The Alamo Hour

Michael Girdley, Investor, Entrepreneur and SA Business Advocate

Justin Hill — Fri, 18 Feb 2022 05:30:00 -0600

Michael Girdley has become a well-known advisor, commentator, investor, and authority on all things San Antonio business related. He has a huge Twitter following and has a lot to say about our city and what we need to keep progressing.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Hello and bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique in the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

Michael Girdley: How long do we go?

Justin: One hour. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Michael Girdley. He's kind of all things. I'm going to hit some of the points from his website. His bio, he's currently Chairman and Co-founder of Dura Software. He's a partner at Geekdom Fund. He's been involved in co-founding and leading multiple different ventures in San Antonio and around Texas.

He was Man of the Year with San Antonio Business Journal and Geek of the Year with Geekdom, right, in 2016. He's passionate about San Antonio's future. If you follow him on Twitter, you know how much San Antonio and the future of our city matters to him. He's a perfect kind of guest to have on here, so thanks for being here.

Michael: Yes, excited. Thanks for having me.

Justin: You've listened to a few of my really compelling episodes, so I appreciate it.

Michael: Yes, four actually. [unintelligible 00:01:10]

Justin: That's more than most people. I start a lot with just some general questions about San Antonio I wanted to ask you about.

Michael: Yes.

Justin: All right. Do you have any pets?

Michael: We have two cats.

Justin: Okay. What kind of cats?

Michael: Four-legged ones, simple.

Justin: Like alley cats?

Michael: Ones we got at The Humane Society.

Justin: Okay. Some people are into like Persians or these bald cats.

Michael: Yes, we're not.

Justin: None of that?

Michael: We're not fancy.

Justin: All right. Favorite hidden gems in San Antonio?

Michael: Oh man. I definitely like just the normal taquerias that are like all over the place.

Justin: Do you have a favorite?

Michael: Man, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. They're all my favorites.

Justin: I had a judge on here who wouldn't give me a single restaurant she liked because she didn't want to endorse them.

Michael: I love that we have Tex-Mex. To be totally frank with you, I don't enjoy eating it that much. When my wife and I have options to go out or we go out for dinners like we're ended up at Bliss or Cured or those types of places. We lived in California for a while and we still brought that taste back with us. We want to eat that kind of food and have that kind of dining experience.

Justin: Bliss and Cured do it for you.

Michael: They're definitely fancy. We love going to the Pearl Food Hall as well. I will be unabashedly snobby about where I like to go.

Justin: I like the Food Hall now that you can just sit at your table and order on the QR code and it comes out. I appreciate that, especially during the pandemic. Do you have any odd hobbies other than your Twitter?

Michael: Twitter is definitely one. I've really gotten to pasture into plane tracking. Yes, it's a really interesting hobby.

Justin: What's the goal of this?

Michael: What do you mean what's the goal?

Justin: I mean other than just see where planes are going.

Michael: How could it not be obvious that plane-- we live in the flight path underneath San Antonio International. The runways are aligned in a way to orient towards the natural flow of air, which is either coming off the Gulf or going towards the Gulf. We get lots of planes taking off and landing all the time. Every plane that flies, whether it's general aviation, so like private planes or the commercial ones, they emit a repeater signal with their ID and location, speed and all that kind of stuff.

Justin: Sure.

Michael: That's not encrypted, you can actually see that however you want. Probably last year, I got really big into it, but a couple years ago I set up an antenna over our house. I could see planes going from Mexico City to Frankfurt in the middle of the night and that sort of thing. We have a whole setup that [crosstalk]

Justin: Just curiosity.

Michael: It's just fun.

Justin: Do you look up the tale numbers and see like, is this a business plane or a personal plane?

Michael: Yes. It's cool. Yes, and it's fun you can actually see like-- you'll look up certain names or certain private planes fly over and you can go look, okay, what address is this registered to? Then you can figure out who that fancy San Antonian was that flew over my house. I've never been on a private plane. I'd like to do it someday, but I can see the fancy people go over.

The other fun thing is when you can see some of the corporations in town will hold their national conventions here. You're like, "Why are there 40 private jets in San Antonio International." You can figure what they're all here for. There's actually even more fun stuff when like the Final Four is here and you see all the private jets like taken off one after another right after the game ends. It's pretty nerdy.

The other weird ones that are super cool is there will be ones that fly over my house that are not registering. They're not sending a signal. They don't show up-

Justin: Is that military?

Michael: -because they're military. A lot of times, you can tell when some really big wig is going over because two fighter jets will take off first, then you'll see a plane go, and then two fighter jets will go.

Justin: Okay, this sounds more fun than originally.

Michael: Yes, it's cool. It's super cool.

Justin: My first boss had a private plane and the first time I rode on that, I just remember that, as we were taking off, he played Flight of the Valkyries as loud as it would play and that just-- memories seared into my head. That plane was nothing but a flying cooler, is what it really was. It was just tons of Miller Lite, not the pilot. He wasn't flying himself. I'm going to tell you some other stories about those experience.

Michael: You have enough money for a plane and all you get is Miller Lite?

Justin: He was a Diet Coke Miller Lite guy.

Michael: Well, okay.

Justin: He knew what he liked.

Michael: Whatever makes you happy.

Justin: Yes. We'll talk about it in a second, but you have a history as a CEO of Alamo Fireworks.

Michael: Yes.

Justin: I too, as a very young 7-year-old, 8-year-old to 12-year-old boy worked at a firework stand. Did you have a favorite firework?

Michael: Yes, whichever one was the easiest to sell. Actually, my favorite as a business person is there's these assortments that are already assembled.

Justin: Sure.

Michael: Somebody walks up, they give you their money. You say, "Here's your assortment." They walk away happy, you walk away with their money. You move on to the next customer. I grew up running those firework stands. That's how I learned a lot about business, a lot about people.

Justin: Sure.

Michael: Running a firework stand, you do it as a partnership with the company. The people that run those aren't actually our employees, they're independent contractors. They get paid on commission. They have an investment in running those things.

Justin: That's for like Alamo Fireworks, right?

Michael: For Alamo. Yes. For our company. It's a great way, when I was 18, 19 years old, to learn the fundamentals. You have to learn how to staff your thing. You have to learn how to merchandise it. You have to deal with personality issues on customers and employees.

Justin: You have to stay there overnight, right?

Michael: You have to sleep there. You have to develop resources. You have to develop grit to do that because nobody sets up the firework seasons during the nice time of the year. You're either-

Justin: Hot as hell.

Michael: -freezing your butt off around New Year's or cooking in a camper at around the 4th of July [crosstalk]

Justin: You didn't get one of the big air-conditioned steel buildings?

Michael: We did not-- they were not legal at the time when I was running stands.

Justin: They couldn't be permanent, right?

Michael: Yes. Those came around only in the late '90s, early 2000s. By then, I had already moved on.

Justin: Was this still 10 days the whole time you were there? 10 days before both holidays?

Michael: Yes, yes. 10-12 days.

Justin: The one I worked at was independently owned and he had to order himself. We had to write down what to order. I just remember it was like a 10 times markup or something on all the stuff.

Michael: Yes, it's not quite that good. People talk about, "Well, these fireworks are so expensive," or whatever. First of all, in the past couple years, all the Chinese and supply chain problems have hit the fireworks industry huge.

Justin: Okay. Last time I went, it seemed barren, and I didn't know if that was just a crappy firework stand or what.

Michael: It may depend on who you went to or which companies you went to or when you went, because they're designed to run out of fireworks on the big days because we don't get to sell anything again for six months after. Also, a lot of the competitors had supply chain problems over the past few years. We did a pretty good job of navigating that, but some people didn't.

Justin: Right. You're out of it entirely now?

Michael: I don't work in the business, but I work on it a lot. We have a great team running the business. My brother and I are very much involved in it.

Justin: I couldn't tell, it was a family thing?

Michael: Yes. It's started by my great-grandfather.

Justin: Cool.

Michael: Incorporated formally in 1962. My dad worked in it for 35 years or so.

Justin: Wow.

Michael: We've been in San Antonio area forever since [crosstalk]--

Justin: Just Bexar County?

Michael: No, we're all over the state, so a couple hundred locations. We just passed our 32nd, 33rd indoor store. We have a location in Nevada, one in New Mexico, and then we go as far west as El Paso, as far north as Amarillo, and then down in the valley [unintelligible 00:08:31].

Justin: What do you do with the big buildings in the off times? The other 345 days a year.

Michael: They mostly sit dormant.

Justin: Is that right? They're not used for storage or something.

Michael: Yes. Yes. They just mostly sit dormant. You might leave leftover merchandise there for the next time. The way those locations are set up, where they are, there's really no other businesses that make sense to be in there. We did Halloween for a while. Amazon destroyed that business.

Justin: Hell, yes.

Michael: I don't know if you've tracked that, but 15 years ago, there were tons of pop-up Halloween stores. Except for Spirit, they've pretty much all gone by the wayside.

Justin: Now, JV with Spirit. I mean because y'all are not really in the city though with those locations?

Michael: Correct. Though that's changing, this city keeps growing. We had Spirit at one of our locations this past year, and I think it went well.

Justin: If city annex is where one of those permanent buildings is, are y'all no longer allowed to sell fireworks there?

Michael: It used to be different, but there's a law now where, if you're annexed, if you have a building there, you get 20 more years before [unintelligible 00:09:33].

Justin: Oh, nice. Okay. All right. Well, that helps.

Michael: Yes. There's been a good migration of pro-fireworks legislation the past decade or so. Thank you.

Justin: [chuckles] What's the state with the least rules on fireworks? It used to be like Oklahoma, you could go get cherry bombs and stuff.

Michael: Yes. Nationally, there's been just a recognition across everywhere that you're better off just regulating fireworks than [unintelligible 00:09:53] them. Almost every state has gotten more permissive except for New York, Massachusetts and California. Florida, Alabama, Florida used to be closed, that opened up. Michigan. All these different states have become more permissive over time. Wyoming, New Mexico, it's getting friendlier nationally for the fireworks business.

Justin: You said you moved to San Antonio from California. When did you move here?

Michael: I grew up here, left for college when I was 18. I was like, "I'm never coming back to this place." That worked. [laughs] See how that turned out. Then moved out to California because I wanted to be in the tech business, and so got out there in '97 when I graduated from college and stayed out there until 2004 and moved back here with my wife.

Justin: All right. Moved back, did Alamo?

Michael: Yes. That was the draw to bring us back to San Antonio, and I was CEO there for going on eight years.

Justin: Then we're going to talk a little bit about-- your Twitter's very business advice. Do you have favorite business books that you recommend people to read?

Michael: Yes, I got a whole ton of them.

Justin: Yes, about top three.

Michael: Usually, when people ask that question, I ask what they're trying to solve for because people will typically have a specific thing that they're [crosstalk]

Justin: What about a small business law firm owner like myself?

Michael: What is your biggest problem right now?

Justin: Ooh, I think things are pretty good. I don't really want to grow. I'm pretty happy with the size and all that.

Michael: Are you making as much money as you'd like?

Justin: Yes.

Michael: Then maybe you don't need to read any books. You need a plane with a Bud Light in it.

Justin: Oh, it was Miller Lite.

Michael: Oh, I thought it was a classy plane.

[laughter]

Justin: It wasn't Miller High Life though because that would be real good.

Michael: Oh, yes.

Justin: Generally, what are some of the go-to books you think-

Michael: Yes, for sure.

Justin: -really do a good job for small businesses?

Michael: For small businesses, for sure, a huge fan of a book called Traction. It's about the entrepreneurial operating system. It's business paint by numbers for running your business. Number two is, there's an interview methodology I really like called Top Grading. It's what I use for all team building on that sort of things. There's a third one and I'm totally blanking on it, but it is basically a recipe for how to be a first-time manager. I'll tweet whatever it is when I can remember, but I could see the cover but I can't [crosstalk]

Justin: Have you read The E Myth?

Michael: Yes, E Myth is good.

Justin: I'm reading it right now. It's really good. It makes a lot of sense to me.

Michael: It's nice, it's how do you create systems and get out of your own way in terms of making your business repeatable.

Justin: Yes. Just because you're good at being a lawyer, don't think you're good at running a law firm.

Michael: Where a lot of books and almost all those books fall apart is it's very easy for them to be theoretical. You look at most of those books and they'll give you theory and principles. Then when it's like, okay, what do I do with this in terms of my-- what do I do today? What do I do this month or this quarter? I've gravitated totally towards loving these books that just give you recipes, so you can follow those systems out of the book.

EOS for example has exactly that kind of stuff. How do you document your core processes? How do you systematize them? How do you make them? Instead of you having to figure out, "Okay, I know this principle and how do I put this into practice," it's like, "Oh, here's this worksheet I just fill out." You can go back to figuring out how to be an amazing lawyer as opposed to figuring out how to be an amazing creator of some business system that some expert already created, so just use that.

Justin: I think professional services are so different as opposed to somebody that's making and selling a product too.

Michael: I'm a big believer all business tastes like chicken.

Justin: Okay. Well, you talk about processes and I'm like, "I don't even know what our processes are here."

Michael: There are the stuff you got to get right to really be a successful business. It's pretty much the same stuff. I think you look at my career and what I do now,...

Patrick Svitek, Texas Tribune Political Correspondent

Justin Hill — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 05:30:00 -0600

Patrick Svitek is new to San Antonio but a long time political reporter covering the state of Texas. He works for The Texas Tribune and covers Texas politics and policy from a local level to how they affect national discussions and trends. We have a lively discussion about what is happening in Texas and how he is enjoying San Antonio.

Transcript:

Justin: Hello. Bienvenidos, San Antonio, welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique in the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Patrick Svitek. He is the primary political correspondent for the Texas Tribune. If you don't know, Texas Tribune is become a really a nationwide leader in nonprofit journalism and reworking the way the business model works.

He's their primary political correspondent. He's previously worked at the Houston Chronicle. He's covered the 2016 campaign trail. He's in my estimation one or two of the biggest Twitter accounts to follow if you're interested in, especially state of Texas politics. For me, it's really cool able to have you here because I've been following you for a long time. You recently moved to San Antonio so I took the opportunity to ask you to come on my show. Thank you.

