Area Real Estate News & Market Trends

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June 17, 2013

Downtown San Antonio Spanish Governors Palace

The Spanish Governor's Palace

by Celia Hayes

The single-story adobe ramble on the corner of Military Plaza (or that which is left, with Town Hall plunked down in the middle of it) is the oldest existing domestic structure in San Antonio, It dates from the 1700s; that period when Texas was a far-flung outpost of Spain, and the entire town was a huddle of similar houses around the margins of Military and Main Plazas. So – the Spanish part of the description is justified. It definitely wasn't a palace by any stretch of the imagination. But it was a vast improvement, living-situation-wise over a windowless, dirt-floored jacale-hut made by planting upright timbers in a trench and plastering them inside and out with mud, so on that basis it certainly looked enough like a palace to warrant a touch of exaggeration. Finally, it was a governor's residence only by extending the term to gossamer-thinness; it was originally built as the residence and place of business for whomever was captain of the local garrison.

That captain of the garrison was the highest authority-figure around, year in and year out ... and long after Mexico won independence from Spain, and Texas won independence from Mexico, the sturdy adobe building survived, as the home of the family of the last garrison captain. When it was no longer a residence – as the area around became a lively commercial district – the rooms housed various enterprises; a pawn shop, a grocery store, a couple of saloons and a haberdashers. Little by little, similar colonial-era structures crumbled, or were demolished and replaced by newer and bigger shops and houses. The nearby Veramendi mansion on Soledad, from the same era and general plan, but built of stone, also followed the same arc. Once the home of the aristocratic family whose daughter married James Bowie, it descending from a grand residence to a variety of shabby businesses before being demolished in the first decade of the 20th century in order to facilitate the widening of Soledad Street.

The Governor's Palace was luckier – in that it didn't stand in the way of any plans to widen streets, and that the conservation bug had settled in, well and truly. The city bought the place entire, and commissioned architect Harvey Partridge Smith to restore it to what it would have been like in its glory days. Smith used his knowledge of other similar buildings across the length and breadth of the Hispanic settlements in the Southwest, and so arrived at a romantic approximation rather than a strict interpretation. But it is a charming building even so, with thick walls and tall ceilings (as a sort of heat sink), long narrow windows opening into a Spanish-style courtyard and garden. In the old days, the garden and outbuildings would have reached to San Pedro Creek. The floors are of tile, which would have been cool to walk on, and there are numerous niches cut into the walls and set with shelves for various ornamental items. Before the invention of air conditioning, this kind of building would have been about as comfortable as you could get, in the heat of a Texas summer. The Spanish Governor's Palace is open to the public various hours on every day but Monday, and is well worth a visit to gain an idea of how the upper elite would have lived in early San Antonio.

 

June 13, 2013

Beanz-Garden Update

Beanz! A Garden Update

 
for all your San Antonio Home Buying needs!

by Celia Hayes

I have to say that the occasional rain shower over the last week or so has been very, very, very welcome, and so have the cool fronts. Anything which delays the full frontal blast of wicked summer heat by a week or so is a good thing in my book. But it has been a good month in the garden; what a difference a mere four or five weeks have made.

This year, I bit the bullet – the only plant starts that I bought were tomatoes. They went into a pair of Earth Boxes, and six home-made hanging planters. So far, lots of big green tomatoes, but nothing edible yet. For just about all the other plants this year, I began with packets of seeds from Lowe's; three or four kinds of beans, sugar peas, three kinds of squash, and five seed potatoes from Rainbow Gardens. The bell, jalapeno and cayenne pepper plants are left over from previous years, as are the eggplants. I had never really thought of them all as perennials, but they all came back very nicely from winter.

The pepper plants are thriving, and the eggplants all have fresh new foliage and are hung with star-shaped purple blossoms which herald fat little eggplants, or so I hope. The okra plants began from seeds from last years' okra plants. I didn't know that you have to pick the okra pods as soon as they are about four or five inches long; any bigger than that, and they are totally inedible. So, I had a boat-load of okra seeds. Until now I had never had much luck growing vegetables from seeds. Very likely, I was doing it all wrong in trying to cultivate the terrible, horrible, awful clay soil that my yard is made of. Even digging in sand and compost didn't help much. Last year we used Scott's Moisture Control Potting mix in the pots and Earth Boxes, and things generally did very well. This year we filled the two raised beds with it, planted squash and potatoes in one, and beans in the other, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best.

