilbert & Sullivan opere a has enamored audiences since 1879 with its comedic renditions of seafaring, swashbuckling and smitten first love. The Pirates of Penzance tells the story of Frederic (David Walton), a young man reaching the end of his pirate apprenticeship

who has fallen in love with a general’s daughter, Mabel (Madison Leonard). When his former shipmates catch wind of the budding romance, they set off a series of practical jokes that throw Frederic off course and pit him against his pirate clan. Alongside its main cast, the production features 24 local artists as part of the OSA Chorus. One hour prior to each performance, ticket holders are welcome to a end a free lecture in the Tobin Center’s Feik Rotunda. The lecture will recap pertinent pirate history to offer a be er understanding of the show’s se ing. To reduce financial barriers, OSA will open the production’s final dress rehearsal to more than 1,000 students and teachers for free. It also will distribute more than 500 free sponsored tickets to students, teachers, first responders, veterans and low-income residents. More information is available at the OPERA San Antonio website. $30-$130, 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, 100 Auditorium Circle, (210) 223-8624, tobincenter.org. — CW

FRI | 04.12

SPORTS SPURS VS. NUGGETS

The NBA champion Denver Nuggets, led by league MVP frontrunner Nikola Jokic, are scheduled to make their only San Antonio stop this season. Jokic was masterful against the Spurs in Austin last month, knocking down 31 points, 7 rebounds and 5 assists in a 117-106 win for the Nuggets. After the loss, Spurs reserve Zach Collins commented on the emotional toll of possibly the worst season in franchise history. “No one wants to lose this many games,” Collins told reporters. “We definitely saw this year going a lot different, but here we are. There’s no choice but to keep pushing and keep trying to get be er. Stay in the gym and keep gelling together with this group. It’s no question that losing this much hurts, and we’re not trying to get used to it.” Barring a late-season surge, San Antonio should once again have a 14% chance to land the first pick in the draft at the NBA Draft Lo ery next month. With Victor Wembanyama on the roster and another impact player potentially on the way, the rebuild continues for the Spurs. $28 and up, 7 p.m., Frost Bank Center, 1 Frost Bank Center Drive, (210) 444-5140, frostbankcenter.com, Bally Sports SW-SA. — M. Solis

TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE

A solar eclipse will pass over Mexico, the United States and Canada on April 8, with San Antonio and the Hill Country lying within its path of totality.

Unlike the annular eclipse the Alamo City experienced in October 2023 — described as a “ring of fire” eclipse for the bright ring of sunlight that surrounds the shadow of the moon during the eclipse’s peak — the moon will fully block out the sun when this eclipse reaches totality, causing the sky to darken in a manner akin to dawn or dusk. During totality, it will be possible to perceive the outer atmosphere of the sun, called the corona, according to NASA.

The eclipse is approximated to begin at around 12:14 p.m. and end at 2:55 p.m., reaching totality at 1:34 p.m. The edge of the path of totality will cross over San Antonio from the southwest to the northeast, with the Hill Country towns of Kerrville and Fredericksburg located near its center. Totality there will last between three-and-a-half to four minutes.

General information about the 2024 eclipse and safety guidelines for eclipse viewing are available at science.nasa. gov/eclipses.

Though a mass influx of tourists is predicted to overwhelm the area — as many as 1 million out-of-state visitors are expected to come view the eclipse, according to the San Antonio Express-News — with careful planning, it’s still possible to find a way to celebrate this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

While many of San Antonio’s famous landmarks and major attractions lie outside the eclipse’s path of totality, these Alamo City viewing options will allow those eager to experience the eclipse to do so at its fullest.

SAN ANTONIO PARKS

Local parks which lie within the eclipse’s path of totality include Friedrich Wilderness Park (21395 Milsa Drive) and most of McAllister Park (13102 Jones Maltsberger Road), as well as Government Canyon State Natural Area (12861 Galm Road).

Prior to the eclipse, the city’s Parks and Recreation Depart-

ment will provide free viewing glasses for pickup at all local community centers as well as adult and senior centers, while supplies last.

On April 8, the department will host themed activities from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. at several parks and community centers where the total eclipse will be visible, including Eisenhower Park (19399 NW Military Highway), Phil Hardberger Park (13203 Blanco Road and 8400 NW Military Highway), Ward Community Center (435 E. Sunshine Drive) and Yates Community Center (568 Rasa Drive).

Eclipse event information is available at sanantonio.gov/ ParksAndRec/News-Events/Events.

NATURAL BRIDGE CAVERNS

On this occasion, visitors will want to eschew Natural Bridge Caverns’ underground wonders for a view of the sky from the meadow on its grounds, which will o er a vantage point to witness the total eclipse. The landmark is o ering a variety of VIP viewing packages that include admission to its eclipse viewing area as well as amenities including eclipse glasses, reserved lounge chairs and a lunch bu et ($32.99$199.99, noon-3 p.m., 26495 Natural Bridge Caverns Road,

naturalbridgecaverns.com/eclipse).

SEAWORLD AND SIX FLAGS FIESTA TEXAS

Amusement parks SeaWorld and Six Flags Fiesta Texas both lie in the path of totality, and both are hosting eclipse-watching parties to mark the occasion.

Sea World is o ering complimentary themed eclipse-viewing glasses to the first 2,500 park guests to arrive, educational presentations by representatives from Southwest Research Institute and more activities, which are included with the day’s admission price ($29.99, 11 a.m., 10500 SeaWorld Drive, seaworld.com/san-antonio).

Six Flags Fiesta Texas’ daylong eclipse festivities include a Total Eclipse Drone and Fireworks Show at 1:30 p.m. The park is o ering various eclipse-viewing packages, which must be purchased in addition to regular admission. The add-on packages include eclipse glasses and other souvenirs as well as admission to the drone and fireworks viewing area at Lone Star Lil’s ($68.99-$108.99, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., 17000 IH-10 West, sixflags.com/fiestatexas).

SAT | 04.13 SPECIAL

SAN ANTONIO BOOK FESTIVAL

The 12th annual San Antonio Book Festival is an opportunity for authors and readers to unite in downtown San Antonio. Guests can mingle with 100 or so authors writing in genres spanning from nonfiction to fiction, poetry to political writing, YA to graphic novels. Featured writers include MacArthur “Genius” grant recipient, poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib, award-winning dark fantasy novelist Silvia Moreno-Garcia, graphic novelist Kazu Kibuishi and bestselling YA author Becky Albertalli. More than 60 talks, interviews and presentations for various ages are scheduled at the free event, giving book lovers a chance to hear authors talk about craft and present on their creative processes. Book signings and other activities will take on the festival grounds, while food trucks will keep fans fed. Free, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Central Library and UTSA Southwest Campus, 600 Soledad St. and 300 Augusta St., (210) 750-8951, sabookfestival.org. — Macks Cook