Patrick: Thanks for having me. I'm excited about this.

Justin: You're recent to San Antonio as of Labor Day, I think you said.

Patrick: Around Labor Day weekend, me and my girlfriend moved down to San Antonio. She got a new job here. We decided to pack up and come down here and we bought a home in Beacon Hill, and we're loving it so far.

Justin: You're living like real San Antonian and so many people are like, "I live in San Antonio, I live in our north or here," but they are in San Antonio. It's just a different experience. All my shows I always get some information on people, the city of San Antonio feel for you. You're new here, so it'll be interesting to get some of your takes. This is your first time to live in San Antonio, right?

Patrick: That is correct. Previously only had traveled to San Antonio for work basically. I think I've made a number of trips, but only even spent the night just once is usually an afternoon day trip [unintelligible 00:02:00].

Justin: Sure. You've spent so much time in other Texas cities. What stand out to you after being here for the last few months as what sets San Antonio apart in your estimation?

Patrick: I think it's more laid back in a good way than other major Texas cities, especially compared to Austin. I think the two cities are hard to compare in some ways, but one comparison I will certainly make is that it's more laid back than Austin, and in a good way. A big city with a small city culture, I think in some ways. Again, I mean that in a positive way. Absolutely. I've loved the people so far. I've loved living in Beacon Hill.

My girlfriend and I wanted to live somewhere really central in this city as we were talking about that also had its own identity, it wasn't just blended into downtown or Midtown or the urban core. We're getting that with Beacon Hill, and we like it a lot.

Justin: I think it's one of the oldest neighborhoods in San Antonio. I'll speak out to turn, but I remember when I was doing some research, I wanted to move by building over there and move office over there. I was doing some research, and I was surprised at how historic that neighborhood is for the City of San, which is already a historic city. Have you found any hidden gems in San Antonio that you've just been shocked by or surprised by? The first time I went to the Japanese Tea Garden, have you been there?

Patrick: I don't know.

Justin: You'll go and there's a waterfall coming out of a limestone cliff and huge koi ponds and it's in the middle of the city. Anything like that, that you've been able to experience and just been surprised by?

Patrick: We we've been to, I think at this point, all the major neighborhoods. In terms of, we like South Town, King William, we've obviously as I pointed out Beacon Hill, I think has a lot to offer. We have made it outside of the Outer Loop a little bit. We took our new Chihuahua dog on a hike at Government Canyon State Park a couple weekends ago. We enjoyed that a lot. Was surprised by how close that nature was to the city. I don't know if I'd call that a hidden gem because I think everyone probably knows about the Government Canyon State Park but it was very [crosstalk].

Justin: I think there's some dinosaur tracks out there, maybe. I've never seen those.

Patrick: We didn't see them, but we read about them.

Justin: Because you had a dog, you can only go to a certain park.

Patrick: That's true, it's the front country trail.

Justin: I got lost there with my dog in what had to be like June one time. I had to carry him over my shoulders, he puked. It was hairy getting lost out there when the heat was really hitting, but it is, it feels very desolate out there. I was going to ask you about pets, you've already answered that. Any odd hobbies?

Patrick: Odd hobbies? No, I have a hobby, it's not odd. I like to run most evenings of the week, and this is also ties into what I like about San Antonio. We live relatively close to San Pedro Springs Park. One loop around the park is basically one mile. If you're like someone like me who likes to run round distances and challenge yourself based on a one-mile loop it's a good place to be. I like running down there.

Justin: The Springs are beautiful.

Patrick: We, unfortunately, didn't get to experience. By the time I started branching out after she moved in and looking around for places to go out to parks and stuff like that, it was getting a little cold and past the prime time for the spring. We're looking forward to that this [crosstalk].

Justin: I don't think anybody's been in the Springs in years, I think because of COVID it's been shut down. [crosstalk] Literally they used to have a fence around it. I thought there's a fence around it and there is nobody in it. It is beautiful, and the theater there is actually really-

Patrick: Oh yes It's gorgeous. I haven't been in, but I run by it all the time.

Justin: We need to support, San Antonio doesn't have the Zack. Austin has three professional theaters. That is our only professional theater and it struggles. San Antonio is a city that's growing, so do go see it. Have you been to Fiesta yet?

Patrick: No.

Justin: Are you going to stay in town for Fiesta?

Patrick: Yes. Oh, definitely, planning on it. Haven't experienced it yet.

Justin: Is your girlfriend from here?

Patrick: She's not. She had lived in Austin for a number about maybe three or four years. Then before that she went to school in Virginia, lived in Virginia, but she's originally from Colorado.

Justin: I'm jealous you're going to get to experience Fiesta for the first time. We're both looking forward to it. I think enough people don't realize how much fun it is. It's our Mardi Gras, and it is a huge party for multiple days. How many counties do you think you visited in Texas? I know a lot of political correspondence really get out and about.

Patrick: I would say, so we got 254 counties in Texas. I'm confident that I have at least driven through- it's a bold claim to make. I want to make sure that I don't get out in front of my [inaudible 00:06:41] here. I've definitely driven through over half the counties in Texas. I wouldn't be shocked if I tied them all up, and I've driven through at least up to two thirds of them.

Justin: I didn't know if you got stuck following Beto on his every county tour or something.

Patrick: In his 2018 campaign, I got to travel to some remote places, and we drove for Christmas from San Antonio to Fort Collins, Colorado up through Amarillo. That was I knocked out like probably 14 to 15 new counties in Texas for myself doing that.

Justin: Probably more.

Patrick: That added some new names.

Justin: Did you go up through Amarillo?

Patrick: Yes. San Antonio, basically nothing between San Antonio and Amarillo, I guess you go through Big Spring, maybe. I don't know.

Justin: Maybe Abilene, Big Spring [crosstalk]?

Patrick: Your west of Abilene. Otherwise, there's not much between San Antonio and Amarillo.

Justin: My dad was born up around Amarillo, but we don't go up there. I grew up in the Wichita Falls area, but I've seen quite a bit of [crosstalk].

Patrick: Definitely got some new counties to add to the list from that drive.

Justin: I was doing some research. I saw you have a lot of TV appearances and you're the guy who comes on, talks about what's going on in Texas. Any particular interviewers that you thought were just really good and impressed by?

Patrick: I always like doing podcast interviews, or like the longer form interviews, whether it's like sometimes the local TV anchors. They'll have you on for like a five minute hit and then they got their personal podcast and like, come over here and talk for half an hour. Those are always more fun sometimes stuff. Exactly like we're doing right now. I always enjoy that a little more.

Justin: Most of the ones I saw you were like two minutes and 40 seconds.

Patrick: Exactly. It's like you come on MSNBC or CNN for a little bit, and you just got two questions about, tell us how big of a deal this is in Texas right now. How's it playing out on the ground? I like the longer form stuff I'd say.

Justin: Do you like doing the TV stuff, or the written more?

Patrick: I like appearing for the Trib on TV gives a good opportunity to talk about, I think it's good to show that the Tribune has reporters who are working hard on these stories and that have national impact the national reach. I enjoy that. I think it's a great opportunity for the Trib's profile. I'm also doing more video work for the Trib. We have this new campaign video series that we just started recently. We did a soft launch first episode that was about the governor's race. We're working on a second episode about the Republican primary for AG. I've been trying to do a little more video work for the Trib because it does continue to intrigue me.

Justin: I'm sure I butchered it, but for our audience, how would you describe the Texas Tribune because it is non-traditional media.

Patrick: Absolutely. We're a nonprofit newsroom. I'd say our focus is statewide government and politics. If you want to know what's happening at the legislature, if you want to know what's happening in campaigns. If you want to know how our politicians and our policies are impacting the entire state and in some cases the entire country, we want to be the go-to source for that. Not just to explain those things and explain implications of those things, but to hold folks accountable, and really dig into what's behind some of the decisions that our leaders are making.

Justin: Evan Smith was the editor, but he recently retired.

Patrick: He recently announced that he'll be stepping down by the end of this calendar year so he's still with us.

Justin: Yes, but he had come from Texas Monthly, he has a big pedigree.

Patrick: Exactly, yes and he's [unintelligible 00:10:09] and he goes out saying Evan is a singular figure, not just in Texas media, but in the national media landscape, and is so central to the success of the Tribune.

Justin: Did you see the Washington Post about him today?

Patrick: I did yes, absolutely. [crosstalk] What the Trib has done over the years, in terms of trying to create a better environment for local news as a statewide organization, I think has been really important. Whether it's just like the fact that we let local newspapers republish our content, as long as they give us credit, they put the byline on it, but we republish it, in its full form. I think that's a really important thing the Trib has done over the years. Also and I know COVID has tamped this down, but our events business has increasingly held events outside of not just Austin, but outside of the big four cities or whatever the big Metro area is.

I think that's obviously, really good for informing the public but also just good for our brand to be in places like the Rio Grande valley and Lubbock. Providing a forum for local legislators or local elected officials to face some questions, and not just from the moderators, but oftentimes from the public who come or something like that. Stuff like that makes me really proud to be [crosstalk].

Justin: Are those events just like Tribfest, we all have [unintelligible 00:11:28].

Patrick: Yes. If you think about the kind of events that you see at Tribfest, whether it's a panel of like three lawmakers, two Democrats, one Republican, two Republicans, one Democrat. Yes, we have events like that in other parts of the state. I'm not involved in our events business, but that's something that I always just, as a reporter working for the Tribune, and I was always have liked to see that. Because I knew when I was hired by the Trib several years ago, it had a robust events section.

One of the things I saw just being a reporter for the Trib over the years was how that events section branched out of just holding the typical interview with an Austin-based politician in downtown Austin in the Tribauditorium or the local, another venue. I think that's important getting that [crosstalk].

Justin: What always surprised me about Tribfest was how successful it was in getting everybody to come. All the politicians wanted to be there so Texas Tribune, in a time when every media is somehow maligned as political or whatever. Dexter Tribune's been able to stay above it and when they have events, people want to be part of it regardless of the party they're in, which speaks a lot to the [crosstalk].

Patrick: Yes, we obviously, live in a very polarized political environment. We're not going to get every elected official to show up at our events. I think that the ones who do never, by and large, never walk away feeling like they weren't given a fair shot. Even the most Republican lawmakers or elected statewide officials who you think would be the most hostile toward the media. Those ones who choose to show up and participate, I've never heard them walk away and feel like they didn't have a fair opportunity or a fair interview.

Justin: Well, it seems like there's a way to phrase questions that's fair when you can ask it the same way with a different inflection, and all of a sudden feels like an attack. I've seen a bunch of Evan Smith interviews, and he just has that really good way of asking questions, even when it is, "Hey, here's something that maybe makes you feel defensive, but I'm going to ask it in my way, and you're going to feel comfortable answering it."

Patrick: Yes, absolutely. I think he has a great interviewing style. He knows how to really push people, and maybe in some cases being- he would say sometimes I'm a dick in an interview, but it's effective and people don't walk away from it. The interview subjects often don't get offended. They understand what's behind the questioning and the persistence and the questioning.

Justin: You are a political correspondent. What is that?

Patrick: Yes, so it is covering all things politics in Texas. Correspondent obviously, is I think in journalism, maybe a little dated bit of a term. You think of someone on the scene in all these different cities. Although I do like to embrace that a little bit, pre-COVID, I definitely, took a lot of interest in traveling the state, traveling the country, even for the presidential campaigns, and really getting outside of Austin and covering the stories where they are at. As COVID has gone on and become the new normal. I've gotten back out on the road and I've really enjoyed it. Well, maybe a bit of a dated term correspondent, I do embrace the part of it that makes people think about someone out and all these different things.

Justin: You mentioned this before we got going, but sometimes you meet with sources and things like that. Part of it is you just being present, able to report on things that other people aren't present for. Part of it actually has to do with like creating and having your own sources of information that it gives you insight and information that other people don't have access to. How do you go about cultivating sources in, like you said, a highly charged political environment?

Patrick: Yes. I think you just get to know people through multiple election cycles and multiple campaigns. You try to keep an awareness of oh like that person worked on that race last cycle. Now I can see they're working for this person this time around. Either I'll proactively reach out to them and say, "Hey, it's, Patrick Svitek. You maybe remember me from this race last cycle," or something like that. I think it's just a matter of having a good knowledge of what people are doing in their professional lives in the political and campaign realm. Staying in touch with them and always making clear to them that I'm always interested in sitting down having a beer, having a coffee, and talking off the record.

Make it clear to people that like, I want to have a relationship that's not just based on you giving me some public on the record statement, or something like that. I'm sure if there's any political journalist listening to this, this is not a crazy innovation for me to be saying this. I think that's how political reporters tend to operate and tend to be successful in building relationships.

Justin: I'm sure, how you present the information given and how you keep your word ends that relationship or builds it over the long term,...

Frank Ramirez, Candidate for HD 118

Justin Hill — Tue, 21 Dec 2021 05:30:00 -0600

Frank is fresh off a nail-biter loss in a special election for House District 118. He is running again and joins us to talk about the lessons learned and plans if he wins. He is born and bred in 118 and has a wealth of knowledge about our great city.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Frank Ramirez. Frank was recently running for election in HD 118, a special election to replace the retired or resigned Leo Pacheco.

In the special, it was a super close election. He did not win. There's a chance. I think he probably already has an answer to it that he will be running in the future, but we're here really to talk to him about his time in San Antonio. His love for the city has worked in politics here. Get to know him a little bit better. Frank, thanks for being here.

Frank Ramirez: Hey, thank you, Justin. Coming off of the trail has been a very sobering time. It's been about a month now since the election and I've taken time to myself to recollect myself rest and really get a better understanding of the race that we ran and how effective it was because for all intents and purposes, it was. Even though we fell short, we did a lot of really great work that brought a lot of people out that normally would not have come out. We're excited about you having me here today. Thank you so much.

Justin: Rest and relaxation [laughs] is that you like the Japanese tea garden doing yoga, looking at the koi pond, or is that beers and tacos on the strip?