The squash have begun putting out blossoms; it looks like the little green patty-pan squash are going first, with the yellow squash and the zucchini lagging slightly behind. The beans – the Kentucky Wonder variety began going up the string net which I had run from the edge of the raised bed to the top of the fence as if there had been some green bean drill instructor screaming at them to climb. As of this week they are covered in little white and purple flowers. These things are supposed to bear copious quantities of beans – and harvesting them regularly encourages even more. I still have packets of other varieties of beans, and hope to start another couple of small raised beds. It seems that I have inadvertently hit on the right place in my garden to grow pole beans; partly shaded for much of the day, but growing up against a south-facing fence.

I also had a packet of lettuce seeds, and another of mixed salad greens, which just this week had enough leaves to harvest and use in salads. Oh, the taste of fresh greens is indescribably good. When the squash plants are exhausted, and I dig up the potatoes in the fall, I am planning to put up a plastic tent over the large raised bed and sow more salad greens and lettuce inside. I'd like to be able to eat out of my own garden for the rest of this year, and even have enough excess to freeze.

And that's my week in the garden – what about yours?

Posted in Gardening
June 13, 2013

Suburban Garden

The Many-Splendored Suburban Garden

by Celia Hayes

Given a nice big lot, spectacular situation, mature trees, an architect-designed mansion, and massive infusions of money, it's practically a no-brainer that there will be a beautiful garden, or even a merely adequate or maybe just a functional one adorning it all. What is really a challenge for a hard-core gardener is to create a lovely garden on a tiny lot, in a fairly ordinary suburb of small and relatively plain houses ... and on a budget. Sounds impossible, but it has been done by at least three homeowners in my very own neighborhood of Spring Creek Forrest. One of the very loveliest gardens, alas, has since declined since the original owner sold the house. At it's best it looked like the pictures of a classical English cottage garden in one of the glossy home-and-garden magazines. Admittedly it was high-maintenance, with stone and gravel pathways, a patch of lawn and flower borders to die for; that first owner had no social life at all, outside of work. She spent all her time on the garden, and it showed.

But the second spectacular garden that I know of has been established on an even tinier lot – and the best of it isn't even visible from the street. You'd never know, just by looking – although the fact that the front lawn and the single well-manicured flower bed in it would likely give a clue. The house is one of those very like mine; a narrow rectangular cottage built close to the property line on one side, with the garage at the front. There is a gate into the long and skinny side yard, which leads to the front door – which isn't actually at the front, being that it is in the middle of the long side. A lot of the smaller houses in Spring Creek Forest were built like that, which means that at worst, the windows along that side offer a splendid view of the long blank wall of your next-door neighbor's house, at a distance of about fifteen feet or so.

Not this house, though – a number of small ornamental trees planted by the original owner masked that unenticing prospect. The original owner also had a screened back porch installed at the back of the house – which was one of the main reasons that Bess and James bought the place as their retirement home about two years ago. They loved the screened porch, and the tiny yard that it overlooked. The house had one more advantage; some very tall trees in neighboring yards provide shade in the afternoon; a good thing, especially at the height of summer. And because of the slight grade present, none of the neighboring houses windows overlook that patch of pocket paradise.

One of the first things that Bess and James did was to tear out a wooden deck and gazebo along the side, and replace it with a walkway of flagstones set into decomposed granite gravel. There are several benches and chairs along that skinny side garden; it feels larger than it really is. The screened porch looks out on the back yard, and another paved area, shaded with a fig tree. Bess has many flowering plants in pots lining the walkway. They do have hopes of a small patch of healthy lawn – but near-constant shade makes it iffy. And almost the best part is that nothing planted in it is particularly exotic or high-maintenance; in fact, Beth laughs, because just about all of it came from Lowe's.

Posted in Gardening
June 12, 2013

Spurs Dunk Heat 113 to 77-Why is James Cryin

Why is James Cryin?

Cuz He Just Got Dunked On

Spurs Rout Heat 113 - 77 in Game 3 of NBA Finals, take series lead. The Miami Heat kept saying it didn't matter, that LeBron James affects the game in different ways. They were wrong James was struggling again to impose his will. The odds of the Spurs winning the fifth title they so desire turned in their favor yet again.