SAT | 04.13

COMEDY

GABRIEL ‘FLUFFY’ IGLESIAS

Beloved LA-based comedian Gabriel “Flu y” Iglesias is making his triumphant return to San Antonio, which he once called “one of his favorite cities, if not the favorite city outside of being home.” And what can we say? SA audiences love him right back. Iglesias, who last smiled on San Antonio during an appearance last October, made history with a monthlong 2021 residency here, even if his plan to film a televised special in the Alamo City at that time was canceled due to a COVID diagnosis. This time, he’s back on the Don’t Worry, Be Flu y tour and ready to hit up Garcia’s, reportedly his favorite SA Tex-Mex joint. Expect the comic to perform his howl-inducing stories steeped in the contemporary Chicano experience — the same reason Chris Rock once called him “the King of the Mexicans.” Beyond that, his sound e ects and uncanny voice work have also propelled him into the ranks of Forbes’ list of the world’s 10 highest-paid comedians and made him an in-demand actor in animated movies. And don’t forget he’s the star of Mr. Iglesias, his own Netflix sitcom. $43.50 and up, 8 p.m., Frost Bank Center, 1 Frost Bank Center Drive, (210) 444-5140, frostbankcenter.com. — Dean Zach

buy your tickets at sacurrentflavor.com

participating restaurants

Pete’s Hot Chicken | Tu Asador Mexican Steakhouse | Salsa De Leon | Jardin in the Garden

Sweet Paris Creperie & Cafe | Paladar Fusión México Cuba | BOTIKA | 7 Brew Drive-Thru Coffee

Elsewhere Garden Bar + Kitchen | Míra Matcha | Cakes by Felicia | Culinary Institute of America

Conversa Elevated | Paciugo Gelato | Sugar Clouds Cotton Candy | Tributary | Paciugo Gelato | COVER 3

Sugar Clouds Cotton Candy | Cosmic Cakery | Halcyon Southtown | Las Perlitas Latin Street Food

Feast for the Senses

The McNay embraces maximalism with the De La Torre Brothers exhibition ‘Upward Mobility’

Multi-layered, maximalist, dizzying and dazzling, the mixed-media work of brothers Einar and Jamex De La Torre is a chaotic feast for the senses.

Based between San Diego and Baja California, the De La Torre Brothers, as they’re simply dubbed, started collaborating in the 1990s and have since developed an expansive aesthetic marked by surreal blown-glass figures, mind-boggling lenticular images and installations resembling fantastical movie sets. Nodding to everything from pre-Columbian deities and Colonialism to horror classics and modern-day monsters, their wide-ranging projects boast narratives as stacked as the objects themselves.

While their mural-like installation Latin Exoskeleton has been dominating the McNay’s lobby since last September, the De La Torre Brothers truly arrived in San Antonio with the March 1 opening of “Upward Mobility,” an ambitious exhibition divided into four eye-popping chapters. A keystone of the McNay’s 70th anniversary programming, “Upward Mobility” represents the artists’ largest major museum show in Texas and their first in San Antonio.

Intriguingly, the creative spark for “Upward Mobility” arrived two years ago when McNay Head of Curatorial Affairs René Paul Barilleaux traveled to Riverside, California, to a end the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture’s inaugural exhibition — the De La Torre Brothers retrospective “Collidoscope.”

“I didn’t know the work at all,” Barilleaux said. “But when I saw images and video, I was just blown away. So I had to go out there to see for myself. They were there, we met and I almost instantly realized: this is perfect for San Antonio. You could just tell that everybody was happy and they were ge ing it. Even the kids were into it. And then you have all of the references to Mexican history, Mexican culture and pop culture … the playfulness of the work, the satire and the informality. … There’s a touring version of the Cheech show that traveled to Corpus Christi and El Paso, but we couldn’t make that work. So we reached out to them and said, ‘Let’s make our own show that’s specific to the McNay.’”

Thanks to the easy flow from one over-the-top room to the next, “Upward Mobility” indeed feels tailor-made for the McNay. But as we learned during

a walkthrough with Einar De La Torre, the exhibition also includes some remarkable pieces and arrangements created specifically for the occasion. And local culture aficionados will undoubtedly delight in the fact that the entire show is dedicated to Tomás Ybarra-Frausto — the Chicano scholar behind rasquachismo, an underdog sensibility that informs the work of many San Antonio artists.

‘Outside of the fishbowl’

Born in 1960s-era Guadalajara, the De La Torre Brothers moved with their mother to Dana Point, California in 1972.

“Our dad is a brilliant architect, but he was also an alcoholic that could get mean,” De La Torre recounted. “Finally, my mom had enough and grabbed five out of the six kids and moved to Southern California. So we went from an all-boys Catholic school to a surfing town with [girls in] miniskirts and hot pants. [The] culture shock was beyond imaginable. It was pre y wonderful. In weird ways [those] references still come out in our work. Because of those juxtapositions, we learned that you can be the insider-outsider. And that status puts you in a kind of interesting [place] outside of the fishbowl.”

Those deep-rooted juxtapositions come across vividly in what’s arguably the De La Torre Brothers’ earliest signature: quirky blown-glass characters that celebrate hybridization.

A Lorax-inspired figure wrapped in vines, a luchador navigating the depths of Hell and other mutant-like

creatures welcome McNay visitors into “Dark Nature,” the exhibition’s first thematic chapter.

“[Throughout] this front room, we’re talking about dark or strange nature, our relationship to nature and our need to control it,” De La Torre said. “But it’s not going so well — global warming shows us that we can’t control it.”

Gesturing to a humanoid figure constructed from glass cactus pads, De La Torre continued, “We wanted to make a nopalero here as [a way to ask], ‘What do you get when you breed all of the different people?’ You get diversity. You get strength. That’s kind of our position.”

Dominating the red-walled anteroom, the 2021 opus Vodyanoy exemplifies the artists’ mastery of lenticular printing — a medium they fell in love with after happening upon a vintage Disney poster. A novelty associated with 3D advertisements that appear to change or move based on the viewer’s perspective, lenticular prints can pack a multitude of layers into one conglomerate image that gets printed on the back side of a finely sliced prism-like lens. Inspired by the Slavic myth of the water spirit Vodyanoy, the piece conjures a historical acid trip that transports a handsome toreador, a dancing frog-man and ba ling cavalry to La Plaza de Toros Monumental in Tijuana.

“The reason that we love this stuff is that you can have so much information,” said De La Torre, who clocks countless hours assembling densely layered Photoshop files for the lenticular prints. “The very same lens is making your eyes focus in front of the substrate and behind it for depth. The other effect that happens isn’t just a stereovision of your eyes converging. It’s the fact that as you move you see other things appear — and that makes it look like there’s more space. But it’s just fake — it’s totally analog once we get down to it.”

Eat the rich

“This is a project we started in Europe … and it just kept growing,” De La Torre explained as we entered “The Mansion.” Easily the most jaw-dropping chapter of “Upward Mobility,” the Baroque-inspired room is covered in elaborate wallpaper and anchored by a long wooden table evoking a dinner party that took an apocalyptic — even cannibalistic — turn. Glasses of wine are in mid-spill, fur coats are draped over chairs and dishes are filled with blood, eyeballs, tchotchkes and kewpie dolls. Visually thrilling yet undeniably macabre, the entire scene makes one wonder what the hell happened — and why everyone disappeared.

“This is a feast of conspicuous consumption,” De La Torre explained. “We’re repulsed by it but we’re also wishing they invited us.”

After pointing out tabletop characters such as Capitalist Pig and Stinking Rich Fly, De La Torre explained that this iteration of the project — titled Le Point de Bascule (The Tipping Point) — is their largest to date.

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MFrom left: The De La Torre Brothers’ blown-glass sculpture The Charmer and their installation Le Point de Bascule (TheTippingPoint).

The construction of the table — mirrors and all — was handled in-house.