Frank: Hey, that's me getting a mile in the morning now, but also being able to balance that with those beer and tacos.

Justin: [laughs] All right. That's fair. I told Frank before we started that maybe the least amount of research today for a guest, but I'd done plenty of research when you're running for office and got to know you a little bit. We're just going to talk a little bit about San Antonio, talk a little bit about your time in politics, your hopes for the city, what you think the future San Antonio looks like because I think that's a real important discussion that's being had right now.

We are on the edge of this Austin explosion and that's going to spill over so we're going to talk about that, but I always start with a top 10. It's probably might be 10, might be 20, might be 4. What are your favorite hidden gems in the city? You're a San Antonion and so you might have some places that I've never been to or never heard of so dig deep favorite hidden gems.

Frank: I am a lifelong south sider. The majority of my experience in this city has been in the south side. I'm a product of the Harlandale Independent School District. That's Gillette, Kingsborough, McCollum high school go Cowboys, and go Cowboys in Dallas as well. We were a very tight-knit community, but at the same time we support businesses in the south side and we like to tout them. We like to tell people, "Hey, when you come to the south side, you got to go to these spots because they're the best."

Justin: Sure.

Frank: I'll give you my top five restaurants in places in the south side. If you're looking for some great Mexican food, you got-- Don't bet those Mexican restaurant. I have been in the neighborhood for over 50 years. Then you got the other one, which is one of my personal favorite south of 90 is Blue Moon Cafe off of Flores Street. That's on Mitchell and Flores, and they have the best chilaquiles tacos in the entire city, hands down.

The other one taco-wise is going to be got to be Carnitas Lonja which has been featured on Forbes magazine and is a nationally acclaimed restaurant. Actually the chef, [unintelligible 00:03:41] he was actually nominated for the James Beard award. He was, I think, one of the top two finalists in the state of Texas for that award and it just goes to show how amazing their food is

In terms of, and I'm going to stick to food because I eat a lot, that's culinary-- Whenever you're in San Antonio, what do you do? You got to go to the river walk, you go to the Alamo, and then you go to eat because we've got TexMex. Chef Chris, out at RockerDogz off of Roosevelt Avenue.

Justin: Never heard of it.

Frank: Never heard of it. I guarantee you this is the best hotdog you've had in your life. They have this one where it's a carne guisada chili with queso and salsa verde hotdog. That is solid brother.

Then of course I'm going to stay away from food. This last one is the entirety of the mission trail. I'm a biker, I like to bike. One of the largest infrastructural improvements for multimodal transportation, you're talking about not just being restricted to a single person in a single-vehicle. You're talking about ways to get downtown from the south side that are unconventional to some. I'm talking about the entire mission reach from outside of 410 south, even into the county past Mitchell Lake, you can get downtown to this trail and about 45-minute bike ride you're downtown and you're in the center of the entire city.

Those are some of the coolest spots and in the south side in terms of luxury, leisure, and transportation, but also for activity. If you want to get back from your bike ride, you ride back down, and then you go to Don Pedro's or to any of those other restaurants.

Justin: I've only been to two of those you just listed, the restaurants. I've been to Don Pedro's and I've been to Carnitas Lonjas which I hear got built out a little bit. It used to just be a counter.

Frank: It used to be the counter to go. They have a patio now and now they have fish lonja. It's like a fish counterpart and they do cocktails, shrimp cocktails. They do fish tacos, quesadillas, mariscos, and everything. It's awesome. It's awesome.

Justin: I'll have to go check that out. I wonder if the James Beard people knew what the restaurant looked like in the inside when they nominated, but it was just fantastic food and I think that's an-- They did one thing really, really well and that's it. That's all you got to do. Are you a Bcycler?

Frank: No.

Justin: Have you ever rented one?

Frank: No.

Justin: My last guest, number one in the city, multiple years in a row in miles on a Bcycle. Apparently, they track it.

Frank: Wow.

Justin: Now I'm going to start asking everybody because he's the legend. Favorite Fiesta event?

Frank: Favorite Fiesta event, NIOSA definitely. That's just hands down. You get a couple of friends and you just got to--

Justin: I don't think you're going to say that in 10 years. It already hurts to say it this year. I tell you that. What night of NIOSA though?

Frank: I can't even confidently say this anymore, but college night was always the most fun. I'll even say this, not even at night anymore, just going during the daytime and leaving before it gets--

Justin: Tuesday at 5. I'll be there if I'm going.

Frank: I'll be there at five o'clock hands down every single year now. I enjoy that atmosphere a little bit better. The other is Mission Fest. That's mission San Jose.

Justin: Never been.

Frank: Awesome. That's an awesome spot. Mission San Jose was actually my home church for a long time and it's a lot more centering because it's in the historic missions. They actually have mass inside of the church that people had mass in three, four, hundred years ago.

Justin: I'm probably sound very non San Antonion by saying this, but is San Jose the big one with a wall around it?

Frank: That's right.

Justin: That has the big facade. You see, every time I go there, somebody's getting married there. Looks beautiful. That's right.

Frank: They're all iconic in their own rights. Some of them were more built out than others, but [crosstalk]

Justin: Some are grand and some aren't. Some are.

Frank: As is a lot of things, you have your centerpiece and then you have the peripherals around it, but--

Justin: The Alamo is not grand compared to San Jose.

Frank: No. The story's grand, but Mission San Jose is much more beautiful. You have a lot more vision around.

Justin: Have you read the Alamo book, the Stanford one that's getting all the controversy.

Frank: I haven't. The one that--

Justin: Real Alamo--

Frank: Okay. No, but I understand. It's an interesting topic to delve into. The history of the Alamo who is the villains who were the heroes, how was history written in that regard.

Justin: Yes. I think there's a discussion of how slaves played a role at the Alamo that's never discussed. I tried to do a new Fiesta event every year, Mission fest will be a new one. Are there any Fiesta events you have not done that you want to do?

Frank: I forget what it's called, but it's a taste of--

Justin: Well, there's Taste in New Orleans.

Frank: Taste in New Orleans is the one that I was trying to get to.

Justin: You said Taste of Northside or, is that really a fiesta though? It's so far?

Frank: If there's anything culinary-related, I'm sticking to the south side in our cuisine because I went downtown too. Downtown, you start your learning.

Justin: Well, [laughs] I don't really go to the south side much for food. You live in your bubbles it sounds like. I finally went to Brooks city, Base Leo was a guest and he gave me and Ryan Pape who is looking to build a facility down there a private tour. I was blown away, but driving down there, I remember thinking, this is far. It's a Trek to get down there. If you're not down there or need to go down there, you don't just venture.

Frank: It's like, if I have Brooks in the south side, am I really going to take the drive to La Cantera, if we have all the same things, but we don't. We will, for now.

Justin: I think so too. I think that's where that's all going.

Frank: You just look at in the scope of real estate, what's built out, what is not. You look at shirts of low universal city, often 35, it's already all built out. There's very little room for there to be any type of lateral growth or horizontal growth. It all has to be vertical at this point. In the south side, you go outside of 410 South, little land. It's just nothing but land. That's where a lot of these developmental trends are going to start going towards east or west of 90, east 90, outside of 1604. It's all trending back down south because that's where the available real estate is at.

Justin: One thing I found interesting was, I don't know if I was reading about it or I was at one of the county commissioners' meetings, there was a big discussion about how some of those developments were just so poorly planned. They were just throwing up these developments that had 400 homes and one point of ingress and egress and it was causing traffic and the roads are too small. If you never hear that conversation, you never really understand the responsibility for developers to responsibly develop, and do it right, and make sure you take all those things into consideration. The south side is a good example, I think of some people that have done it poorly.

Frank: That's why it's important that I got into this arena, specifically because of that. Because we do see how bad development affects not only the people that are going to be moving there but the people that live there. There's a development that occurred a few years ago, a school that was built basically on the buffer between a commercial road or an industrial road and a single-family residential neighborhood that had been there historically. Now you have a feeder road, and you have people picking up their kids on this feeder road, which is only two lanes on one going each way at two, three o'clock in the afternoon every day.

Justin: That's poor planning.

Frank: Right. You have from point A and literally a mile and a half road to point B, that's how long the line is to pick up your kid. You take into consideration design standards and things that people don't necessarily have to do because our state laws don't necessarily require that. Traffic impact analysis. How many peak hour travels are going through this

development?

Justin: That's where our local leader should.

Frank: The issue is that if it's already zoned, or if it's already prepared for that type of development, there's not a lot of hands that the city has in that rezoning or that development because outside of permitting, you can't do anything about something that's already given to you by right. That was a strong part of my campaign is, how can we responsibly grow the next trend of developments in the city of San Antonio? I worked in development for the past four years of my professional career.

Doing that, we understand the ins and outs of, okay, if we're going to have a single-family development in an enclave neighborhood, we have to make it to where it is seamless with the existing infrastructure. On top of that, how are we being mindful of the infrastructure that's already around us in terms of other single-family residential? We don't want it to be so encumbering that if you're trying to get home, it now takes an additional 20 minutes because of this new--

Maybe not even 400 or 400 homes, but even 70 homes can make that impact because you consider that, all right, I have a nuclear family with a wife and two kids, and my kids are 20 years old each, they're both in college, they both drive a single car. Instead of just having two cars per house, you're talking about four cars per house now. Instead of 70 homes, you're looking at 280 cars, vehicles getting to that one neighborhood, and that's what creates [crosstalk]

Justin: It doesn't take long for that to stunt the growth or development or new people purchasing into a neighborhood. Because when I was looking around, I remember I looked at a neighborhood and my realtor said, "You would not want to come here between 2:30 and 4:00 because it backs up all the way to 410 because of a school that was there." I just remember thinking, "Okay, I'm not interested in that." I moved on.

Frank: Take into consideration Culebra outside of 1604. Historically, it didn't have anybody living there. Traffic was never an issue. All right. You have one lane going this way, one lane going that way. That's never an issue because nobody's going that way. You're always coming back in. You put a 200-unit development out there, single-family residential, all of a sudden, your traffic impact is exponentially increased and people were trying to get home, now it takes you an hour and a half. Because nobody ever had to go home that way. Now they are.

Being mindful of that not just with single-family residential, not just with development like that, but the expansion of Brooks City Base, the expansion of those amenities in Texas A&M, San Antonio, Palo Alto. We're hoping to start breaking ground and really building up the new university health system in the south side, outside of 410 South near Zarzamora. What are we doing to preempt these things? What are the identified issues right now that if we were to put this development in today, would we be able to sustain it?

Justin: I think you and I were talking about that Westover Hills development had a full hospital system before like the south side. There was literally nobody living out there, and they built this giant complex and still, we didn't have a big one in the south side, which I think now they are building that one right there off the 35. I think they've announced another big one that they're going to build down that way. You're born and raised in San Antonio, you're a roadrunner.

Frank: Longhorn.

Justin: You are a Longhorn. Okay. I had UT in my head. Is that the only time you've lived away was your time in Austin?

Frank: Correct.

Justin: Four years or did it take a little longer?

Frank: I was there for up until from 2012 to 2016 but I stayed there as well for the 85th legislative session when I was a legislative director and chief of staff. I lived in Austin until 2017.

Justin: For Tomas?

Frank: That's right.

Justin: All right. Uresti,

Frank: Uresti, correct.

Justin: Any odd hobbies? You said you've picked up boxing. Anything else?

Frank: I enjoy boxing. I enjoy weightlifting, biking. I've been playing guitar for about 15 years now. I enjoy playing guitar, cclassical, acoustic, electric. Just throw it at me.

Justin: Flamenco.

Frank: Flamenco is a little harder.

Justin: You said throw it at you. I'm throwing it all out there.

Frank: My grandpa, he actually is a very good flamenco guitar player but they used to call him the Mexican Elvis when he was in the army.

Justin: Cool.

Frank: He did a lot of work like that. Other weird hobbies, outside of a 27-year-old guy in the south side running for office, that time is restricted whenever you're doing that. I have my luxuries. I like hanging out with my friends, my family. I have two nephews who I love to death, and whenever I have an opportunity to see them, it's always fun. I like watching football. I like going to football games. UTSA, they made us all proud as a city this past year.

Justin: [unintelligible 00:16:33] [crosstalk]

Frank: That's right. It's interesting to see that that happening. Lifelong Spurs fan. I go to every single game as often as I can. I'm a cute Cowboys fan.

Justin: The guy you just met, Damon, he played football at Trinity. He is not all-American. I used to say it was all American. He's like, I was not an all-American. Now I'm described as not all-American running back there. He was all-conference...

Rick Hill, VP at The Valero Alamo Bowl and SA Famous

Justin Hill — Mon, 22 Nov 2021 05:30:00 -0600

Rick Hill moved to San Antonio for college and has been here since. He has worked for a variety of local sports teams and events. He currently work as the VP of communications and marketing at the Valero Alamo Bowl. Additionally, he has a few cool hobbies and likes that we discuss. Rick is a big fan and advocate of our great city.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

Rick Hill: Who is the worst guest you've ever had?

Justin: [chuckles] We'll talk about that in a second. I like how Rick just spoke over the intro, so in the intro, we'll have Rick in the background. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Rick Hill, no relation to me, unfortunately. He is the VP of Marketing and Communication with the Valero Alamo Bowl, and I realize you have to say Valera with the Alamo Bowl now. Rick has also spent time with the Spurs, the Missions and something called the SA Riders, which I am told is a football game. I thought it was maybe something that happens on the strip late at night, but no, a football team here in San Antonio.

He has no championship rings, he likes to tell people on his internet profile. Since the Alamo Bowl is right around the corner and I'd bugged Rick for like a year, I figured it'd be a good time to bug him, and here he is. Rick, thanks for being here.

Rick: My pleasure, Justin. Thank you.

Justin: While we were starting, Rick said who's the worst guest I've had on here. Well, the worst guests are the ones that just no matter what you ask, they're going to answer whatever they want.

Rick: Good. I have nothing prepared, so I will be the opposite. I just like to set a low benchmark so people are happy.