 

 

Froggy Fresh - Dunked On lyrics

Out on the court for a game of two on two,
Me and Mike vs. James and his boy, Big Blue.
We headed off to Kevin's house right after school
'Cause he got that new Lifetime basketball hoop.
We game ready, we came ready to play
We came ready to win and bring the trophy home that day
Big Blue said – you ain't bringing home that W
"How you gon score when I'm standing here in front of you?"
I grab the ball and I passed it in to Mike
Mike caught the pass, faked left and went right
He broke through the line and he threw it off the glass
I couldn't believe my eyes, he was running so fast
Caught the pass in midair then he threw that boy down
Nobody could believe it, James fell over on the ground
He started cryin, put his hands on his head
And Big Blue looked at me and Mike and he said...

[Hook]
Why is James cryin? Cuz he just got dunked on
I ain't even lyin – yo, he just got dunked on
Yep yep, he was standin in the way
So I jumped up in the air and I dunked it on his face

Why is James cryin? Cuz he just got dunked on
I ain't even lyin – yo, he just got dunked on
Yep yep, he was standin in the way
So I jumped up in the air and I dunked it on his face

[Verse]
James was mad, I could see it in his eyes
James never gets dunked on and James don't ever cry
He stood up, beat his fist on his chest
Looked at me and Mike and ran his thumb across his neck
He grabbed the ball, squared up to the hoop
Took a hard right step and then he slipped in dog poop
Me and Mike started laughing and he deserved it too
For the rest of the day we called him Captain Poopy Shoe
Then the ball bounced right over to me
Big Blue was so big I could barely even see
I took the ball and I threw it in the air
Although I couldn't see a thing I had a feelin' Mike was there
He grabbed the ball and did an alley-hoop dunk
Right on top of James, he made him look like a punk
Then James' girlfriend walked by
She stopped right there and looked me square in the eye
She said

[Hook]
Why is James cryin? Cuz he just got dunked on
I ain't even lyin – yo, he just got dunked on
Yep yep, he was standin in the way
So I jumped up in the air and I dunked it on his face

Why is James cryin? Cuz he just got dunked on
I ain't even lyin – yo, he just got dunked on
Yep yep, he was standin in the way
So I jumped up in the air and I dunked it on his face

[Verse]
For the rest of the game, the lead went back and forth
It was all tied up when I checked the scoreboard
There was only 10 seconds left on the clock
James went in for a layup but his shot got blocked
Why? And then juped out Big Blue
With the spin move, I was headin straight for the hoop
I looked at Mike, put my hand up in the air
James was standin in the way but you know I didn't care
Mike threw a perfect pass and I jumped so high
I was way up in the sky, dog it felt like I could fly~
I grabbed the ball and I threw it down hard
Right on top of James, I felt like a superstar
That's how me and Mike won the basketball game
We beat Big Blue and Big Bad James
'Cause me and Mike are the number one team
And we heard James cry and we heard his mom scream
She said...

[Hook]
Why is James cryin? Cuz he just got dunked on
I ain't even lyin – yo, he just got dunked on
Yep yep, he was standin in the way
So I jumped up in the air and I dunked it on his face

Why is James cryin? Cuz he just got dunked on
I ain't even lyin – yo, he just got dunked on
Yep yep, he was standin in the way
So I jumped up in the air and I dunked it on his face

[Outro]
Yea, you come up in here – you're gonna get dunked on
Python and Kim,
Penny and Shaq,
Pippen and Jordan
Boy, me and Mike are bad

Hey!

Published on Jun 4, 2013 by Froggy Fresh

Posted in San Antonio Sports
June 3, 2013

Texas Transportation Museum

The Steel Rails of Yore

by Celia Hayes

I have to admit that I have been driving past the Texas Transportation Museum ever since I moved to this city (ulp) nearly twenty years ago and discovered that Wetmore Road was an especially speedy means of getting from my home in the north-east quadrant to the area around the airport. I was just not sufficiently motivated to stop in and check it out – which since it is only open on Friday and weekends, and I was usually driving past during the week ... well, I had no particular reason to visit until this weekend. I am currently scribbling the first draft of another historical novel set in Texas, this one in 1876-78, and with a large portion of it set in San Antonio. Those years were significant, for a couple of different reasons.