“Our preparatory team had an incredibly fun time working on this exhibition,” McNay Curator of Exhibitions Lauren Thompson said. “They had the opportunity to help the brothers fabricate the table and work on the elaborate underside that you see in the mirror.”

De La Torre Brothers: ‘Upward Mobility’

Outside of their own glass and mixed-media interventions on the doomed dinner party, the De La Torre Brothers scoured local antique stores and thrift shops, borrowed a veritable zoo of taxidermy from a local collector and even shopped for period furniture in the McNay’s collection.

$10-$20, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday, noon-5 p.m. Sunday through Sept. 15, McNay Art Museum, 6000 N. New Braunfels Ave., (210) 824-5368, mcnayart.org.

“The scale of this we’ve never touched. The biggest table we’ve done was maybe 10 or 12 feet. This one is about 26 feet. … When the McNay said they wanted to put it up on a platform, we thought, ‘Let’s add mirrors so you can see the underbelly.’ [There are also] money bags in the chandeliers [above the table]. And we have never made chandeliers before. We thought, if Chihuly can do it, [we can do it].”

“[Some of the furniture] was part of Marion McNay’s house,” Barilleaux explained. “We’ve pulled things out that don’t get seen.”

Godzilla vs. Putin

Small but mighty, the third section of “Upward Mobility” evidences the brothers’ overlapping interests in politics and horror. Aptly titled “Monster Movie,” the dimly lit room is bookended by large lenticular prints that pit two powerful shapeshifters against one another. While the Aztec mother goddess Coatlicue morphs into the Godzilla-inspired Coatzilla, her mortal opponent Mictlantecuhtli — the Aztec god of death — morphs

Find more arts coverage every day at sacurrent.com

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into Vladimir Putin.

“So, these are movie posters,” De La Torre said of the prints. “She’s grumpy at humanity because we’re not taking care of nature — so she’s tearing it all up. … And he’s coming at her shooting. … He’s creating more highways with his tribes. He wants the industrial revolution to continue and to make more gasoline and internal combustion engines because it’s all about petroleum for him.”

Projected on the floor between the two monstrous lenticular prints is an oddly hypnotic video of a particularly busy roundabout along Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City. Driven home by the scale of the traffic below and the cinematic destruction on either side, the simple act of stepping across the projection — which is amusingly bordered with rug-like fringe — deftly places the unwi ing museum-goer in the role of a stomping monster.

“All these rooms have one thing in common — losing control of nature,” De La Torre said. “Here we are stomping on Mexico City — and we are the monsters. If he wins, global warming will continue. And if she wins, she’ll get rid of all of humanity because we’ve been terrible.”

Lunar anthropology

A De La Torre Brothers “wow” moment since its 2002 debut, the roomsized installation “Colonial Atmosphere” makes for the dramatic finale of “Upward Mobility.” In keeping with the duo’s interest in hybrid forms, the piece re-envisions an enormous replica of an Olmec head as a lunar lander alongside a pre-Columbian astronaut with painterly nopales and mountains of nachos in the horizon.

“This is the third Coatlicue we have in the show,” De La Torre said. “In this case we morphed her with Neil Armstrong in all her glory. … The idea is that, here we are colonizing the moon — with cactus and chips. … We came to the States in ’72, right when the Apollo 13 series was still landing on the moon.

MCNAY X BLOOMBERG CONNECTS

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From top: The De La Torre Brothers’ installation ColonialAtmosphere and their lenticular print Miclantiputin.

As kids, it affected the hell out of us. This [piece] is a li le bit about Rapture theology, which is a very American thing. The idea that you actually get corporally extracted from your home and taken to heaven — and all the unbelievers stay in Hell and have some sort of apocalyptic demise? Well, here we are — burning.

Latinx perspective

Fi ingly, “Upward Mobility” has overlapped with the arrival of the McNay’s first ever Curator of Latinx Art, Mia Lopez, who helped Barilleaux and Thompson organize the exhibition. Since her arrival last October, Lopez has been combing the McNay’s collection and gathering themes for future exhibitions and programs. Following our walkthrough, we asked Lopez if she thought museum founder Marion Koogler McNay might have collected any differently if the term Latinx had existed during her lifetime (1883-1950).

“Something that I think is so interesting about language — and particularly as it pertains to identity politics — is that sometimes something exists but we don’t necessarily know that it exists until we name it,” Lopez replied. “At the time she was living and collecting in San Antonio, she was surrounded by people that we would now call Latinx. In the work that I’m doing, [I don’t want] to project that label backwards. I want to be careful to identify people in terms they wanted to use. But I still think it’s really interesting and so important for people to know that the first work that she acquired was Diego Rivera’s 1927 portrait of Delfina Flores that is an icon of our collection. And when I think about that as the starting point, it’s a reflection of the hybridity of San Antonio.”

In tandem with its 70th anniversary, the McNay teamed up with the tech arm of Bloomberg Philanthropies to develop a digital museum guide offering insight into its permanent collection and exhibitions including “Upward Mobility.” Launched in February and available as a free download, the multimedia guide is available in 30-plus languages with photo, audio and video content. Simply download Bloomberg Connects on your smartphone or tablet and search for “McNay” to access the guide.

Wide-Ranging View

Poetry collection Texas, Being offers exploration of ‘brutal and beautiful’ state

Texas, Being: A State of Poems is an anthology that doesn’t pretend to cover the history of Texas or even every town and city. There’s something else at work in this collection curated by Jenny Browne, a professor of English and creative writing at Trinity University who also happens to be the 2016-18 poet laureate of San Antonio and the 2017 poet laureate of Texas.

Browne explains in a brief introduction that the enigmatic title borrows from the title of a poem she wrote when she moved to this “brutal and beautiful state.”

This is the description that sets the tone for this impressive and wide-ranging collection of 47 poems — all in one way or another about Texas.

Ma hew Zapruder’s “April Snow” begins: “Today in El Paso all the planes are asleep on the runway. The world / is in a delay.” Zapruder was born in Washington, D.C., and went to college in Russia and later in California, where he lives today. While he lived for a time in Marfa, this sizing up of a moment in El Paso from this itinerant perspective delivers the ways good poetry sees the significance in things most of us would pay li le a ention to, how the imagination amplifies the significance of a thing — a place that never leaves you.

While Zapruder manages to observe El Paso without living there, Jeff Sirkin actually resides in the West Texas border city. In his “At Our Disposal,” the title of the poem suggests what is easily close by, but we quickly move on to consider the ways we “dispose-all” (perhaps most especially on the border), from the remnants of a renovation cast into a driveway to the black smoke that migrates from Mexico into the atmosphere to the girls “next door [who] disappeared,” a reference to the murdered girls and women of Juárez.

walked in silence,” she writes.

Reflected in this collection is the fact that Texas is kaleidoscopic. But no ma er where we go in these poems, the spaces render both a nostalgia and a terrible enlightenment — the beauty and the brutality which Browne earlier describes.

In San Antonian Emily Winakur’s “Uvalde,” the speaker addresses her child and recalls the Uvalde, Texas of her childhood. As a young person she could look out the car window and there would be “an example, in landscape form, of all I could do and be.”

She says that in those days she never considered her parents’ gun, even if it was close by in the car’s glove box. She tells her child, “What I thought about when I thought about home / was wildflowers / rampaging across the land in spring; about fishing in shallow bays. / I thought Uvalde would be a name you knew from / stories I told … Instead Uvalde will mean something else to you.”