Justin: Some people have and I feel like if I was calling out guests as the worst, I'd have a hard time finding other guests, so I better not do that. Let me just say, the least listened to episodes are some of my better friends, so I just better not tell them. You will have 10s of listeners at a minimum, I guarantee that. You could have many more than that.

Rick: I'm used to people not listening to me. This is perfect.

Justin: Well, it's funny. I had one guy on here who became an all-star of the fintech Twitter, the Fintwit I think they call them and his episode just went bonkers because of that. All that world wanted to hear whatever he had to say because he had the highest performing stock over the last 17 years, and even The Wall Street Journal was like, "It wasn't Tesla. It was this group out of San Antonio had the biggest stock in the last 20 years." It was interesting. All right, so let's start with a top 10. I'm going to ask you, it'll be 10-ish. Favorite Fiesta event?

Rick: Coronation.

Justin: We were just talking about that before and you seemed super excited about it, so I'm glad you brought that up. Something I'm probably going to talk more about, but you have some sort of weird BCycle thing. What's the number of miles you've put on a BCycle in a year, the most?

Rick: The most? Probably 3,000 in a year. They have the E-bike now, but it's more pedal-assisted. I think the E-bike takes too much credit. I love jumping on Saturday, jumping out the Witte, driving through downtown, Southtown, and then heading south to Mission Reach.

Justin: When you did it, it was not pedal-assist?

Rick: Some of it is, and I think they're switching to all pedal-assist in the next couple of months, which should be great. I've been to Madison's [unintelligible 00:03:26] the best setup. It's all pedal-assist. I got a huge leg, but it's really been fun to see how many people are on the trails especially COVID-wise.

Justin: I'm having pedal-assist, and I love it, and people act like, "Oh, that's not a workout." It's a workout, but when the hill is there, it helps a lot.

Rick: Yes. The Mission Reach I felt really bad for the people with the BCycles because those old bikes are clunky. They are heavy, and you'd see a family going up and down those hills far south. Pedal-assist is the way to go, and I think that that program is going to take off now that they all go that way.

Justin: They have a hard time finding a sponsor though I have read. Are you still a BCycle enthusiast?

Rick: I am. I went yesterday, Sunday.

Justin: This one, a daily thing that got you to 3000 miles?

Rick: No. It's I'll go 20 miles on a Sunday and you start adding them up. COVID, obviously, you're working from home here and there you can take a long lunch to clear your head, but now, you get some podcasts. This is a great podcast to listen on your long BCycle trials. Then I always stop by the library, pick up a book, so those are my routines.

Justin: You had the most miles of anybody in San Antonio on you, right?

Rick: Yes. I've always been top five, so if they've actually post them. If you're semi-competitive, you see your name at number three or four, you're like, "I'm getting to two." Then you see yourself at two, you're getting to one. I think basically, point-to-point was how it was supposed to be with super short rides, but now, they've really done a good job and you can check them out if you're a annual member for two hours at a time, so you don't have to do that constant in and out every 30 minutes.

Justin: I'm surprised there's a limit.

Rick: Well, I think they always wanted people not to take it for the whole day, but now it's great. I think it's a great way to show off our city and like I said, especially for me that Mission Reach area is great.

Justin: Do you get anything for being number one?

Rick: No. If you could go to all the stations in a weekend, they gave you a t-shirt. I got a green t-shirt. I think it's called Tour de BCycle. I went to 55 stations in three days. They actually tell you your calories and how many dollars you've saved. I've saved a million dollars on something.

Justin: [chuckles] New York has the tour of the boroughs, and we have tour of the BCycle stations. It's similar.

Rick: Yes. It's great stuff. It's actually for Fiesta. I've done it over there because obviously, Fiesta gets a little crowded, so if you get on the outskirts of downtown, you take the BCycle into a station, and you just walk on in.

Justin: When did you move to San Antonio?

Rick: To come to Trinity in '87. It's been a long time.

Justin: Been here ever since?

Rick: Yes. I'm never too tired to drive home.

Justin: You're Southtowner, right?

Rick: We live by Incarnate Word so Midtown-ish.

Justin: Okay. I met you in Southtown. I just assumed that world was all yours.

Rick: I don't ever leave 410. I am not quite Southtowner, but I'm very like I said biking and all the activities. We love that, all the entertainment options. One of the great things about COVID relaxing is all the different venues you can go to from Sam's Burger Joint, went to the Carver last week. I went back to Majestic and Tobin.

Justin: What's the Carver?

Rick: The Carver is, there's a Jo Long Theater. It's just east of Alamodome. They have a 500-person theater over there.

Justin: Is something going on there?

Rick: Rebels. I bought their tickets three years ago, and they canceled and now they came back. It's a jazz New Orleans R&B. When they come back in three years you should go.

Justin: Well, I bought some tickets, but then in the meantime, we had a kid so it's limited my ability to go out drinking and concert-going.

Rick: Yes. Kids going off to college, the emptiness thing is a little real, but it's also pretty-

Justin: Liberating?

Rick: -liberating is a good word.

Justin: Mine is a long way from that. Hidden gems in San Antonio, the theater. What did you just call it?

Rick: Jo Long Theater. I think all the venues. Sam's Burger Joint, we love going there. It's outside, inside. I think people need to get that Library app, read some books. It's not bad to read some books.

Justin: The Libby app?

Rick: The Libby. Actually, a public library has one. The Libby, you can read on. The public library, the way you can reserve books is so easy now. You just reserve it, and they send you a text, "It's ready." Then now you just pull right in. They throw the book in your bag, and you go.

Justin: You actually go pick them up.

Rick: Yes. I'm still old school.

Justin: We use the Libby app.

Rick: It also allows for audiobooks.

Justin: Through the San Antonio library.

Rick: Yes, so I think that's a great system.

Justin: Any branch that you think is unique and awesome?

Rick: You know what, there are some nice ones. Landa is super nice, but on my BCycle route, I always go to Central downtown.

Justin: I've become pretty familiar with the Landa Gardens Conservancy over the last two years. It's quite interesting. It's a very well-run organization, and they have a very nice setup there.

Rick: They have good trees. I remember taking my three-year-old for pictures there, who's now 20, so that was a couple of years ago.

Justin: They redid the playground.

Rick: It's a great setup.

Justin: Have you ever been in the Bushnell across the street?

Rick: I think when I was at the Spurs, one of my co-workers was in there, but not [crosstalk]

Justin: I've never spoke to anyone that's definitively been in there, so I'm not sure there's people in there.

Rick: It might be just like a movie set or something. [crosstalk] Now he actually lived there, the Spurs trainer.

Justin: Did you ever go see it though?

Rick: I think I dropped him off. I did not go in, so maybe he just walked around the block.

Justin: See. [laughs] I have friends that live on Bushnell, and I've never been in there. Do you have any odd hobbies other than the fact that you're a BCycle enthusiast and go to the museums and concerts?

Rick: I do. I had a pretty good streak of if there's movie extras, trying to be in movie extra for a day. I'm in Matthew McConaughey's least successful movie, The Newton Boys.

Justin: That's his least successful?

Rick: Well--

Justin: I feel like there's some terrible rom-coms in that somewhere.

Rick: Probably dollar-wise. The good news on that was I was in a scene with them, so I can say I have the picture of the scene. Then I did try to get behind Julianna Margulies in the catering line, and they told me extras, and they pushed me away. I had to go to a different line. I just saw her on, it was The Morning Show. If you're in a movie, you might as well have been in one with 50 actors that are popular. You can always say I was in a movie with him, or if Linkletter wins an Oscar, "Oh yes, he was in one of my films. He directed one of my films"

Justin: You got any other movies I would know?

Rick: They shot one in the Dome called Everybody's All-American or All-American. It was about a Texas player, and I thought I knew where to stand to be in the key shot, but they shot it from across the field.

Justin: Have you ever heard of Texasville, the movie? It was supposed to be the sequel to The Last Picture Show.

Rick: I haven't heard of it.

Justin: It was filmed in my hometown, and everybody I know is an extra, but I was four.

Rick: Selena was at the Dome. My only one that I can actually watch it and see myself.

Justin: The Cloak & Dagger was probably before you were here, right?

Rick: I was probably just here. Henry Thomas, we just see him and he still comes up in about.

Justin: What about Pee Wee's Big Adventure?

Rick: I was not in that.

Justin: Well, nothing good then. Favorite new post-pandemic bar restaurants.

Rick: We like Hello Paradise, going outside, sitting there. We're probably going to go there Friday and then walk down to Sam's Burger Joint and see a show.

Rick: Nice.

Justin: We rotate around a lot, but yes, this time of year you got to eat outside if you can.

Rick: Have you been to Three Star Bar yet?

Rick: No. Across the street?

Justin: Yes. I'm going to try that.

Rick: We'll have to do that too.

Justin: We did elsewhere. We all went to elsewhere for lunch the other day. It's good.

Rick: Yes. I think they get people through nicely. That's a stop on the BCycle, they got to BCycle station.

Justin: There's also one by the parking garage in Bracken Ridge, it's very dark and by the museum.

Rick: Yes, that's my go-to.

Justin: There's never any bikes at it. I saw two today.

Rick: You got to go early.

Justin: I have my own BCycle.

Rick: Well, the good news is, I get a flat tire. I just call them and I put it away or I flipped over and bend something. I just bend it back and I get another one.

Justin: What if you're in the middle of nowhere and you get a flat, will they come get you?

Rick: No, they're close enough. I've walked a couple of times.

Justin: Do they have a limit on the range other than two hours?

Rick: Then they'll just charge you three bucks. You can go longer.

Justin: The scooter is like, "We'll just die." The bikes don't do that.

Rick: They have a time limit too, right?

Justin: I don't know. My big ass don't get on scooters.

Rick: I'm a little scared of scooters. The tires are getting bigger because when they first came out, it was a Final Four going on and I got one. I was the big hit, but you hit a little pebble and you get thrown--

Justin: Lots of broken arms. I'm an injury lawyer. Got a lot of calls on those.

Rick: Good for orthopedics and injury lawyers.

Justin: I had a friend who was maintenance at the Botanical for 4th of July and he shows up 30 minutes late and he's just drenched in sweat. That's when we learned there was a geographic limitation to these. Rick, you were with the Alamo Bowl. People hear about it a lot. People know it's a football game. I want to ask you some questions about the Alamo Bowl, but I want to start asking you a little bit of Alamo Bowl trivia.

Rick: Okay.

Justin: Who were the four named at sponsors of the Alamo Bowl? Currently, it's Valero. Just gave you one.

Rick: Valero. That's a good one. I would say MasterCard's another one.

Justin: Yes.

Rick: I would say Sylvania is another one. I would say Builders Square. I actually started between Builders Square and Sylvania. The second day I was there, they were getting ready to have a press conference and it got leaked. It was Sylvania, was a new one, and I was being screamed at, because I leaked it and I go, "I just got here. I don't know anything about anything."

Justin: Light bulbs.

Rick: Yes. Light bulbs. They were out of New York. The interesting thing is, I think between Sylvania and MasterCard, they would bring 10 or 20 people to the game. Now you have Valero, who basically makes it such a big annual event and really propels us, and back then it was like, "Hey, it's great to get out of town money to help support local events." There just wasn't the buy-in. To have someone all in like Valero, that's why I'll always say Valero Alamo Bowl. If my car does run out of gas, I'm going to push it six blocks to the Valero.

Justin: Big supporter. What this meant to me when I read it, was that the cost of sponsorships must've slowly gone up significantly, because I've never heard of Builders Square.

Rick: Well, they were basically Home Depot, and they lost out.

Justin: Were they that big?

Rick: They were pretty big. They're based here. The beautiful thing about a company like that is you can defray some of the costs by having, hey, a paint company and a ladder company. That you can get a lot of co-op program in dollars. It was great that they were San Antonio-based. Unfortunately, they ran out of gas.

Justin: Now Valero is set through 2025, I think I read.

Rick: Correct. They are started in '07. The other trivia is there was actually one year without a title sponsor. If you think the year without a Santa Claus is a sad story, the year without a title is not a good one.

Justin: What year was that?

Rick: '06. Thankfully, and this is why one of my favorite players of all time is Colt McCoy. We'd never had Texas in our game. In '06, he was a freshman, and he was the quarterback. We didn't have a title, which pays a lot of the freight. Luckily, when you have a Colt McCoy and a Texas...

Mario Bravo, San Antonio's District 1 Councilperson

Justin Hill — Thu, 23 Sep 2021 05:30:00 -0600

Mario Bravo unseated an entrenched incumbent City Councilperson to become the new District 1 representative. He has a history that includes working fishing boats out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Now, he is dedicated to improving San Antonio for all.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right, welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Councilman Mario Bravo. Mario is District 1 Council Person for the city of San Antonio, recently elected. District 1 is basically everything you see on a map in the middle of San Antonio, from Southtown all the way up to about 410, a little bit on other sides, but between 281 and I-10. He ran on the issues of public safety, healthy community, and economic redevelopment. He unseated an entrenched incumbent, who, if he had won, would maybe have been the longest-serving council person in San Antonio history, is that right?

Mario Bravo: I'm not sure, but yes.

Justin: Something along those lines. It would have been a very long run.

Mario: I think that's probably right because we had just recently gone from four years to eight years for term limits.

Justin: Oh, okay. Yes, yes.

Mario: He would have been at about eight and a half years.

Justin: There are two four-year terms now for y'all, right?

Mario: Four two-year terms now.

Justin: Oh, yes, because four two-year terms would make a whole lot more sense. I remember thinking how strange it was the way we did it. Mario has been involved in activism in San Antonio for a long time. We'll talk to him about that. We asked him to come on to talk to us about his most recent election, challenges for the city, and now is a very challenging time, so this is very [unintelligible 00:01:42], I think, and a little bit about who he is. I got to know Mario, when he decided to run for this District 1 seat, I reached out to him and said, "I think it's time for a change. I'd like to get to know you."

Mario is very passionate about our city and his district. Before this, we were talking that when you're passionate about something, it doesn't feel like work and he's really enjoying it. Mario, I sort of start all these with a little bit of getting to know some strange questions. What are your favorite places to eat and drink right now in town? Let's do District 1, District 1 where's your favorite place to have a bite and have a drink right now?