The United States celebrated the Centennial in 1876 – a whole hundred years as a nation, which at times had seemed like being a pretty close-run thing. The long and brutal Indian wars with the Comanche, the Kiowa, and the Apache had been briskly wrapped up, making large tracts of western land safe for settlement, the Civil War was eleven years in the past, although it would not be forgotten – and most importantly for San Antonio; it was finally connected to a railroad – the last large city of any size, east or west, to do so.

This led to a local boom in business and in transport, much of which is documented on the Transportation Museum website. In the bare space of those years, a bustling new neighborhood grew up around San Antonio's first rail terminal, somewhat to the north of then-downtown. It was known as the Levee, for the way in which the tracks had to be laid on a strip of artificially built-up ground – just about where IH-35 cuts through Milam and Sherman Streets. The original terminal building is so long-gone that only a couple of pictures exist of it, as it was. But the railroad depot was also the impetus for a mule-drawn streetcar system, and very soon those streetcar lines formed a network ... and the sleepy adobe-built frontier village was subsumed.

There are two birds-eye city maps of San Antonio, the first from the early 1870s, in which San Antonio is mostly green space and wide tan avenues surrounding a thicker cluster of buildings around Commerce, the twin plazas and Soledad, all tangled about with the blue-green ribbon of the river. In the second, from the 1880s, the railroad has arrived; the network of streets, all tightly packed with businesses and houses has spread and spread again, reaching nearly to the parade ground and the Quadrangle at Fort Sam. And it was the railroad arriving, which made all that difference.

The Transportation Museum documents much of that on their website – almost more thoroughly than in their current displays. The museum is entirely run by unpaid volunteers, and I would guess on a shoe-string budget. There are some neat old rail cars on display in the open air – gosh, that was the way to travel, back in the day, in a Pullman car, with nice little beds that pulled out, or down for the night, and with a restroom-lounge where one could change...There is also a large barn with more historical cars and carriages on display, as well as a huge model railway set-up. It's all very much a work in progress, and candidly not a threat to the California Railway Museum in Sacramento ... but then, California has other problems of its' own. Still, it's a great place for an hour or so, especially for kids, who would never have seen rail travel, save for in the movies.

May 30, 2013

The Rain it Raineth

Here in San Antonio, hardly anyone has an umbrella...

by Celia Hayes

...On the just and on the unjust fella.
But mostly raineth on the just,

Because the unjust steals the just's umbrella!

Or so runs the traditional couplet – here in San Antonio, hardly anyone has an umbrella, a proper raincoat or galoshes, because the worst rainstorms always seem to arrive unannounced. You might as well just resign yourself to getting wet, like we did over Memorial Day weekend. We hadn't planned on doing anything for the weekend anyway. The thunderstorm woke me up when it blew in during the wee hours, the morning dawned dark and dreary, and the dogs were disinclined for walkies, so we were even less inclined to go anywhere, until it cleared up in the late afternoon.

That was when news stories and pictures of high water in downtown and in the parklands behind the Olmos dam, and in Breckenridge Park finally came to our attention. Oh, dear – another one of those places prone to flood are deep enough in water to draw the attention of local, national, and even international news outlets. How can I put this gently – it does rain in Texas, sometimes hard and long, and with flood-productive capacity, although thanks to a half-century of Hollywood movies and television, the national (and international) mental image of Texas as a waterless desert.

This might be true of West Texas; East Texas is as soggy as any other place in the Deep South. But San Antonio has its own problems with water. In some years, a shortage of it reduces home-owners to watering their lawns with a hand-held hose, while in other years it is entirely possible to drown in a sudden storm surge on a street within city limits; even without having taken the ill-advised step of driving around the city barriers, or going to muck about in the usually-dry-but now full-running-and-overflowing neighborhood creek-bed. San Antonio is still at an outstanding danger from flash floods. I cannot say that too often enough, although the danger of death from them is much diminished from former years, thanks to civic and engineering enterprise. The elementary thing about flash-floods is that they are – flash floods. They hit without very much warning, sometimes as a result of rain which has fallen miles or even counties away, and at intervals so irregular as to lull residents into complacency.