Texas, Being: A State of Poems

Vievee Francis is from Texas. She later lived and worked in Michigan and North Carolina and now teaches at Dartmouth College. Her poem “Still Life with Summer Sausage, a Blade, and No Blood” takes us to East Texas in the 1980s. And then, through staggered parenthetical phrases, the speaker moves us to consider a memory that is, not faulty, but deliberate in ambiguously recounting and reimagining a seemingly ordinary trip a child and her father take to the town of Palestine.

The “storefronts hadn’t changed since / my father was a child,” she explains, and we understand that racial and class divisions have persisted. They share a snack of saltines and a sausage he cuts with a pocketknife. “We were together / in Texas and we ate and

In another poem, it is the child who speaks to the parent. Tarfia Faizaullah is a Bangladeshi American poet, originally from West Texas. In “Aubade: Summer, Texas,” the speaker addresses her father with the “faint scent of coriander still lingering” on his fingers: “Neither the sky nor your hands will change what they do — you lay out the prayer mat / on summer grass.” Her father will pray and never “stop looking for the face of the god who, even at dawn, is silent.”

The pointillistic precision of this experience of a newer immigrant to Texas shows that there is very li le in human experience that is unfamiliar. We have more in common than not — even in Texas with its complicated history and the inglorious tendencies it clings to today.

In “Texas,” Jorge Luis Borges describes the state as “the other/Edge of the hemisphere … Here too, the never understood / Anxious, and brief affair that is life.”

When you see a copy of Texas, Being, you might at first think that you can enter it and exit it easily, speedily. That will be an incorrect assumption. You will turn the first page, and the book will fan open like a map of the whole world you’ll want to explore. Those interested in learning more about Texas, Being have at least two upcoming opportunities: Trinity University Press and Texas Public Radio will host Texas, Being editor Jenny Browne and contributors Christopher Carmona, Naomi Shihab Nye and

Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson as part of the Maverick Book Club. Free, 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 10, Texas Public Radio, 100 Soledad St., (210) 614-8977, tpr.org

A Texas, Being: A State of Poems panel will take place at the San Antonio Book Festival in the Texas Monthly Tent. The panel includes Jenny Browne and contributors Jan Bea y, Octavio Quintanilla, and ire’ne lara silva. Free, 4 p.m. Saturday, April 13, Central Library and UTSA Southwest Campus, 600 Soledad St. and 300 Augusta St., (210) 750-8951, sabookfestival.org.

Sweet Talk

Oscar nominee Amy Ryan discusses role in new Apple TV+ private detective series Sugar

From Sherlock Holmes to Nancy Drew, private detective stories in literature, TV and film have thrilled audiences for centuries.

That history of mystery and suspense lives on in Sugar, a contemporary detective TV series on Apple TV+ that stars Oscar-nominated actor Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin). Farrell plays John Sugar, an American private investigator looking into the disappearance of Olivia Siegel (Sydney Chandler), the granddaughter of renowned Hollywood producer Jonathan Siegel (James Cromwell).

Oscar-nominated actress Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone) plays Melanie, the ex-wife of Bernie Siegel (Dennis Boutsikaris), Jonathan’s movie-producing son. She meets John during his search for Olivia, who was once her stepdaughter. Melanie is also the former lead singer of the fictional ’90s punk band known as Vanilla Whore. The series is directed by Oscar-nominated Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles (City of God).

Along with her critically acclaimed role in Gone Baby Gone, some of Ryan’s most memorable movies include Capote with late Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bridge of Spies with Oscar winner Tom Hanks and Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) with Oscar nominee Michael Keaton. She’s currently filming the psychological thriller Wolfs with Oscar winners Brad Pi (Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood) and George Clooney (Syriana).

During a recent interview with the Current, Ryan, 55, talked about what drew her to her new series and what it was like working with Colin Farrell. She also revealed who her go-to artist is when taking the stage at a karaoke bar.

Sugar premieres April 5 on Apple TV+.

What resonated with you about a private detective story like Sugar?

I love a few things about it. Visually, it transports you instantly into another world. So, it’s not just [a] detective whodunit series. It’s really driven by our main character and how this world affects him. He’s a character that has a great love of old Hollywood films. As he navigates through this world, you see those references pop up through his thought process. At the end of the day, you’re asking yourself, “Where’s the humanity in all this?” and “How does this harsh world affect us?”

Nobody goes by unscathed. I think that’s what really sets [Sugar] apart.

What drew you to your character? Melanie had great success in her early 20s and 30s in her band and had married Bernie who was part of a multigenerational powerful Hollywood producing family. She’s still a ached to the family, but no longer married into it. Melanie has a lot of stories in her background and puts a lot of walls up, but there’s also still a tenderness and a humanity in her. That comes out stronger through the friendship she makes with John.

You get to sing in the series. Had you ever sung on a film or TV series before? No, I had not. When I read the scene for that, I thought it was going to be a quiet li le song you sing into your glass late at night at a bar. But [director] Fernando [Meirelles] really had this idea that [the scene meant] she recognized that she’s still a person. She’s enjoying living [in the] old days. She hasn’t performed something in years. It takes a bit of steely, great gumption to go for it.

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What’s your personal go-to karaoke song? I’m sure it’s a Neil Diamond song or something fun. Something that gets the crowd going.

You have worked with some amazing directors over the years like Steven Spielberg and Alejandro González Iñárritu. And now, Fernando Meirelles.

I feel just gobsmacked that I got to work with him and his cinematographer César Charlone (City of God). There’s just another language they speak. The worlds they create together are like none other.

This is the first time you worked with Colin Farrell. Did you know him in any capacity before this series? What was the experience like?

We had mutual friends, which is always a great icebreaker. Working with him felt like I’ve known him for a long time. It was effortless and liquid. We have great mutual respect for one another, and it was just so much fun. I adore that man. He’s a great actor.

THE OFFICIAL KICK-OFF TO NATIONAL POETRY MONTH IN SAN ANTONIO

Celebrate the spontaneous composition of poetic performances, live visual art, and creative culinary tastings!

Emceed by: Anthony “The Poet” Flores and current Poet Laureate, Eddie Vega

Featured Poets: past Poets Laureate, Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson, Dr. Octavio Quintanilla, Dr. Carmen Tafolla.

Plus Jacinto Cardona, Tomás Castillo Roqúe, Nate Zin, Joyous Winder, and others.

Visual Artists: Cruz Ortiz, Adriana M. Garcia, and Ashley Perez

Live Music by: Los De Esta Noche and DJ Despeinada

San Antonio UNESCO Chef Ambassadors include Leo Davila, Stixs & Stone; John Tamez, Brackenridge High School; Sofia Tejeda, Blush Bakery; Juan Carlos Bazan, Cuishe Cocina and Torro Kitchen, and other local chefs.

Tree adoption, 300 fruit trees will be given away

Beer Bonds

These beer and food pairings from San Antonio brewpubs are worth raising a glass to

Sunday, April 7, will commemorate National Beer Day, which marks the date the Cullen–Harrison Act repealed Prohibition.

Whether that beer-focused holiday — or its Saturday, April 6, predecessor, dubbed New Beer’s Eve — end up drawing you to one of San Antonio’s growing number of brewpubs, there’s good reason not just to imbibe in those establishments’ sudsy libations but their impressive array of food items.

To that end, here’s a rundown of great food-and-beer pairings from area taprooms, including some suggested by local beer pros.