Mario: Oh, there's quite a few, but Liberty Bar's one for sure. I'm a big fan of Curry Boys on North St. Mary's Strip. I like to get the much [unintelligible 00:02:31] tacos from Garcia's.

Justin: I just heard Curry Boys BBQ, right?

Mario: Right. It's barbecue, but it's like barbecue chicken and brisket, but with Curry, and it's amazing.

Justin: No, it was fantastic. It was all very spicy though. Just heed the warning. I haven't been to Liberty Bar in a little while, but I used to be known to go there on occasion. Favorite hidden gems in District 1 of San Antonio, maybe places people didn't know or haven't been within your District.

Mario: Hidden gems.

Justin: You have a lot of stuff in your district, so this should be an easy one.

Mario: Well, I'm just trying to think of what's hidden? I guess not everybody knows about Sanchos and how great their michelada and their Bloody Marys are.

Justin: I was going to go with the Japanese Tea Garden, but we'll stick to the drinking thing. I'm okay with that. Sanchos is good and it's very fairly priced, which I also appreciate, and District 1 has some places that are not fairly priced. What was the surprise hardest part of running a campaign? This wasn't your first, so you have some experience.

Mario: It wasn't my first. It was a little bit surprising to see a lot of, quote-unquote, "people from the left," progressives that piled on against me in the runoff. That was a little bit surprising.

Justin: Why do you think that is?

Mario: Because I think I have strong progressive credentials and a record of working in the community, and so that was surprising to me.

Justin: You think they were just so aligned with Trevino at that point, they didn't care?

Mario: I think that they bought into Trevino's rhetoric over his vote record. That's my best guess, I don't honestly know.

Justin: He spent a long time and I'm sure he had some successes. I had a personal story and politics are local. You need your city councilman one time and if they don't help you out, you think they're not very responsive. That was my experience, so I can't talk to his voting record. I could just talk to my one anecdotal moment. Do you have any odd hobbies?

Mario: I wouldn't say odd hobbies. I like to sail.

Justin: I think that's an odd hobby for San Antonio.

Mario: Yes, a little bit.

Justin: Not a lot of people sail around here.

Mario: When I was growing up here in San Antonio, my neighbor's dad, one of my little brother's best friends, his dad built a 60-foot sailboat in his backyard and it was legendary. I thought about that a lot. Then I taught at a leadership program for middle school kids in DC ones, and every week we'd get a new group of kids, and then we would take them to go see the documentary about Sir Ernest Shackleton and his whole adventure in sailing. It was just a dream. When I finished grad school, I had no money, no job. A friend of mine presented an opportunity to get a sailboat. I was like, "I can't pay you because I have no money and no job." Then I got a job, and we worked out an arrangement for payments. I'd never been on a sailboat before, and I started learning to sail, and I've been learning the hard way.

Justin: Okay, where have you sailed.

Mario: Lake Travis.

Justin: Okay, there's actually a lot of sailboats out there.

Mario: There are.

Justin: Have you ever been on a Raser? Not the scooter.

Mario: Yes.

Justin: That was the funniest Olympic event--

Mario: Is it Raser or Laser?

Justin: Ooh. I don't really know. Laser?

Mario: Yes. The little teeny ones?

Justin: Yes. It was the funniest Olympic event I saw this year.

Mario: Very reactive, slippery little boats. They are lots of fun.

Justin: Everybody was everywhere. There are two people on course, everybody else was lost.

Mario: My boat's very different from that, but they're both fun in different ways.

Justin: I wanted it set to Benny Hill music. I thought that would have been really comical. Just the one where they chase everybody around.

Mario: I can see that.

Justin: Did the 60-foot boat built in somebody's backyard, was it sea-worthy?

Mario: He sails it all over the world. The guy's retired and he sails it all over the world

Justin: Built his own sailboat?

Mario: Yes. Mine is not sea-worthy like that. My boat's older than me. You can buy old boats cheap and then you've spent a lot of time and money keeping them up.

Justin: Hardberger has a really impressive sailing history too, I think.

Mario: I've heard, I'd love to go sailing with him. I bet I could learn a lot from him.

Justin: There's a videographer who does court reporting here named Terry Lindemann. You can't see it, but he gave me a Big Bend photo he took as an office warming gift. He was hired by one of the Maloney's and Hardberger at different times to be part of their competition sailing teams. He didn't have his own boat, but he's just done it enough that he got sucked up to do that.

Mario: They could hire me to wash their boat, probably. I don't think they would hire me to--

Justin: I think they go out and race in the Pacific and real big races. Favorite fiesta event?

Mario: Favorite fiesta event? I like just going out among the people and just wandering, and checking out the different foods that you can get, and being able to get the [unintelligible 00:07:45]. There's not a lot of times and not a lot of good places. If somebody knows a good place to get [unintelligible 00:07:49], I would love to hear about it.

Justin: It sounds like you like NIOSA is what it sounds like.

Mario: Yes.

Justin: That sounds like lots of people and lots of food. You said that one of the things you did after graduating high school was work on an Alaskan fishing boat, I think, if I heard that correctly, right?

Mario: Indeed

Justin: Scariest moment?

Mario: Scariest moment?

Justin: Because it's one of the deadliest jobs in America.

Mario: All the terrible accidents that you hear, a lot of times they're crabbing boats where somebody takes a boat that's too small for the kind of weather and the kind of sea conditions you're going to experience, and too small of a crew, and they work too long of hours and then big accidents happen or you have the boat overloaded with seafood and weight and then you hit a big storm. Our boat was 240 feet long. It was six stories tall, double steel holes, every door sealed down like on a submarine with the wheel. We felt like it was what the Titanic wanted to be. However, when we hit rough weather coming back, I started to realize, "You know what? If mother nature is going to take you out, mother nature is going to take care out."

Justin: Sure, and in the North Sea, the waves are shorter. They're higher and shorter. I'm sure the physics teacher could tell me this again, but up there as you get closer, the waves get tighter.

Mario: I did not know that, but I experienced that. At one moment, you're on the back of the boat and it's like being on top of a mountain and you can see forever, and the next thing you know, it looks like there's a mountain descending on you.

Justin: What were y'all fishing for?

Mario: We were fishing for pollack when I was out there. It's a basic white fish, like the fish filet sandwiches from Long John Silver's, or McDonald's, or fish sticks, a lot of the fish sticks you know are pollack.

Justin: I think it's the certified environmentally friendly alternative to cod, is how it was described to me at a restaurant one time.

Mario: Possibly. What struck me when I was out there is that I didn't realize the extent to which we were going to be overfishing when I got the job. Then I get out there and what struck me is everybody in the industry was talking about the industry as though they weren't a part of it. All the things that were wrong and all the things people needed to do. We went to Russia. You sign a contract for a certain number of fishing trips and they don't tell you when you sign up, but they make you sign a contract for more fishing trips than you can possibly fit in a US fishing season, then you find out, "Oh, I'm going to Russia."

Justin: Is that right?

Mario: Yes. We go to Russia and there were no fish in Russia. We were catching baby fish, and I thought, "Why are we doing this? If we catch all the baby fish this year, first of all, you can't do anything with them."

Justin: You were keeping them.

Mario: Yes. Then we're not going to have big fish next year. That's all there was.

Justin: How many days were you at sea?

Mario: I think maybe 40 days.

Justin: Long enough to know.

Mario: It was worth the adventure, not the money.

Justin: 40 days, you were like Noah, I think, right? 40 days, 40 nights?

Mario: I'm not sure.

Justin: My mom worked in a cannery on Kodiak Island. She always tells the stories about how the fish were frozen when they were brought and one of her jobs was-- I don't know either. Everybody had a job. One cut their head off, one did this thing. She said you would leave and your fingers would be frozen just solid because that's all you've been doing.

Mario: Oh, my knuckles got really swollen because it was a 16-hour shift, and every four hours you get a 15-minute break. I guess your hands would get cold. You'd take a break and then you'd come back and your hands weren't warmed up again, and all of a sudden, everything's frozen.

Justin: Was it with nets? Is that how you catch a pollack?

Mario: Yes. We were dragging huge nets. We could bring in up to 75 tons per net and we had machinery that would do everything that people working with your mother did, by hand. You would put them in these slots on a conveyor belt.

Justin: They were cleaned on the boat.

Mario: We did it all. It was a factory trawler, factory dragger, so we'd drag nets and process the fish. There were machines that would saw cut the heads off, slice the belly open, whisk out the guts, filet them, descale them. Then you just take these clean filets and you're layering them into a basket. It's on a scale. Once you get to 17 pounds, they go into a little box and they get flash frozen. You can freeze, I think, 1 ton of fish or 2 tons of fish in 15 minutes.

Justin: Did you eat a lot of pollack while you were out there?

Mario: No, we ate really well on that boat. Really, really well.

Justin: I guess you catch other things that aren't part of the season.

Mario: No, you're not allowed to.

Justin: You just throw them back.

Mario: Yes, because you don't want to get busted.

Justin: What if they're dead? Still, throw them back?

Mario: You got to get rid of it all, yes, because you can't be accidentally targeting the wrong fish, I guess, and you don't want to get fined or lose your boat.

Justin: I was in Mexico fishing marlin, and long story short, it was terrible, but we finally catch one marlin and they said, "Well, you can't keep it. It's illegal to keep it if it's a viable fish and then a guy hits it in the head with a hammer and says, "It's not viable anymore." I thought, "What in the hell?" I didn't know if y'all had some loopholes like that.

Mario: No, we didn't have anything like that. If they accidentally pulled on a shark or something like that, a big one, they'd try and get it off the boat quickly so they could live if they could.

Justin: Did you catch things like that?

Mario: Yes, we caught the wrong things now and then. It was one of the more modern fishing boats. We had radar or sonar that could tell you what fish were down there, and so we were targeting our schools of fish but also we would track the other boats. We knew which currents your boat fished on which day so that we wouldn't go and follow you in those currents as well.

Justin: There's so much money to go out. You better make it pretty sophisticated, I would assume.

Mario: It was a $40 million boat.

Justin: How many people were on the crew?

Mario: Anywhere from like maybe 100 to 120 at a time.

Justin: Full bunkhouses and everything? You and your brother?

Mario: Yes.

Justin: What was the longest amount of time y'all were out at one time.

Mario: Maybe three weeks at a time, two to three weeks.

Justin: That's a while and y'all went out of.

Mario: Dutch Harbor.

Justin: Which is where all the boats on the show go out of. I could talk to you about fishing because it's real interesting. Easy question. Tell us about District 1. What is it? Who are the people? Who lives there?

Mario: District 1 is unique because District 1 borders every single other city council district, it's the only one that does that. We're like the middle of the pie. It's like I say, people, typically, you cut a papaya into wedges, but if there was a centerpiece, that's District 1. It's unique in that way. It's unique in that it has so much of Downtown. That makes it a little bit different. Then you've got some competing interest with development. There's Downtown development or just density development versus people wanting to preserve the character of their neighborhoods, not wanting more traffic in their neighborhoods. Just wanting to keep things the way they are.

Justin: It's everything Downtown that the normal person thinks is Downtown. It's I-10 all the way to 281.

Mario: Yes, for the most part, it's everything that people consider Downtown.

Justin: Economically, almost every economic class is contained within your district, right?

Mario: That is true as well.

Justin: You have some very nice neighborhoods. You've got some of the really nice condos all the way to some of the older neighborhoods that have been known for having downtrodden economically areas, and some of the areas that have been forgotten and taken advantage of probably.

Mario: Absolutely. I like to tell people, people in low-income neighborhoods, they pay taxes too.

Justin: They vote. If they vote more, we get people that pay attention to them more, which is a good thing. You're in an interesting time, I think, for San Antonio as well because Mayor Castro, he was the decade of Downtown or...

Judge Mary Lou Alvarez Discusses her Unique Journey to Law and Changes at the Courthouse

Justin Hill — Thu, 09 Sep 2021 05:30:00 -0600

Judge Alvarez joins us to talk about her path from San Antonio, to Stanford and back to San Antonio. She was educated and worked as an engineer before going to law school. After law school she had a few jobs before running for District Judge in Bexar County. Join us to hear her talk about her unique path and the great things happening at the courthouse.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonio, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

[applause]

All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is the Honorable Mary Lou Alvarez. She is a civil district judge at the 45th Civil District Court in Bexar County. She was educated as an engineer prior to being a lawyer. Born just south of here, raised in San Antonio, a graduate of Incarnate Word High School. Bean and cheese are her favorite breakfast tacos I learned. I didn't know that.

Mary Lou Alvarez: Yes.

Justin: If you're spicy, it sounds like bean and cheese and bacon.

Mary Lou: Bacon or brisket, a little meat to add something to the mix.

Justin: The beans have to be good you said, so we're going to ask some questions about that. Judge Alvarez, thank you for being on here. We asked you to come on today, talk about what's going on in the court. I want to talk about your path into elected politics because I don't know why anyone would do that to themselves but you've got a lot of thoughts on that. I've practice law in front of you. I've gotten to know you, really over the last five years, as you decided to run and it's really been very enjoyable for me to get to know you, see you on the court, see how passionate you are about it.

You're not just a judge, you're actually volunteering your time to improve some of the processes of the courthouse, which I think is really invaluable because people maybe don't realize but Bexar County has been revolutionary in the way we run our courts for so long. Old Judge Casseb brought in the presiding system, which I tell everybody to this day, we have the most efficient court system in the state of Texas. You should file all your cases here because you're going to get hearings, you're going to get justice, you're going to get answers and other places don't have that benefit.

I think it's good that we are still moving to improve what we have that is already a really good system. I start with everybody, top 10. It's never really 10 but I have a stick to it. Who has the best beans?

Mary Lou: Real beans or fast food beans?

Justin: For your bean and cheese taco, let's go there because that's where I've got this from.