Into the 20th century, downtown San Antonio was prone to catastrophic floods; the establishment of the Riverwalk was an effort at control. It's worked out very well, ever since – but this dear and rambling city still has water hazards. Those sections of highway downtown which run below ground level will flood. Given sufficient rain, the 281 north of the Olmos dam will be under water as well, and the stretch of North New Braunfels which runs through Alamo Heights will be running with water. Regular commuters will know the places along their route which can and will accumulate deep water. Most of the really potentially dangerous places along our surface streets are marked with bright yellow flood-gages, marked off in one-foot increments. There is a reason for this; a water level at or just above the underside of your car has a very real potential to lift your vehicle and float it away. The surface of your tires which actually touches the road, which gives you braking and steering control is only about the size of your hands (if you have big hands!) and once your wheels no longer touch the road, the best that you can hope for is that your vehicle lodges against something firm, and that rescue is not too long in coming. Never go around barriers to drive through a flooded area, be aware of those places which will flood, pay close attention to flood warnings, and know that those mostly-dry creek beds which meander through the greater part of our city will soon be full of very fast-moving water in the event of a large amount of rain upstream. Word to the wise – stay dry, San Antonio!

Posted in Other
May 16, 2013

Our Little Backyard Garden in April

April in the Garden

by Celia Hayes

Ah, the rain which fell last week; glorious, bountiful rain, just when we had given up all hope of seeing such again. And just about when I had concluded that we had skipped over spring entirely and gone straight into summer. Having to run the air conditioner because it's ninety degrees outside – freaking ninety degrees! – in March! That is just wrong ... especially when most of the rest of the northern hemisphere is suffering cold, rain, snow. If I could have figured out a way to swap about twenty degrees of Fahrenheit for about ten inches of rain over a week or so, I would so do it.

On the other hand, the cycle of undue warmth and a sudden generous rain has worked out in the long run, so I ought not to complain too much. The big raised bed is filled with squash sprouts – zucchini, golden and the round greenish ones which my grandmother always called 'patty-pan' squash. This is a promising start, for as of yet they are only sprouts: Whether or not my ambition to have squash by the bag-full to inflict on the neighbors remains to be seen. The five seed potatoes that I planted at the far end of the bed are also sprouting vigorously. I had a thought – potatoes might make a very attractive bedding plant, if interspersed with some kind of flowering annual. And at the end of the season, you could harvest the potatoes; ornamental and edible!

Now the small raised bed, full of three kinds of beans is going to town. I thought that all three of kinds planted there were bush beans – but it seems that the middle row is sending out exploratory tendrils towards the chicken wire that I wrapped the raised bed in, so as to prevent the dogs from trampling all over them. My ambitions are to have two more small raised beds, so as to keep the bean crops going as long as possible, and now I see that a trellis of some kind will have to feature in them.

I had three ornamental wire plant towers, bought here and there, now serving as either tomato cages for the tomatoes that I planted in earth boxes, or as supports for sugar peas. I planted the sugar peas just last week, and after seven days there are tiny green slips sprouting in the earth box. The tomatoes in the home-made hanging containers are also thriving; they were started the earliest and so are already putting out embryonic tomatoes. The largest is the size of a marble. Several weeks ago I discovered Rainbow Gardens as a source for exotic tomato starts – a veritable rainbow of colors of tomatoes. I loved the little lemon-yellow tomatoes that we had last year; 'Yellow Pear' was the name, and so that's one kind that we'll try again. Last week I bought a huge, gangly variety called a 'Black Krim' which comes from southern Russia and is supposed to thrive in heat ... which we can guarantee!

I've held over a number of plants from last year; notably various peppers which had been growing in the pepper topsy-turvey. They did OK in the topsy – not spectacular, but OK. I put them all in pots – much, much better. I will never have to purchase cayenne or jalapeno peppers ever again, and as for bell peppers – a single plant from last year now has nearly a dozen half-sized green bell peppers on it.

And that was my week in the garden – how was yours?