Gather Brewing Co.: Main Squeeze hazy IPA and Korean Sticky Wings

Main Squeeze hazy IPA offers a slightly floral background that quickly yields a big juice bomb that bursts with citrus and tropical notes. Gather’s wings have undergone several iterations since the brewery opened in 2021, but the current recipe features a complex wing sauce featuring the spicy fermented funk of gochujang chili paste and bits of pickled ginger, making them an assertive foil for Main Squeeze.

“[Main Squeeze] is perfect for spring and summer weather as the perfect poolside companion,” Gather owner and head brewer Mike Voeller said. “To pair with this, I would prepare our Korean sticky wings. I feel the soft, frothy, tropical IPA contrasts perfectly with the sharpness of the ginger, garlic and the heat of the gochujang in our wing sauce.”

210 E. Aviation Blvd, (210) 868-3596, gatherbrewing.com.

Vista Brewing: Destination American IPA and Crispy Chicken Sandwich

Vista Brewing’s crispy chicken sandwich features a Thai sriracha-glazed fried chicken thigh, aioli, house-made pickles and chipotle lime slaw on a brioche bun. This behemoth on a bun deserves a hearty accompaniment — in this case, the Destination American IPA. A hoppy beer can intensify chili heat, but it also plays nicely with other flavors in the sando thanks to pine and citrus notes from a heavy dose of Columbus and Amarillo hops along with floral and citrus notes from a Cryo Cascade dry hop.

125 Lamar St., Suite 106, 210-802-1578, vistabrewingtx.com/san-antonio.

Wild Barley Kitchen & Brewery: Flavor Corner Mexican lager and Jumbo Smash Burger

Flavor Corner is a Mexican lager brewed with San Antonio-roasted Theory Coffee and smoked jalapeños. The rich, slightly spicy brew pairs well with the eatery’s jumbo smash burger, which also features smoky and spicy flavors, co-owner and head brewer Holland Lawrence said. There’s also something to be said for contrasting the fa iness of a burger with a refreshing lager.

“The [beer’s] malty backbone is a great complement to the caramelized onions, and the smoked peppers in the beer come to life with the pickled jalapeños on the burger,” he said. “The crisp finish of the lager cuts thought the juicy fats of the burger, cleansing the palate.”

8403 Broadway, (210) 455-9982, instagram. com/wildbarleykitchenandbrewery.

Southerleigh Fine Food and Brewery: Gold Export Lager and Fried Snapper Throats

Fortunately, two of longtime Pearl fixture Southerleigh Fine Food and Brewery’s mainstays are a perfect match. Diners love the kitchen’s “famous” fried snapper throats — cornmeal ba ered and fried served with Crystal hot sauce aioli, celery root remoulade and fresh lemon. Beer aficionados also crave its staple Gold Export Lager, a well-balanced and smooth German-style brew. The crisp lager offers just the perfect amount of bracing bi erness to cut through the bu ery snapper.

136 E. Grayson St., Suite 120, (210) 455-5701, southerleighatpearl.com.

Künstler Brewing: Cashmere Hefeweizen and Grilled Pork Ribeye

Künstler Brewing is known for its German eats, but its menu also includes other heavy hi ers such as center-cut pork chops and pork rille es, a classic French charcuterie spread. Owner and brewer Vera Deckard swears by her Cashmere Hefeweizen as a perfect partner to the brewpub’s hefty 14-ounce grilled pork ribeye.

“It’s a hearty but tender cut topped with Comté cheese and comes with a rich demi-glace and crispy potatoes on the side. It really hits that comfort food spot, especially if you’re into German cuisine,” she said. “To go with it, I recommend our Cashmere Hefeweizen. It’s a nod to traditional German beers but gets a twist from Cashmere hops, adding subtle lemon-lime and melon-passion fruit notes. The beer’s fruitiness cuts through the pork’s richness, creating a satisfying balance on the palate without overcomplicating things.” Multiple locations, kuenstlerbrewing.com.

Dos Sirenos Brewing: Giuseppe Italian Pilsner and Cubanesque Sandwich

Dos Sirenos’ Cubanesque sandwich is the brewpub’s take on the Caribbean favorite, which features dry-cured, pepper-encrusted capicola, pulled pork, Swiss cheese, chipotle honey mustard and pickles on a ciaba a roll. A Giuseppe Italian Pilsner makes the ideal pairing by offering a lighter contrast. The brew features the expected crisp and clean flavors of a pilsner but gets extra oomph from a tangerine taste and dry-hop dose of Mandarina Bavaria hops.

231 E. Cevallos St., (210) 442-8138, dossirenosbrewing.com.

food

Skywatch

These San Antonio bars, restaurants and landmarks will offer free eclipse viewing

The April 8 eclipse visible from portions of San Antonio will be the last total solar eclipse visible to the contiguous United States until 2044. While plenty of high-priced festivals, parties and events have popped up to offer a view of the spectacle, these Alamo city spots aren’t charging a dime for the amazing sight.

Chicken N Pickle will host a free viewing party from noon-2:45 p.m., featuring a themed margarita called — what else? — The Dark Side of the Moon. 5215 UTSA Blvd., (210) 874-2120, chickennpickle.com.

The Alamo will host space enthusiasts for a free viewing event on the historic grounds. The gathering runs from noon3 p.m. 300 Alamo Plaza, thealamo.org.

Flying SaucerDraught Emporium will expand its patio into the parking lot and add rows of tables for eclipse viewing from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. The appropriately named tap house will offer an eclipsethemed beer flight, outer space-inspired treats and free viewing glasses while supplies last. 11255 Huebner Road, Suite 212, (210) 696-5080, beerknurd.com.

The Tobin Center for the Performing

NEWS

The longtime Jim’s Restaurants location at Broadway near Hildebrand Avenue has closed after 53 years in business.

Arizona-based brunch-focused Hash Kitchen revealed it will open two restaurants near Brackenridge and Shavano parks by year’s end.

The owners of goth club Cream are taking over the space that formerly housed St. Mary’s mainstay Squeezebox, 2806 N. St. Mary’s St. Unlike Cream’s dark trappings, new club Neon Moon will offer ice-house vibes and feature nu metal, country and rock along with karaoke.

Hill Country staycation destination JW Marrio

San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa is adding a new pizza concept, Fiamme Pizzeria, early this summer. The spot will feature an Italian-made Morello Forni mosaic pizza oven, according to resort officials. 23808 Resort Parkway, (210) 276-2500, marrio .com.

Li le Em’s Oyster Bar into that space. Up Scale will serve its last plates April 6, and the expanded Li le Em’s will reopen late this fall.

OPENINGS

New East Side taproom Fermenteria is now serving probiotic water kefir drinks, which contain 5% alcohol and zero sugar. 2243 E. Commerce St., (210) 201-3585, fermenteria.com.

New Vietnamese spot Banh Mi102 has opened, offering the signature Southeast Asian sandwich and milk tea in Northwest San Antonio. 7531 Bandera Road, Suite 106, (210) 468-5088, banhmi102sanantonio.com.

Chef’s Table Mediterranean Grill has opened a second location, this one in Helotes. A Saturday, March 23, grand opening kicked off the expansion. 11851 Bandera Road, Suite Number 123, (210) 664-5100, facebook.com/chefstable.satx.

Arts will offer free viewing space on the top floor of its parking garage during the solar event. Parking and eclipse glasses are both free. 100 Auditorium Circle, (210) 223-8624, tobincenter.org.