Mary Lou: All right. Well, it depends on how much time I've got. If I can sit down and have a bean and cheese taco and wait, then it's going to be a hole-in-the-wall taqueria. My favorite right now is the one that's off McCullough and Dewey, Taqueria Jalisco I think, or El Chapala. I forget the sign because I think it changed once while I was off Locus, but it's off McCullough and Dewey.

Justin: Where's Dewey at?

Mary Lou: Dewey, it becomes St. Josephine closer to 35 I think.

Justin: Further down McCullough Monte Vista area?

Mary Lou: No, it's St. Josephine is what it becomes. It's by Hawthorne, Hawthorne Academy right across on the backside of the Pearl. Then coming up to McCullough, it's Dewey, and taking you into Sack it's Dewey.

Justin: I know exactly where you're talking about. A newish building?

Mary Lou: Yes.

Justin: Okay. The drive-thru menu it's like a cheesecake factory. It's huge.

Mary Lou: You got a lot of options.

Justin: Yes. I know exactly what you're talking about.

Mary Lou: Their beans are great. If I'm driving through, then I'll probably go to Bill Miller's even though we're not really supposed to go to Bill Miller's, but they've got some good beans.

Justin: They had some legal trouble recently, I saw in the news. There was a big verdict. It didn't involve the beans though, so I think we're good.

Mary Lou: I'm good.

Justin: Favorite restaurants in town. I had another esteemed Honorable Judge and it was very careful on whether somebody could condone certain things. I guess I'll put it this way. What are some of your favorite places to go to these days to have dinner?

Mary Lou: [chuckles] Well, places that have a playground, so I've got some cover that way. If my Mari and Javi can be entertained and I can actually finish dinner, they can have fun, and maybe I can have a drink, that's my favorite place.

Justin: The Cove, Friendly Spot, some of those?

Mary Lou: We go to The Cove, we go to The Friendly Spot, Viola's off of Military and Hunt Lane, so SeaWorld side of the world. For those folks that don't venture too far away from downtown, it's a trek, but it's great, lots of shade, playground's kind of small, but they've got a lot of rocks and a lot of climbing hazardous things that my son likes to, you know. [crosstalk]

Justin: The Cove used to have the deadliest playground equipment I had ever seen.

Mary Lou: [laughs]

Justin: You'd look at that and think, how on earth did they-- You know what I'm talking about?

Mary Lou: Yes.

Justin: There was no railing and a 12-foot drop-off.

Mary Lou: Yes, yes. They had that when my children were toddlers, like two and three because that was fabulous. I like the one that they have now much better.

Justin: I don't know how they got away with that for so long.

Mary Lou: [laughs]

Justin: I've told Lindsay, I'm like, we can be rich. All we have to do is sell okay food and have a playscape and people are going to go. There was a few places that have proved that to be true.

Mary Lou: Drinks, don't forget the drinks.

Justin: Oh, yes. It goes without saying. [crosstalk]

Mary Lou: Food and drinks and a playscape, yes, you're good to go.

Justin: All right. Favorite hidden gems in San Antonio. This isn't the Riverwalk. For me, the first time I went to the Japanese Tea Garden, I remember thinking, how have I not been here already and how is everybody not telling me about this place? Do you have any like that in San Antonio that you think these are places that not enough people go visit?

Mary Lou: Well, see if I give them out, everybody's going to go. No, I'm just kidding. I know.

Justin: My 10s of listeners will flock there.

[laughter]

Mary Lou: With kids in tow. That's the key.

Justin: That's right.

Mary Lou: No, we spend time at the Botanical Gardens. I love that place and the kids love that place. I've gone a couple of times to I think it's Government Canyon Reserve, Government Canyon Park something off-

Justin: Government Canyon Park?

Mary Lou: -again, on our side of town. We had to do it twice before we could get to the dinosaur tracks because the first time, they had the COVID restrictions. I'm like, "Oh, the noon slot is open. Mari and Javi, let's go," and we signed up. My babies are light-skinned. My poor son was just red-faced and he's like, "I can't make it." I'm like, "You can't make it. We only have a mile and a half to go."

Justin: How far in is it?

Mary Lou: I think it's three and a half miles in or three miles in and then you come back.

Justin: That's a trek.

Mary Lou: We made it halfway. We did half of it. We got a quarter in and had to come back. I'm like, "We're doing this." I picked a nine o'clock slot I think or maybe 8:45 slot the next time and we made it. Noon is probably not the best way to-- [crosstalk]

Justin: I've only been once. There's only a small portion you can have your dog. I took my dog and we got lost. As in, I was carrying him over my shoulders because he couldn't walk anymore. We were a little panicky.

Mary Lou: It's hot.

Justin: Yes. I've never gone back there.

Mary Lou: You need to go back. You need to revive yourself.

Justin: It was a bad experience. I'll go without Winston because I think he thinks I'm going to leave him if I take him. You were so kind to go do a commencement speech at Restore Education for me and Lindsay, I've recently been put on the board. It's just incredible. You and I were sitting there bawling our eyes out at the happiness we felt. What other nonprofits are you involved in, in terms of where you spend your own time and not just people asking you to help out on occasion?

Mary Lou: That has gone way down with the kids. My kids are my nonprofit but I'm really involved with their schools and with our church. We have to. We had to. Now, Mary, our Mother Church is a brand new church off by us, Potranco in 1604. We spend time there but there's not a lot of time, unfortunately, for non-profit] [crosstalk]

Justin: You were doing some with Youth and Fiesta at some point, right? Did I get the name right?

Mary Lou: Fiesta Youth. We did, we went to the back-to-school fair, and we helped sponsor it. It's a community that I don't think receives as much attention and resources. This organization is just going head and shoulders providing weekly support groups for parents and for children and really--

Justin: Who's the beneficiary of it?

Mary Lou: Children who are exploring their gender identity or who have already come to their decision and they just need the support, they need to know that they're not in isolation. I think the reason I was able to really reach out to that agency is because I needed the resources for a case that was before me and to know that that resource is a gem, a hidden gem in our community. It's amazing.

Justin: Thrive is a little bit like that too I think here in our community, which is this they do incredible work, they're super underfunded, they're always shoestring budget, and yet they still managed to do really good work. Now, they're one of the beneficiaries of Cornyation which has just changed their ability to do their services. Any odd hobbies?

Mary Lou: Odd hobbies?

Justin: Do you quilt or crochet?

[laughter]

Mary Lou: No, I don't quilt or crochet. I taught my children how to order their own bean and cheese taco before they were two. Both of them could lean out to Taco Cabana and say, "I want my bean and cheese taco."

[laughter]

We do a lot of drive-thru. I like to watch a lot of TV.

Justin: Okay, what?

Mary Lou: Right now, it's a lot of children's TV. Vivo is what we have on repeat.

Justin: I think it's played about 800 times in our house.

Mary Lou: Isn't it amazing?

Justin: You know, I mean--

Mary Lou: You don't like it? Oh my God.

Justin: The girl's music is not my kind of music. What's the song that she sings at the start in her bedroom?

Mary Lou: Yes, I know what you're- because it's so funny.

Justin: It's going to be stuck in my head if you say it, so don't say it.

Mary Lou: [laughs] I was almost going to bring up the app and pull it up. I love that song. Mari and Javi are with you. They don't care for it. When it comes on, because we've got it on repeat, I blast it and they're rolling their eyes at me.

Justin: The bounce to the beat of my own drum, that song.

Mary Lou: There you go. I'm a wow in a space of ho-hum.

Justin: There we go. All right. When you watch shows, any you've got time for right now?

Mary Lou: I haven't in a long time. I started the-- Is it The Crown?

Justin: Yes.

Mary Lou: I haven't picked it up for about seven months.

Justin: I've never watched it. Lindsay loved it.

Mary Lou: I'm on episode four of season one so I didn't get far. [chuckles]

Justin: We are watching Nine Perfect Strangers right now. It's really good.

Mary Lou: What is that?

Justin: Nicole Kidman, Melissa McCarthy, Michael Shannon, Bobby Cannavale. I think that's all I can name right now. It's based on a book. Nine people go to a health retreat, then there's some intrigue and mystery. It's really good character development, really good actors. So far so good.

Mary Lou: Nobody dies? Maybe?

Justin: Well, there are deaths, but not at the retreat. It's good. It's worth watching. We watch probably more than we should because what else are we going to do right now? We're not doing anything. Worst trend you followed when you were younger?

Mary Lou: [laughs]

Justin: I did the overalls with one strap down.

Mary Lou: Oh my gosh. I can totally see that too, which is hilarious.

Justin: I had a mullet.

[laughter]

A full mullet. I've now exposed myself. We're sharing. This is [unintelligible 00:11:41].

Mary Lou: Okay. We're sharing. Well, as you can tell, I don't spend a lot of time on my hair or makeup or anything, but for seventh grade, at St. Paul's, I did. I would tease my hair to get the bangs down and to get the bangs up. I swear that one year of prep and messing with my hair, I've now got really thin hair. [chuckles] In about, I don't know, maybe 10, 15 years, when I have a receding hairline, that will be it, seventh grade at St. Paul's.

Justin: Did you tease it out and then Aqua Net it?

Mary Lou: Yes, yes.

Justin: Some people had the one thing, but some people could make it almost two-story.

Mary Lou: I did two-story for a year.

Justin: My sisters, they messed around with that. Favorite fiesta event?

Mary Lou: I liked the King William there, obviously with the kids, but Texas A&M has a kid's fair like the Fiesta de Los Niños.

Justin: I had no idea.

Mary Lou: We like that. We've gone a few years.

Justin: Is it on the campus?

Mary Lou: Outside.

Justin: Okay. There's a few fiesta events that are not closed.

Mary Lou: I think it was there or maybe it was at missions. I'm not sure. It's outside. I thought it was Texas A&M. We haven't had fiesta in a couple of years, so my memory is short.

Justin: Oh, we had the abbreviated.

Mary Lou: Yes, the let's get COVID together fiesta.

Justin: Lindsay and I actually got a hotel room in the Embassy with a balcony. We're like, "We're going to go to the river parade," but we have air conditioning because it's July and we can have Lincoln sleep inside. It was as much as we could do. We're going to do something that was as much as we could do.

Mary Lou: That worked?

Justin: Yes. It was unfortunate because the zoo was the beneficiary this year. I think they raised $550,000 though.

Mary Lou: Not bad.

Justin: The emcee matched. I can't remember her name, but she matched whatever-- Oh, it was all going to the Will Smith Zoo School. That's who got the beneficiary of this year's river parade.

Mary Lou: I never got to send my babes there.

Justin: That's the plan.

Mary Lou: You have to send Lincoln. You have to.

Justin: That's the plan. We're on the whitelist. We started a while back. I'm on the zoo board now. I'm going to go around and slip people dollar bills and hope that gets me where I need it to get me.

Mary Lou: [laughs]

Justin: I really never tell people what I want to talk to them about because why? Let's just have a conversation.

Mary Lou: Preparation would've been key.

Justin: I know, but favorite fiesta event. What are you going to come in with, "Here's the three reasons this is my favorite." It's not as fun. You have such an impressive educational background. You were born in Carnes, raised in San Antonio. I'm from a really small town. Now, as I look back on people that have come up, we're the same generation, we're the same age-ish. You went off to Stanford and you got an engineering degree, which getting into Stanford is hard enough, leaving town is different, but you went off and got this incredible education, and then you trended into the law.

Talk to us a little bit about the very different mindsets I think. One of them has answers and solutions, and one is a lot different and a lot more fussy. It's not positive and negative. There's not an answer. Why did you start in engineering and decided to get into the law?

Mary Lou: I always wanted to go into the law. I did. I don't know if you remember The Paper Chase?

Justin: Oh, yes.

Mary Lou: I would watch that with my dad.

Justin: It's great.

Mary Lou: I loved it. I can't find it. Every now and again, I'll search Netflix and see if they've gotten the rights or whatever it is they need to do.

Justin: Go to Amazon Prime. You can rent it and then pull up your Amazon app and it'll be waiting for you.

Mary Lou: Is it on there?

Justin: $3.99. It has to be. Everything's...

Tim Morrow, San Antonio Zoo CEO

Justin Hill — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 05:30:00 -0600

The San Antonio Zoo has undergone an incredible transformation since Tim Morrow took over as the CEO in 2014. From their goals to the way they interact with our community, the Zoo is changing stereotypes. The mission of the San Antonio Zoo now includes much more emphasis on conservation, education and interaction. Tim could speak for days on these issues but I am glad we got one hour of his time.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello, and bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great, and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. [applause]

All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Tim Morrow. Tim is the CEO of the San Antonio Zoo. He has previously worked with, and correct me if I get it wrong, but I think Fiesta, Texas, the San Antonio Spurs, and SeaWorld, basically all big hospitality groups in the city. Since 2014, he's been the CEO of the zoo. In that time, you've seen a lot of the projects that have changed at the zoo. I mean, the Kiddie Park moved over, which a lot of people know about, the Will Smith Zoo School was launched. If you've been there lately, the rhinos Africa exhibit has become a whole new expanded habitat for animals to share space.

There's a Jaguar habitat going in, the list is on and on, but some of the more interesting things that I learned about recently is the work they've done to bring animals back from the brink of extinction or endangered status. There's a lot he's done here. I was recently lucky to be appointed to the San Antonio Zoological Society or the zoo board. I've gotten to meet Tim, I asked him to come on. Thanks for being here.

Tim Morrow: Thanks for having me.

Justin: Tim, I do this with everybody. I start with just some general questions. The idea behind my podcast was to get to talk to people of San Antonio, share their stories, so some background questions. You're running the zoo, do you have pets?

Tim: I do have pets. I have two dogs and a cat. Then I live at Leon Springs area, so we have random wild animals at all times, around the house, or sometimes in the house.

Justin: Nothing exotic?

Tim: Nothing exotic. No. I leave that to the zoo, to the professionals.

Justin: In your life have you ever had exotic animals?

Tim: I have had snakes and fish, and those kinds of things, but nothing crazy that you would expect maybe some of the workers at a zoo to have at their house.

Justin: Yes. I think that's fair. When I'm at the zoo, I feel like a kid, do you have a favorite animal?