Posted in Gardening
May 6, 2013

Hauptstrasse Quiltfest in Boerne

The Allure of the Quilt

by Celia Hayes

Once again this last weekend, we were lured to the pleasant bedroom-slipper community of Boerne by the charms of the Squirrel's Nest on Main Street, which supports the totally worthy services provided by Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation to animal-kind of this part of Texas. This visit also coincided with the celebration of a uniquely American art form – with contemporary examples hung from storefronts, and along the sides of Boerne's town plaza. They made a splendid show, all through downtown, and many of the businesses along Main Street (or Hauptstrasse) also had window displays incorporating quilts – and many of them were offering drinks ... although we had to turn down the offers of margaritas at one otherwise inviting establishment. Were they non-alcoholic? My daughter doesn't drink, and although I do, 1:30 in the afternoon is just to darned early. There was a lemonade stand in front of one place though. Perhaps we should have gone back...

Anyway; quilts – an essentially American fabric art form, which pretty much runs the gamut from the brutally practical to the over-the-top artistic. Many examples of the latter were on display this weekend; lovingly designed and carefully calculated to draw the eye and to show off the design skills and the artistic eye of the person who made them. (Almost always a woman in the case of modern examples, and totally in the case of historical ones.) There are three different strands in quilt design, by the way, although very often they can be combined within a single quilt. There are quilts that are patched or pieced, in that scraps of fabric are sewn together to form plain or intricate geometric patterns. Then there is the use of an applique, where the design is cut out and appliqued to the fabric of the quilt top itself – and finally, there is white-work quilting, which is used on a length of plain fabric and depends on an elaborate pattern of stitching for the effect.

Historically a theme for the quilt was chose, pattern and color was selected from material either purchased or thriftily using scraps left over from making clothing. Then the quilt top pieces were cut, seamed together, and combined through various means with a padding and a backing to provide a reasonably warm and practicable bed-covering. All clear about the concept here? Things to cover a bed with, to keep people warm with on nights which might be cold, things which were often made on the cheap, utilizing scraps of woven fabrics, flour and seed sacks, and sewn together by women who didn't have much free time... and such bedcovers were practical things which might on occasion be thrown up upon, or have other stains from bodily functions deposited on them ... (urp).

Among some historic quilts shown off in the town plaza were a number made between 1920 to 1950 or so by the grandmother of the collector who had rescued them from storage in the old family farmhouse in Kentucky. Most were patchwork, in the simpler patterns and random fabric scraps, but one was particularly eye-catching, pieced together from pink and greenish-aqua cotton fabric in an interlocking pattern of rings. That had obviously been made from deliberately purchased fabric; and very likely intended to be a show-piece, for the best guest bedroom, perhaps. Two of the quilts were interesting in that they had been pieced together from rectangular patches of light-weight woolen men's suiting. It seems that they had come from fabric sample books, and when the company catalog was updated, the seamstress had thriftily pieced together the outdated fabric samples. It made a very heavy quilt, in simple rectangles of muted shades of grey, brown, navy, and olive; not much to look at, designwise, but I'll bet anything that quilt would have been warm to sleep under on a cold winter night.

May 5, 2013

Korean Food Can Be Spicy

Korean Delights

by Celia Hayes

So, many of the headlines this week concern themselves with Korea, a country which I have some slight connection to; that is where my father was serving a tour when I was born. And a good few decades later, I did a year-long tour there myself. About the very first thing that I realized was that Korea in the 1990s looked nothing like the TV series MASH ... and only very little like what my father remembered. Dad and his platoon with their mobile radar set-up lived in several different tent encampments near the DMZ. I spent the year living at Yongsan Garrison, in the heart of a bustling and very cosmopolitan Seoul. The garrison was itself a fairly un-crowded green island in the middle of a very built-up city – rather as if there were a substantial military base set up in half of New York City's Central Park.

I very much enjoyed the year in Seoul, by the way – and I very much liked the Koreans that I met and worked with; tough, jolly, and rather outgoing. Someone once described Koreans as the Irish of Asia, which I don't think was too far off. Being that San Antonio is a military-oriented town, and a lot of military – especially Army – have been rotating in and out of Korea for the last sixty years, there is a nice little Korean presence here in San Antonio. I know of no less than three different Korean church congregations in my immediate neck of the woods. Then there is the little 'TigerPop' fast food place that my daughter and I sampled a year or so ago. And when I first came to San Antonio, someone told me that the first and best Korean restaurants were all scattered along Harry Wurzbach, Austin Highway and Rittiman Road, in proximity to Fort Sam Houston – because those first restaurants were all started by the Korean wives of retired Army NCOs. Don't know if it is true or not; but it looks like some the most assuming places with excellent food are along those streets.