Boerne’s Dog & Pony Grill will open early at 8 a.m. so folks can snag tables on a first-come, first-served basis. The sprawling Hill Country venue will offer food and drink specials along with music from DJ Gross Y’all from 11 a.m.–3 p.m. Limited free parking will be available along with paid parking in adjoining areas. 1481 S. Main St., (830) 816-7669, dogandponygrill.com.

28 Songs Brewhouse + Kitchen, a newish Hill Country brewpub, will open at 10 a.m. for eclipse-watchers. The crew also will have plenty of viewing glasses to hand out to patrons. 110 Market Ave., (830) 331-9937, 28songs.beer.

Public spaces will host free viewing events from 11a.m.-3 p.m. in and around San Antonio. Among those participating are Eisenhower Park, Garza Community Center, Medina River Natural Area, Melendrez Community Center, Phil Hardberger Park, Ward Community Center and Yates Community Center.

St. Paul Square coffee shop-music venue Vice Versa has closed. Owner-operator Vincent Guerrero cited air-conditioner trouble and other “small business stuff” as reasons for shutdown.

Beloved San Antonio snack shop Jefferson Bodega is closing up shop after 5 years of serving up a massive selection of imported snacks, craft beer and ramen.

The owners of Southtown’s Up Scale will close that restaurant and move their flagship eatery

Fermenteria

Next year, San Antonio-based mini-chain Bourbon Street Seafood Kitchen will open a $2 million restaurant near Leon Springs. The new build will the group’s fourth location. 25765 IH10 West, bourbonstseafood.com.

Iconic local spot Dry Dock Oyster Bar has reopened and is now BYOB. The spot got new lease on life March 23 after being locked out by the building’s owners. Dry Dock still serves up raw and grilled oysters along with a variety of seafood entrees. 8522 Fredericksburg Road, (210) 692-3959, drydockoysterbar.com.

The Treasure of El Dorado

Aterciopelados pay (delayed) tribute to the album that put Colombia on the rock en español map

In 1995, future three-time Latin Grammy winners Aterciopelados did the unthinkable: make Argentine rockeros pay a ention to Colombian rocanrol

“Have you heard ‘Bolero Falaz’?” two-time Oscar- and multi-Grammy-winning producer and composer Gustavo Santaolalla asked me around that time. “These guys are so special, check ’em out.”

“Bolero Falaz” (“Fake Bolero”), an electrified bolero turned upside down by a female yelling “Te dije no más/y te cagaste de risa” — very roughly translated as “I told you ‘No more’ and you didn’t give a shit” — benefi ed from ample airplay in the Spanish-speaking world and heavy video rotation by MTV Latino. It was a fresh alternative to the Mexican roots movement embodied by Caifanes, Café Tacvba and Maldita Vecindad and the powerhouse Argentina heroes such as Luis Alberto Spine a, Charly García, Soda Stereo and Los Fabulosos Cadillacs.

“We had one thing clear from the beginning: we wanted to be authentic, to be ourselves,” Aterciopelados bassist Héctor Buitrago told the Current from Bogotá during a Zoom video chat.

Buitrago and Andrea Echeverri, guitar and vocals, are the two founding members of Aterciopelados, which has changed lineups throughout the years.

“We didn’t want to sound like anything in English or Spanish,” Buitrago added. “The very intense Mexican movement was rescuing its roots, and that inspired us, but we also had our musical traditions and decided to look for our own sound.”

During a Friday, April 12, performance at Paper Tiger, Buitrago and Echeverri will be accompanied by the same band they’ve used for the past three years: guitarist Leonardo Castiblanco, keyboardist Paula Van Hissenhoven and drummer Jonathan Lacouture. The band’s tour also takes it to El Paso, Austin, Dallas and Houston this month.

El Dorado is an album that not only touches on bolero but Colombian pride (“Colombia Conexión), Santana-esque percussion (“Candela”), Sex Pistols-meets-Andalusia (“No future”) and spite (“La estaca”). The la er is a liberating #MeToo stream of insults that would make Paquita la del Barrio proud; look

up “Rata de dos patas.”

To date, the album has sold more than 600,000 copies. LA’s Al Borde magazine ranked it No. 9 on a list of 250 Iberoamerican Albums in 2006, and in 2013, it landed at No. 13 on Radiónica’s Colombian rock: 100 Albums, 50 Years list. In 2001, Time magazine chose Aterciopelados as one of the 10 Best World Bands.

“It was like utilizing our parents’ music,” Echeverri said. “What happened to [El Dorado] was the result of everything we heard on public transportation, in stores, mixed with our own personal tastes.”

Up until El Dorado — named after the legend of Spanish gold diggers in the Americas and Colombian Indigenous people covering themselves with gold dust — few outside of Colombia had even heard of Aterciopelados. The punkish 1993 debut Con el corazón en la mano was sloppy and sounded like it was recorded inside a shoebox, but “Mujer gala,” the group’s first hit, allowed it to tour the country extensively and “properly record” their follow up, solidifying a growing underground rocanrol movement in Colombia.

“For the first album, we rehearsed at a bar Héctor used to own and recorded at a commercial jingles studio,” Echeverri said. “[For El Dorado], we had more time and budget, a be er studio, and the will to sound more like Aterciopelados and less like La Pestilencia [Buitrago’s former punk band].”

After the COVID pandemic marred El Dorado’s 25-year celebration tour, the band played the album in its entirety twice in 2023. By by the time they reach San Antonio, though, the tour will have taken a different form: there will be plenty of El Dorado, but hits from other albums as well.

“We started realizing too many people don’t know El Dorado and they get sad if we don’t play ‘Baracunátana’ or ‘El album,’” Echeverri said. “So we decided to visit our whole history, including things from [2018’s] Claroscura and [2021’s] Tropiplop.”

“We were always daring in our fusions and mixes of styles on our earlier albums, and I hope we’re still making daring music,” said Buitrago, who’s much more open when it comes to embracing new musical trends. On the other hand, Echeverri assures us there is one thing we won’t hear when the band comes to SA.

“I detest reggaetón with all my heart,” she said. “[Buitrago] likes it, but he likes everything, even Enrique Iglesias. I think [reggaetón] is terrible, I can’t stand it.” (Thank you.)

Fresh off a March 15 release of El Dorado En Vivo (El Dorado Live), the band is recording a still-unnamed new album to be released this fall with illustrious guests including composer Santaolalla, Hilda Lizarazu (Man Ray, Charly García) and Richard Coleman (Fricción, Los 7 Delfines) — all Argentines — and Chilean singer-songwriter Camila Moreno.

The Paper Tiger show is the band’s first San Antonio engagement since it shared the Aztec Theatre stage with Venezuela’s Los Amigos Invisibles in 2019.

“San Antonio is the one with a river running through it right?” asked Echeverri. “Very pre y and amazing barbecue meat! [Buitrago] is vegetarian, but I heard there’s a taco truck [nearby Paper Tiger] with veggie options, so I guess he’ll be OK.”

$31, 8 p.m. Friday, April 12, Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary’s St., papertigersatx.com.

Find more music coverage every day at sacurrent.com

Totality Tunes

Central Texas music festivals celebrate the coming eclipse

Music performances linked to celestial events are as old as time. Older even than Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. Yep. That old.

If you plan to celebrate April 8’s once-in-a-lifetime total solar eclipse with music, there’s no shortage of events do ing Central Texas that offer just that opportunity.