Tim: It really changes. It's really whatever habitat we're working on becomes my favorite animal, because you really dive so deep into learning about that animal because what we really try to do now with habitats is create natural spaces for them that are enriching, and so you need to learn as much about them as possible. Right now, we're working on jaguar, a big overhead catwalk system so jaguar has become just an animal that I'm fascinated with. I mean they're a big predator, they're strong, they're stealth, and just what they do is incredible. If you watch them hunt and grab crocodiles out of the water and pull them up in trees, it's just an amazing cat.

The fact they used to be right here in south Texas, and that they're still jaguars three hours south of the border into Mexico, it's not unrealistic that someday Jaguars could make their way back in Texas.

Justin: I didn't realize that, they came all the way up to South Texas?

Tim: Yes, they were here. They were in Arizona, really across the whole Southwest, and actually, they're starting to spot one in Arizona that's been going back and forth across the border-

Justin: No joke.

Tim: -that they've been spotting in Arizona. Not beyond the realm of possibility that Jaguars someday could show up in south Texas.

Justin: I thought they were more rainforest-y, they'll actually go off into the desert?

Tim: Yes. They live in multiple areas, savannas, deserts, rainforests, which is another really cool feature about them. They really just adapt to whatever environment they're in. We do some conservation work in Mexico with them in rainforest. Just three hours south of Brownsville, there's rainforest in the mountains there, and it's full of Jaguars and all kinds of amazing species.

We partnered with Gladys Porter Zoo and an NGO in Mexico to really do a lot of research down there on jaguars and tracking them and seeing how they are connecting with each other and connecting to other wild places as they move around.

Justin: Well, I mean, at the orientation, I was blown away at all that I didn't know, and I think I'm going to learn a lot today. I always ask everybody and we always post about it, and I've learned a lot about San Antonio. What are some of your favorite places in San Antonio? I kind of say the hidden gem, so the first time I went to the like other Missions or the first time I went to the Tea Garden, I remember thinking, how have I not been here. These are great. Do you have any places in town like that, that you think are these off-the-beaten-path, really neat places?

Tim: Yes. There's so many new things and old things people are discovering in San Antonio. I think the Trailway system that San Antonio is connecting is just really cool and underappreciated. I live up on the north side of town towards Leon Springs and there's just such gems up on that side, around town like dance halls and old bars that have been there forever, and parks like Friedrich park is now very much discovered after COVID. I mean, there's 500 cars up and down both sides of the street now for those parks, but there's jewels all over this town.

You could explore San Antonio forever and not see everything. I was the chair of The Tourism Council here in San Antonio, and I've not even been to all the tourist attractions in town. Now, I do stuff with parks and I have been to probably 1/10th of the parks in San Antonio and across the South Texas.

Justin: Yes, so I had the Mayor on and he told me about Denman Estate Park, I think is what it was called, and I had never even heard of that-

Tim: Me neither.

Justin: -and then I looked it up and it's got these like Japanese ponds, and there's Japanese architecture. I didn't even know it existed. Do you think Silver Fox would be a hidden gem?

Tim: I think Silver Fox is an iconic, legendary place.

[laughter]

Justin: I'm sure it has been a legend for many people. Same question about the zoo. What are the spots in the zoo do you think that, “Man, they don't get enough attention or make sure you find this place.”

Tim: I think the really cool thing about our zoo is it's not this big Boulevard, big wide pathway all the way through. It's got these lots of little exploratory pathways that people can take advantage of. One of the areas which we're about to revamp and redo next year is the Crunk Husky Tiny Tot nature spot. It's an area dedicated to small kids. People just walk right past that area, but if you go in there and go around the back of the building there's outdoor play for the kids, there's exhibits back there that people don't know about with tortoises. We had sloths back there at one point and we would post pictures and people were like, “Where is that? I go to the zoo all the time, I've never seen that.”

We have a lot of places in the zoo that people really don't go to if they don't get off the main pathways, and then within the zoo, we're 107 years old, so if you really pay attention to the concrete and the architecture, there's incredible architecture there and incredible hand-carved fir wood concrete throughout the zoo, which was, Dionicio, who's a famous artist that did the benches around town that looked like--

Justin: Like the one in Alamo Heights that looks like a ferry.

Tim: He was doing a lot of work in Brackenridge Park. There's a lot of his work in the park, and his apprentices were working in the zoo, and so we have this incredible connection to that artist, and so we had this really beautiful zoo with big trees and historic walls and historic buildings that layered on top of all the amazing animals and the things that we're doing at the zoo now. It's just really fun to explore our zoo.

Justin: Is the Tiny Tots area, is that where you can go feed the tortoises too?

Tim: Yes. We have a tortoise experience, we try to bring a lot of experiences now where people can get up close with the animals, so you can go in with the tortoises and feed the tortoises. You can go with kangaroos now, pet kangaroos.

Justin: I saw that

Tim: Feed giraffes, we have rhino behind the scene where you go down and touch our rhinos, or you can go hippo behind the scene. You could feed lorikeets, you could feed flamingos. We know, and zoos know that when people will have that personal connection with an animal, like one-on-one connection moment, like you're staring at a giraffe face to face, then you really get inspired to care for that animal more because you've had that moment, and hopefully that translates to that person going home and doing things that can help the environment and help save that species.

Justin: I'm telling you, it's kind of embarrassing to say, but I did the tortoise experience and I told my wife I feel like I connected with the tortoise. It was just all very strange, you were just eye-to-eye and petting it like a dog, and it was almost a connection. I think you're right. It still sticks with me.

Tim: People remember the names of the giraffes, the names of the tortoises, and the kangaroos. There's a connection formed for sure.

Justin: Sure. Your go-to food and drink spots in town?

Tim: Fralo's pizza, number one, because I live out in Leona Springs, great pizza, you could sit outdoors, under the stars, and then he's got a great little place next door that's a jazz bar called bar 301. That's my neighborhood area bar, and all the friends hang out there. One of the things I've learned quickly when I got to zoo was there's just so many food choices down around the zoo in that area that it's limitless. I could literally just drive down St. Mary's and pick a new place every day probably for months. Bombay, of course, near the zoo is a great place to go. They do a lot to support the zoo too every month.

Elsewhere. I don't know if you've been to Elsewhere Garden, it used to be the luxury, what Terrin and Nolan there has made that place. It's a giant Instagram photo opportunity and a really cool vibe sitting on the river. The list goes on and on. I just enjoy hospitality industry, and right now supporting hospitality employees who have been through so much this year, so I try to get out to restaurants and those kinds of places, as much as I can and support them.

Justin: Did the grill get built back? I know it caught fire

Tim: Yes. The grill caught fire probably three, four months ago maybe now, and what I've read online is there's insurance issues. I think the gentleman who founded Macaroni grill, which his name is escaping me right now, he still owns the building but lives in California or something now. The grill was chef-owned and operated, and I think there's been some insurance challenges. I think he's working through that process, but that was one of the other staples of food out there.

Justin: The food was so good.

Tim: People would come out there to eat from inside 410 and they're like we had no idea there was a restaurant out here that had this level [laughs][crosstalk]

Justin: It's one of the few places I would travel outside of inside 410 to go.

Tim: Yes, it's great food. I hope it comes back.

Justin: You're hearing more about it. I've heard from people that have worked with you on the board, you get a lot of accolades and a lot of attaboys for really being a transformational leader at the zoo. Is there any leadership advice or leadership books that you've found to be your guiding principles on how to lead people because it's a hard thing to do.

Tim: Yes, well, really it's not a book, it's a philosophy. When I first started at Fiesta, Texas, that park when it opened, was owned by Opryland and USAA, did a joint venture to open that park. If you think about Opryland it's all about shows so Fiesta, Texas was very show heavy when it first opened. It's got the theme rounds of Germany and Crackaxle Canyon, '50s.

Justin: I didn't know that.

Tim: The philosophy in the theater world is management's about backstage supporting the actors on the stage. That translated to everything I've done with management like my job is to support the staff. To me, my org chart is upside down. I'm at the bottom, supporting everyone else above me. That servant leadership is I'm here to make everyone's jobs easier, point, “This is the direction we're going to go, and then I'm going to help you all get there with what you need to do that.”

Then really just supporting each other and having a family environment I think is really important, and also hiring people that are smarter than you. I'm constantly the dumbest guy in the room which is not hard, and then I have great leaders that work at my vice president and director of management level that have just taken us to new limits very quickly in the past six years. People that in San Antonio or that visit us from out of town have seen that I think.

Justin: During the orientation, we're talking about stuff in baskets for Easter and y'all were talking about how y'all were all doing it together, it didn't seem to be a hierarchy like you said. There was no “I'm too good for this.” It was, “This is what it's going to take.” Last two questions, favorite Fiesta event.

Tim: NIOSA, easy.

Justin: Yes? Man.

Tim: Yes, NIOSA, tradition.

Justin: I think you're the first to say NIOSA.

Tim: [laughs] I know I'm crazy [unintelligible 00:11:10] Actually, I love all the Fiesta.

Justin: Me too.

Tim: I look forward to Fiesta more than Christmas. For it to be canceled twice and then be abrupted version, this time was painful, and I never get sick, and I was sick in the week of Fiesta. I made one night of NIOSA, I was not full strength but I plowed through, the rest of it, I slept through the whole thing. I think Taste of the Northside is a really great event now, and that benefits the Brighton Center, which is an amazing organization.

I've really become to love the parades too. The zoo had never had a float in the parades or hadn't for decades, and so we have floats in all of the parades now. [crosstalk]

Justin: Yes, I saw the River last year.

Tim: This year the Cavaliers had raised $1,050,000 for Will Smith Zoo School with one of our donors matching that half.

Justin: That way, the Will Smith Zoo School was one of the beneficiaries of the River Parade this year?

Tim: The key beneficiary.

Justin: I didn't know that.

Tim: The Grand Marshal was Susan Naylor who's on our board and Will Smith was her son that was killed when he was eight.

Justin: Oh, I didn't put that together.

Tim: The Cavaliers during COVID raised &500,000, Susan matched them with $550,000, she wanted to one-up them a little bit I think, because that's Susan's personality. We were the featured charity of choice this year. Actually, it was last year for the Cavaliers, and luckily, they let us ride through it because we really wanted to be part of that parade. The Grand Marshal was Susan Naylor who the school is named after her son, and then the third boat in line was Will Smith Zoo School.

It was fun to get the publicity for that school [crosstalk]

Justin: Does that event change beneficiary every year?

Tim: Yes.

Justin: I didn't know that. The zoo doesn't have their own Fiesta event, do they?

Tim: Yes, we do. [chuckles]

Justin: What is it?

Tim: Festival De Animales. We are the last official Fiesta event, we go to last weekend, and it's really a zoo-wide celebration of the animals, and the culture, and the food, and music of Latin America. It's an event that the zoo has been doing for years. A couple of years ago, we applied to become an official Fiesta event, they're like, “You're in” and so we're the grand finale of Fiesta and it's just [crosstalk]

Justin: How long is it been official Fiesta event?

Tim: Official Fiesta event? Probably, three years now.

Justin: I don't feel as bad. I was a little embarrassed before.

Tim: It's a family fun event.

Justin: Which there needs to be more Fiesta events that are really family-centered.

Tim: We really enjoy and love being a part of Fiesta now. We're such a big part of this community, for us to not have a big float was really a shame. Now, our zoo school kids are on there. We have an annual gala called Zoo Ball, Zoobilation Ball. Three years ago, we started one called Kids Zoo Ball. Kids can have a little kid's version of our Zoo Ball so we have a kid's version and an adult version.

The kid's version, the kids raise money for the zoo, and the boy that raises the most and the girl that raises the most become king and queen of the jungle, and then we've added a court now for three or four other kids so we get more kids involved. Those kids get to ride on our float with our staff and things like that.

It's just a really fun experience to see those floats going down the street.

Justin: I think everybody saw the April fool's joke that the zoo was putting a dome over it, but in all seriousness, we're going to talk about some of the big capital projects upcoming, but do you have a zoo pipe dream, the one that like, “I don't know if we'll ever get there, but if I had unlimited money, here's what I'd want to do.”

Tim: I think we would...

Marcus Baskerville, Owner and Brewer of Weathered Souls Brewing Co.

Justin Hill — Tue, 06 Apr 2021 05:30:00 -0600

Marcus began brewing with a cheap home brewing kit. It spawned a passion for brewing that found him in San Antonio opening Weathered Souls Brewing Co. As if that wasn't enough, he started the Black is Beautiful initiative that was joined by over 1200 breweries around the world. It raised money and awareness for social justice causes.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos San Antonio, welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passions that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, proud San Antonian and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Marcus Baskerville. Marcus is the brewer and co-founder of Weathered Souls Brewing right here in San Antonio. As if the story about all the inventive beers is not impressive enough, you spearheaded and created what turned into a international movement called the Black Is Beautiful Movement, which ended up including 1200 breweries across 22 countries and for us Texans, 122 participating breweries just here in Texas. I'm really excited to meet you and chat with you and thank you for doing this Marcus.

Marcus Baskerville: Yes, no problem. Thank you for having me.

Justin: You are in your yeast lab is what I think I heard you say a second ago.

Marcus: No, office used to be my use lab. Now I'm in my crate office.

Justin: [laughs] When you grow a business, you grow where you can grow.

Marcus: Exactly. [crosstalk].

Justin: We do all these similar. I want to ask you a few questions, get to know you a little bit, talk to you about San Antonio. I know some of the answers because I did some research beforehand, but when and what brought you to San Antonio?

Marcus: I moved to San Antonio almost eight years ago, I think June will be eight years. What brought me to San Antonio was actually a promotion. I used to be in fraud prevention dealing with banking. I came out here to train some new employees as they moved to corporate office from Sacramento to San Antonio. In the process of that, ended up getting a little promotion and decided to stay.

Justin: Born and raised in Sacramento, right?

Marcus: Yes.

Justin: You moved here eight years ago. How have you liked it so far?

Marcus: I've enjoyed it. I'm still here, right?

Justin: I mean, the weather is very different than Sacramento.