Be warned, though – Korean food can be very, very spicy, even to Texas tastes. (Not as spicy as Thai food, though.) The dish that most of us have heard of is kimchee; basically pickled Napa cabbage, but with a kick – or as one of my military friends used to call it, "sauerkraut" with an attitude." Very closely related to Japanese sushi is the Korean kimbab; cooked rice, and other things, rolled in a sheet of seaweed nori. The difference is that in the Korean version, the contents are most often cooked. And sometimes, they are made with a sliver of Spam. No, really – Spam is enormously popular in Korea; something that I had heard, but never quite believed until I saw assortments of Spam for sale in fancy baskets in Korean specialty groceries. The other very popular Korean snack food among my friends was yakimandu – pan-friend dumplings, which were as much like Chinese pot-stickers as to have no difference at all. Many of these delights were sold from street stalls, to the horror of the military health authorities, but to the best of my knowledge, I never heard of anyone getting sick from eating them, mostly because they came right from the burner to your plate. And against the red peppers and other hot spices, disease-causing organisms never had a chance.

And now I'm hungry for yakimandu ... guess a trip down to Koreana on Harry Wurzbach is in order...

 

Posted in Other
May 1, 2013

HemisFair Park in the Heart of San Antonio

HemisFair Park

by Celia Hayes

HemisFair Park, in the heart of downtown San Antonio is a bit of an anomaly as far as San Antonio parks go. It's fifteen acres stretches from the entrance to La Villita on South Alamo, all the way to the Institute of Texan Cultures, roughly bounded on one side by the convention center, and on the other by Durango Street – now renamed Cesar Chavez, although many maps still say 'Durango.' HemisFair Park was not a patch of farmland or open scrub left undeveloped, (Hardburger, Comanche Hill, or McAllister) or a particularly scenic piece of property designated as parkland from the earliest days, (San Pedro, Breckenridge) or even neighborhood amenity, (Woodlawn) or even stretches along various creeks left undeveloped because of the danger of flooding. HemisFair Park was deliberately carved out from an existing residential neighborhood to serve as the venue for the 1968 World's Fair.

Some of the urban neighborhood thus renewed was undoubtedly blighted, but a fair portion of it was not. Over a hundred buildings threatened with demolition were of some significance, either architecturally or historically and a portion of them were retained within the park bounds. Some of them seem now to be in use as office space, but others are boarded up on the ground floor – which is a pity, since they are all clustered at the La Villita end of the park, and might make some rather nice studio, retail and exhibition spaces. There is a multi-faceted plan afoot to renew and restructure the various areas of the park – to include using the the half-dozen historic mansions for just that, so here's hoping it won't take too many decades longer. Part of the plan also includes re-establishing part of the original street grid, to tie in HemisFair to the Southtown, and Lavaca neighborhoods on one side, and to LaVillita and downtown San Antonio on the other.

A few of the exhibition spaces built for the Fair are still in daily use although perhaps for other than the original purpose – like the Lila Cockrell Theater and large parts of the convention center. The Institute of Texan Cultures was originally the State of Texas pavilion for the fair, and the round US District Court building was the United States of America pavilion – and the Mexican Cultural Institute is presently housed in the original, but expanded and renovated Mexico Pavilion. Others, like the Women's Pavilion are still there – but closed, pending restoration, or as support offices. One of the most eye-catching structures created for HemisFair is the "Tower of the Americas' – still about the tallest man-made building in San Antonio. Everyone should go up to the observation deck at least once, for nothing other than to admire the peerless view in every direction. It's also a very useful landmark for navigating around the city. The remaining grounds were re-landscaped with gardens, walkways and water-features in the mid-1980s ... but pretty much everyone acknowledges that unless there is some special event going on at the park, not many people are drawn to it – especially at night. In many ways, HemisFair Park is still a work in progress.

HemisFair, although attracting a lot of attention and very well attended, unfortunately fell very short of breaking even. The fair also took a hit when it opened – two days after the assassination of Martin Luther King. Attendance never came close to matching estimates, and the Fair eventually lost over 7 million. Some of the local construction firms were owed substantial amounts by organizers; according to legend, they were paid with blocks of tickets – which they went out and sold on the street, recouping just enough from ticket sales to pay their suppliers and workers.