Ground Zero MusicFest

With 26 bands performing over five days, this gathering fits the bill for hard rockers and fans of ’80s metal, although there’s also a healthy dose of country too. Lita Ford, Pat Travers, Great White and Dokken provide the rock star power, while rising outlaw-country star Creed Fisher and Texas songwriting legend Gary P. Nunn offer something for Americana fans. The festival features no-frills camping along with options for luxury tents and bringing an RV. $65 and up, Friday,

April 5-Tuesday, April 9, Mansfield Park, 2886 TX-16, Bandera, (409) 655-8800, groundzeromusicfest.com.

Arch Ray Solar Eclipse Festival

This two-day festival offers a solid slate of top-name entertainers, including Cory Morrow, Hank Williams IV and the Goo Goo Dolls. On-site camping is available, and so are nicer accommodations for those willing to spend more. Food and alcohol will be on deck as well, including wines produced in Fredericksburg. $75 and up, Sunday, April 7-Monday, April 8, Arch Ray Resort, 4160 US-290, Fredericksburg, (830) 3042900, archrayresort.com.

Eclipse Utopia

Now in its 14th year, the annual UtopiaFest has been rebranded due to its coincidence with the eclipse. Dozens of stalwarts from the Austin scene, from Ghostland Observatory to Sir Woman, will provide the musical entertain-

ment. Festival site the 4 Sisters Ranch will offer hiking and biking opportunities along with yoga, disc golf and more. Tent camping is included in the ticket price. $350 and up, Friday, April 5-Tuesday, April 9, 4 Sisters Ranch, 1555 Lemond Road, Utopia, utopiafest.com.

Texclipse Music Festival

This Junction festival features a full spread of entertainment and things to do, from science lecturers, including the tantalizingly named Dr. Sky, and calf roping to a chili cook-off and a guided motorcycle ride. An on-site ordained minister will even help some tie the knot. Musical offerings include performances by cherished Texas country singer-songwriter Sunny Sweeney and Grammy-winning “Just Enough Rope” singer Rick Trevino. RV and tent camping are available. $25 and up, Saturday, April 6-Monday, April 8, Hill Country Fairgrounds, FM 2169, Junction, texclipsemusicfestival.com.

Kerrville Eclipse Festival

Kerrville lies directly in the line of totality, so expect a full four minutes and 25 seconds of darkness. The city’s free festival celebrating the event features music from Nashville pop-folkies Judah and the Lion plus NASA speakers and activities for the kids. Free, Monday,

MGhostland Observatory is one of the acts slated to perform at the Eclipse Utopia music festival.

April 8, Louise Hay Park, 202 Thompson Drive, Kerrville, kerrvilletx.gov/2042/ kerrville-eclipse-festival.

Texas Eclipse Festival

This electronica blowout promises dozens of musical acts over five days, not to mention event tents, immersive technology and art. Think Burning Man meets Texas Hill Country. Meow Wolf, the famed purveyor of immersive art, will even have its own zone. Camping, glamping, hotels and more are available. $249 and up, Friday, April 4-Tuesday, April 9, Reveille Peak Ranch, 105 County Road 114, Burnet, seetexaseclipse.com.

Totalityville Festival

Vinovium Winery hosts this gathering featuring on-site yoga, cornhole contests, RV camping and music from folkies Fort Vine and award-winning guitar whiz Jimmy Stewart. $350 and up, Friday, April 5-Tuesday, April 9, Vinovium Winery, 214 Edmonds Ave., Johnson City, (830) 888-8010, totalityville.com.

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music

Not Just a Phaze

Phazez/Changez Reunion will celebrate 1980s club that brought goth to San Antonio

Bars come, bars go. Few leave indelible marks on a city’s music and cultural scene.

However, in just three short years, 1986-1989, Phazez put a deep and powerful enough stamp on San Antonio clubgoers that organizers are now holding their fourth reunion for the nightspot’s former patrons.

Phazez, which operated from the San Pedro Avenue space now occupied by The Bang Bang Bar, is widely credited to opening San Antonio’s ears to goth, industrial, post-punk, underground hip-hop and myriad other musical movements that percolated up in the late 1980s.

Scheduled for Saturday, April 6, the reunion will take place at the Bonham Exchange. The gathering also celebrates Changez, a Phazez-affiliated club that offered similar music and a itude.

During its run, Phazez provided a safe space for those seeking the next iterations of underground music and goth culture. It was also a place where LGBTQ+ and straight patrons could freely mingle without fear of harassment from the city’s more conservative elements.

While the club was known for

sharing a vibrant DJ culture with the Alamo City, it also booked touring acts including Firehose, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult and even a solo show by punk forefather Jonathan Richman. Entertainment also included an eclectic movie night and a homespun macabre performance-art series.

The April 6 reunion will include DJs David Milne and Raleigh, both Phazez stalwarts, spinning tracks that helped make the club a Texas-wide tastemaker back in the day.

The suggested cover will benefit the San Antonio AIDS Foundation and High Voltage Music Inc., which provides music instruction in underserved Alamo City communities. Only those who donate will be eligible for doorprize drawings during the night.

$15 suggested donation, and Bonham will charge additional $5 cover after 10 p.m., 7 p.m.-2 a.m., Saturday, April 6, Rainbow Ballroom at Bonham Exchange, Bonham Exchange, 411 Bonham, tinyurl. com/phazez.

qRegulars at long-gone nightclub Phazez show off their best black garb in a late’80s photo.

critics’ picks

Wednesday, April 3

Skating Polly, Bugsy, Retro Cowgirl

Step-siblings Kelli Mayo and Peyton Bighorse founded Skating Polly in 2009 while they were 9 and 14. In 2017, the Oklahoma City-based duo enlisted Mayo’s brother Kurtis to play drums and morphed into an alt-rock trio. They collaborated with Louise Post and Nina Gordon of Veruca Salt for the EP New Trick in the same year. The group continues to rack up critical acclaim by combining indie pop with a dash of punk. $15, 8 p.m., Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary’s St., papertigersatx.com. — Danny Cervantes

Thursday, April 4

Movements, Tigers Jaw, Webbed Wing, Paerish

Californian post-hardcore band Movements emerged in 2015 as part of an “emo revival” uprising. The band released its first two albums, Feel Something and No Good Left to Give, in 2017 and 2020, with a sound and forlorn lyricism characteristic of the genre. The group’s newest LP RUCKUS! embraces new sounds — even pop sensibilities — while still maintaining the energy and intensity of the previous albums. DIY punk band Tigers Jaw, long known for raw, heart on-the-sleeve tracks, will open with additional support from Webbed Wing and Paerish. $30-$35, 7 p.m., Vibes Event Center, 1223 E. Houston St., (210) 255-3833, facebook. com/vibeseventcenter. — Dalia Gulca

Saturday, April 6

Meshell Ndegeocello

Genre-bridging Meshell Ndegeocello’s work as a bassist, singer-songwriter and rapper has earned her 11 Grammy nominations and two Grammy wins. Her 1994 collaboration with John Cougar Mellencamp, “Wild Night,” introduced her to a wide audience when it reached No. 3 on the Billboard singles chart. For this special performance, Ndegeocello and her band will explore the work of groundbreaking writer, activist and all-around badass James Baldwin. $41, 8 p.m., Jo Long Theater, Carver Community Cultural Center, 226 N. Hackberry St., thecarver.org. — Bill Baird

Alex Maas, Garrett T. Capps, Strawberry Jams

As frontman for Austin’s The Black Angels and a founder of that city’s Levitation Music Festival and Austin Psych Fest, Alex Maas helped spur the resurgence of Texas psychedelic music. For his solo work, Maas presents a slimmeddown and more personal vision that’s no less compelling than his main band. San Antonio mover and shaker Garrett T. Capps opens and Strawberry Jams provide support. $12, 9 p.m., The Lonesome Rose, 2114 N. St Mary’s St., thelonesomerose.com. — BB

Tuesday, April 9

STRFKR, Ruth Radelet

Portland, Oregon-based synth-pop band

STRFKR — yes, it’s said how you think it is — straddles the gauzy line between alternative and electronica. The group is touring in support of its just-released fifth album with Polyvinyl Records, Parallel Realms. Besides its cheeky name, STRFKR is best known for the catchy hit “Rawnald Gregory Erickson The Second,” which came to mass consciousness with its use in commercials and TV soundtracks. $34-$82, 8 p.m., Aztec Theatre, 104 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 812-4355, theaztectheatre.com — DC

Friday, April 12Sunday, April 14

Cattle Country Music Festival

With on-site camping and an expansive roster of modern country, this music festival promises a classic festival experience for the country crowd. Tanya Tucker, Tracy Lawrence, Whiskey Myers and more will grace the stage, while concert promoters are o ering a culinary experience that goes well beyond standard stadium hot dogs. Fine wines are also on o er. It all goes down at the Boot Ranch, which o ers numerous swimming holes for those wishing to partake. $79-$860, 7 p.m., Boot Ranch, 10 CR 348, Gonzales, Texas, cattlecountryfesttx. com. — BB

Saturday, April 13

KRTUFest

The second annual KRTU Fest will showcase San Antonio acts at one of the area’s newest and nicest music venues. Trinity University’s radio station serves as a voice for local indie music, and this free show features a sampling of the city’s finest. Volcán dishes out a refreshing mix of Latin laced psych-rock led by songwriter Jamie Mejia, while indie-pop newcomers Inoha and ri y rockers Retro Cowgirl add to the diverse Alamo City lineup. RSVP and arrive early. Free, 7 p.m., Stable Hall, 307 Pearl Parkway, stablehall.com. — DC

Dave Mason

On its own, being a founding member of the now-legendary British band Tra c should be enough to merit rock-icon status for Dave Mason. But the mind-boggling variety of his session work since then elevates him to another plane altogether. Mason has recorded and performed with Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Steve Winwood, Fleetwood Mac, Delaney & Bonnie, Leon Russell and Cass Elliot— to name a few. Oh, yeah, the 12-string guitar on Hendrix’s “All Along the Watchtower?” That’s also Dave Mason. $53, 8 p.m., Aztec Theatre, 104 N. St. Mary’s St., theaztectheatre.

com. — BB

Sunday, April 14

Jake Xerxes Fussell

Jake Xerxes Fusell is a Southern blues and folk musician steeped in the “old ways.” He specializes in fingerpicked guitar, and many of his songs are drawn from folk’s vast catalogue of public domain material. In short, he performs cool roots music that goes back to the original sources for its inspiration. His approach has earned him spots on NPR’s A Prairie Home Companion and as opening act for Wilco, Bill Callahan and others. $12, 8 p.m., The Lonesome Rose, 2114 N. St Mary’s St., thelonesomerose.com. — BB

Tuesday, April 16

Meshell

Ndegeocello

Black Country, New Road

The jazz-inspired constructions of British postrock band Black Country, New Road build to arresting crescendos and showcase frontman Isaac Wood’s lyricism. In 2022, the group was poised to become one of the biggest names in art rock after releasing sophomore album Ants From Up There. However, days before that released dropped, Wood bowed out to prioritize his mental health. Black Country, New Road scrapped their upcoming tours and agreed not to play any of the songs o of its first two albums. Within months, the band created brandnew material and last year dropped Live From Bush Hall, an expressive album showcasing all three members on singing duties. $28, 8 p.m., Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary’s St., papertigersatx.com. — Dalia Gulca

“State of Uncertainty”--we miss the whole thing. by Matt Jones

© 2024 Matt Jones

Across

1. “Come Away With Me”

singer Jones

6. Declines, as support

10. Former Queen of Jordan (and a hint to what’s missing from 21-Across)

14. Final Greek letter

15. “Consarn it!”

16. Lhasa ___ (breed from Tibet)

17. Paris 2024 prize

18. Taunting remark

19. “Buenos ___!”

20. Oh’s predecessors

21. Investment returns not realized because of factors like expenses and fees

23. “Insecure” Emmy nominee ___ Rae

26. A er-dinner party

27. Like many eruptions

31. Voters’ choices

32. Best case

33. Playground equipment

35. Method

38. Word of caution

39. Most high school students

40. Nursery rhyme trio

41. Gallery work

42. Peek at the answers, say

43. Jordanian ruins site

44. ree in Italy

45. Simultaneously

47. Of a heart chamber

50. Cookie with a 2024 “Space Dunk” variety

51. Stank up the joint

54. Wayside lodging

57. “Take ___ from me ...”

58. In the thick of 59. “We can relate”

61. Pre x for rail or chrome

62. Chess play

63. Gambling mecca near Hong Kong

64. Former Domino’s Pizza mascot (and a hint to what’s missing from 51-Across)

65. Small wallet bills

66. “... I’ll eat ___!”

Down

1. Alaska gold rush city (and a hint to what’s missing from 3-Down)

2. “ e ___” (1976 Gregory Peck horror lm)

3. Didn’t say anything

4. Palindromic Ottoman o cial

5. “2001” computer

6. Outer limit

7. Runny French cheese

8. Rum cakes

9. Banned substances

10. Lowest points

11. Speak your mind

12. “August: ___ County” (Meryl Streep movie)

13. Monica’s brother on “Friends”

21. Enthusiast

22. Pool ball with a yellow stripe

24. Jazz vocal style

25. ___ Paradise (“On the Road” narrator)

27. “Livin’ La ___ Loca” (Ricky Martin hit)

28. Product of pungency

29. “Understood”

30. Golf shoe gripper

34. Enjoying

35. Smoothly, as a successful plan

36. Real estate developer’s unit

37. Rookie of the ___

39. Destination in “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure”

40. Dole (out)

42. Baby’s night spot

43. KPH part

44. Camera mount

46. Amount of gunk

47. “Star Wars” droid, familiarly

48. Neighbor of a Tobagonian, informally

49. Citrus with a zest

51. Kendrick Lamar Pulitzer-winning album

52. “___ Talkin’” (Bee Gees #1 hit)

53. Pindaric poems

55. Hurricane-tracking agcy.

56. In-___ Burger (and a hint to what’s missing from 35Down)

59. Steak-___ (frozen beef brand)

60. Speak

Answers on page 29

All vehicles listed below were impounded by the San Antonio Police Dept. and will be scheduled to be sold at public auction via Joyrideautos.com

May 1, 2024, at 3:00 at San Antonio Vehicle Impound Facility

May 1, 2023, at 3:00 pm at San Antonio Vehicle Impound Facility 3625 Growdon Rd, San Antonio, TX. (210) 881-8440

Registered owners may pick up vehicles with proof of ownership, valid ID and payment all impound, towing and storage fees & applicable taxes prior to Auction. Fees accrue daily and are subject to change.