Marcus: Weather is this huge difference. That's what keeps my family from coming too often. They're like, "Oh, your guys' weather is so sporadic." Outside of that and the occasional bad drivers, I've really enjoyed San Antonio.

Justin: You haven't been here all that long. Eight years is a while, but what are some of your favorite hidden places in San Antonio, hidden gems, places that when you moved here, nobody really told you about and then when you found them, you thought, "Wow, how did I not know about this?" For me the Botanical and the Japanese Tea Gardens are two of those things that when I finally went there, I thought, "Why didn't anyone tell me about this?" Do you have any places like that here?

Marcus: That would definitely be one of them. I actually just went to that recently with my children a couple of months ago. That was the first time I had been. I was like, "Wow, this is a beautiful place. I wish I'd known about this years ago.|

Justin: You wouldn't even know when you're hear.

Marcus: Yes, exactly. Then outside of that, one of the things originally when I first moved here was the Pearl. I really enjoyed Pearl area just to be outside and that type of thing. Nobody really put me onto the Pearl back in the day and outside of that really, some of the like different trails and hiking, different things like that. I like to try to get outdoors, I'm always inside all the time. When I do have the opportunity to get outside, I like to [unintelligible 00:03:44].

Justin: The hiking and all those options--

Marcus: To get a little bit of sunshine in my life.

Justin: Those have improved a lot since the time you've been here. When I first moved here-- I haven't been here that much longer, but the mission trail South and all that stuff, wasn't even an option back then. I read about your really big obsession into homebrewing, how you came up in the brewing world. One of the things was you were very passionate about it, very focused about it. Do you have any odd hobbies outside of brewing?

Marcus: [chuckles] Bourbon collecting has become a new hobby for me. I got into bourbon about three years ago. Then that's transitioned into other things. I've been on a quest to make the perfect Old Fashion. That's something that I do at home. I've changed my ices from the sphere, and now I have the cubes and been working with different oranges, different bitters and different whiskey combinations.

That's turned into a little hobby for me even reading on the history of old fashions, but definitely the whole bourbon thing. Outside of that. I mean beer evolves most of my life. When I do have the opportunity to get out of here, it's mostly spending time with the kids and making sure that they get their daddy time in.

Justin: Do you boil your water before you make ice?

Marcus: No. I actually have ice molds that produce clear ice.

Justin: All right. Have you done any of the Fiesta events? Do you have a favorite event?

Marcus: I've only been to Fiesta once. I am very much the introvert despite the fact that I've had to do a lot of talking as of the last year. Those large, huge groups if there's people around make me very nervous.

Justin: I'm not a big fan of the really big events.

Marcus: I've been to Fiesta once.

Justin: There's a lot of small events too you should check it out.

Marcus: I know I did-- I can't even remember the name of which one I went to. I don't remember, but it was when parents came to town and we ended up going out and enjoying Fiesta, but it's a lot of people. Even then you look at many people. Generally, if I'm doing stuff, it's in the smaller crowd, small crowd room where I can count the number of people.

Justin: I appreciate that. What is your favorite beer to drink just every day? What would be your go-to beer style?

Marcus: My favorite to-style would definitely be probably a Pilsner. Also in that room's definitely West Coast IPA. I'm a huge West Coast IPA fan, just because that's where I came from basically. One of the first styles that I got into, gravitated towards when I actually got into the beer scene. Generally, if I am going to have a beer, it's going to be something on the lighter spectrum. Something lighter, so it's not as heavy on your stomach or you got more than one of them. Generally it's a lager or a West Coast [unintelligible 00:07:06].

Justin: Y'all do some hard ciders as well. Are you planning on or are you interested in branching out into other fermented alcoholic drinks?

Marcus: At the moment, no. I have gotten a steal recently, so I do want to get into the realm of doing my own whiskey and bourbon. It's made me nervous. I need to have somebody come over and assist me. The whole blowing up my garage thing has made me nervous. I'll wait until the expert has some extra time to come by the house. I have a few people in mind and we'll test it out and see what we can come up with.

The way that I am when it comes to when I get into interest of things, like I get full blown into it. Even with the [unintelligible 00:07:58] I'm going to make sure that I can either source me in a white American Oak barrel, or I even want to go ahead and try my own barrel, but when the time comes, we'll figure it out. I want to evolve into the whole experience of creating my own whiskey or bourbon. When I do get some additional time, we'll go ahead and experiment with that a little bit [inaudible 00:08:19].

Justin: Is a barrel maker called a cooper? Is that what [crosstalk].

Marcus: Cooper. Yes, I guess with the [inaudible 00:08:31] I think so.

Justin: Do we have any coopers in San Antonio?

Marcus: I don't want to make barrels. I don't think so. I know there obviously has to be someone in Texas with all the distilleries that are popping up in the state of Texas, but I've never heard of one in San Antonio.

Justin: I had a boy in from Dortch Alon, they started as a distiller and then they got into brewing. His still has its own interesting story to coming over from Serbia.

Marcus: I didn't know he was from Serbia.

Justin: They bring in nectarines or gosh, I feel bad that I can't remember. Not peaches. Apricots. They bring in apricots from Serbia, still for their Rockier. It's interesting.

Marcus: I haven't been to [unintelligible 00:09:27] since COVID. Maybe I have to go by and check them out. You have a little cocktail.

Justin: He's got a really interesting family history behind the [unintelligible 00:09:36] and the rockier and all of that stuff. I think he even got stopped by the feds bringing in rockier. Basically, he got arrested for bootlegging when he was 12. He's got an interesting story about that.

Marcus: I'll have to pick his brain about that one day.

Justin: You've gotten into old fashions, what's the perfect old fashion right now?

Marcus: My favorite to make right now is a mocha old fashion. I ended up creating a coffee bitters-- Well, excuse me, a coffee [inaudible 00:10:12] a little bit of chocolate whiskey, and then obviously orange. I like the dry mandarin oranges from Trader Joe's, those are really good. Yes, those are really good.

Justin: I have an orange tree that was just gangbusters for years, but I think the freeze probably wiped it out, which is pretty unfortunate because it was probably 12 feet tall. It was a big old naval orange tree.

Marcus: Oh, man.

Justin: Let's talk about it. You got into homebrewing in the way that a lot of people thought they were going to at some point. I even had that Mr. Homebrew kit or whatever it was called and that's how you got into it, right?

Marcus: [chuckles] Yes. My brother had got a Mr. Beer kit for Christmas from my sister, and he had root brew it beer in it, it was horrible. Mr. Beer kits don't make the beer as it is, but it was one of those things where it was like, "I can make a better beer than you." We actually ended up doing our first couple of beers together, and then I ended up moving to San Antonio about a year later.

When I moved out here, obviously I didn't know anybody, was really more focused on work and that type of thing, and so I ended up homebrewing here in San Antonio. At some point, I ended up getting in a car accident within the first couple of months that I moved here and I took the money that I got from the accident and upgraded my homebrewer with it. From there, did a couple of beers here and there and nothing ever really hit, nothing was ever really that good.

At some point, I actually almost quit homebrewing, and then somebody ended up talking to me and saying, "No, you've invested all this money within homebrewing. You need to go ahead and keep at it, see what happens." I actually remembered the catalyst point of when I made my first good beer and it was listening to a brewing network podcast that had Annie Johnson on it.

Annie Johnson was 2013 homebrewer of the year. In the conversation, she had talked about dealing with not drinking while you're brewing, certain little processes and practices that she implemented into her [unintelligible 00:12:40] that brought her success. Being that she was the first woman home brewer of the year, she was also the first black person that has achieved homebrewer of the year, and she was also from Sacramento where I'm originally from.

You see that where it's like, you see somebody has reached the pinnacle and you look at them, they look like you and it's like, "Okay, I can do this too." The next beer I ended up doing was a robust porter, and I want to say that it was actually a heretic clone for [unintelligible 00:13:15] and it was from a more beer kit that came and mind you I made some little adjustments here and there just because that's the person that I am, and that was actually the first good beer that I made.

That recipe has changed over the course of time, and it's now one of our staples in the taproom, which is around about midnight.

Justin: What year would this have been?

Marcus: That's 2013.

Justin: I was reading a bunch of interviews with you and one thing that really stood out to me, which made me think of Malcolm Gladwell's books about how do you become really good at something that you want to be good at. They talk about the 10,000 hour rule and all that, but while you were in Sacramento, you went and even volunteered at breweries, if I read that correctly.

Marcus: Yes. I actually just got the 10 times rule book yesterday.

Justin: Nice.

Marcus: I started diving into that last night.

Justin: That wasn't your job, that was your passion, but you went and just volunteered your time to learn more.

Marcus: Yes. Once I started making some good beer, I started bringing beer to local restaurants, bars, breweries, and that type of thing. From there, I had brought my beer to a local brewery here, they enjoyed what I ended up bringing and offered, "You have a tap take over." I ended up having a tap take over in my beer that the home brew actually sold more than what their standard beer was in their taproom.

I didn't really volunteer too much outside of just going to hang out and watching what's going on. They ended up offering me a job, and I ended up taking an assistant brewer job on top of working full-time, 50 plus hours at the bank as a manager. I worked at this brewery for about a year, learning the do's and don'ts, things that you should do brewing, some not so good practices, that type of thing.

From there, I grew unhappy. I wanted to be able to experiment more, and create my own recipes and brew my own beer. Mind you in the standard brewing setting, I mean, that's standard. You go to a brewery and you're an assistant brewer, you're not brewing your own recipes and you're doing whatever needs to be done. That was fine at the time, but for me, it was a part-time job.

It wasn't like I had to have this job on top of I'm making great beer at home. If I don't work here, then it's not going to end all for me. Being said, I ended up leaving and continued making my own beer, that different types of things. Had another tap takeover at a local bar. They're no longer here, but it was Missions untapped, a wonderful place. It was a little dive bar off Broadway. Well, not really a dive bar, but craft beer bar.

I guess I can add to the list of place that people didn't tell me about that I enjoyed. Had a tap take over there, and it went fantastic. I think I had four beers on tap and all four of them tapped out. These are [unintelligible 00:16:24], so five gallon slims. Me and my current business partner, used to hang out, have a couple of drinks at that local place. One day we were out drinking and I was like, "Mike, when are we going to open a brewery?" He looked at me and he goes, "I've been waiting for you to ask me that." We literally started working on the business plan a couple of days later.

Justin: Awesome. You talked about these tap takeovers. I remember whenever you were doing it, but I didn't know it was you at the time, because there was a big buzz on social media about it. Talk to me about sort of how those opportunities really just-- That has to just catapult your trajectory, in sort of an unforeseen way, right?

Marcus: It definitely helped out within the local craft beer community, because they introduced me to a lot of people that didn't really know about me or beers that I was producing. Even before we had the brewery opening, pretty much that garnered a following for some of the beers that I was producing, and some of the fun stuff that was going on. On top of being in a couple of tap takeovers, I had won a couple of local homebrew awards, and a couple of little local homebrew competitions and stuff like that.

Some people knew about the beers that we were producing. I mean, literally when we started going into creating the brewery, we started hosting sensory panels and stuff like that, to get feedback for some of the beers we were doing, what direction we should go with some of the beers we were doing. We had tons of people that offered to come drink these beers for the sensory program, just based off of what they knew of me from these couple of tap takeovers and working at the other local brewery.

That definitely helped us within the local scene starting out. It brought an excitement to our opening and helping us get off on a good foot. You can say, within the San Antonio craft beer community.

Justin: Yes. When I was in college, I was really into craft beer, but back then, there was only a handful of craft brewers in the state of Texas. I remember, they were just trying to be good at their three or four, and then you had St. Arnold start their divine reserve program and that was just such a big buzz. I was looking at your list of beers and it's a very unique list of beers on tap at your tasting room.

Talk to me when you all finally decided to open your own brewery, you obviously wanted it to be different than what else was on the market. What was your idea? What was your vision for your own brewery?

Marcus: Yes. Dealing with the type of beers that we have on tap originally, I mean, obviously, we gravitated towards things that San Antonio wasn't really familiar with, and that helped us, as well as gaining some support within the community. I was heavy into imperial stouts, barrel aged stouts, IPAs, sours, that type of thing when I used to drink within California and back home and that type of stuff.

That was more so what I had...

Anya Grokhovski, CEO and Artistic Director Musical Bridges Around the World

Justin Hill — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 05:30:00 -0600

Anya Grokhovski is the CEO and Artistic Director of Musical Bridges Around the World a 501(c)(3) dedicated to sharing music through education and performances in and around San Antonio. She is a classically trained and educated musician herself. She is funny, charming and well worth your time.

Transcript:

[silence] [music]

Justin: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chicken and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

Welcome to the Alamo Hour, today's guest is Anya Grokhovski. She's the artistic director and CEO of Musical Bridges Around The World. She herself is a very accomplished pianist. I think you have a PhD in music or piano?

Anya Grokhovski: DMA, Doctor of Musical Arts.

Justin: Similar, I've got a doctorate in jurisprudence, but nobody calls me doctor. Anya started Musical Bridges Around The World, which really sounds like just your passion project and your attempt to share your love of music, and bring a really different style and quality of music to our city.

Anya: Yes. That is all.

Justin: Thank you for being here. I want to talk about Musical Bridges. I want to talk about your history as a musician and also in bringing this to our city and all of the events that you've put on. It's beautiful, what you're doing from children all the way through to older people. You've got a program for everybody and we're going to talk about that. I start this little getting to know you so we're going to go through our top 10 questions that I ask a bunch of people. They change a little bit but a lot of them are the same. You mentioned it already, what kind of pets do you have?

Anya: I have two large dogs.

Justin: How large? Great Dane large?

Anya: No, not quite as large but pretty large [chuckles]. I've got German Shepherd and I got a mutt, when we got him from the [unintelligible 00:01:58], we hoped that he will be a golden retriever, but he turned out to be made out of parts of different dogs and he's the sweetest thing you can imagine.

Justin: What are their names?

Anya: The mutt is Duke and the german shepherd is Lexi.

Justin: I grew up and I had a golden retriever named Duchess.

[laughter]

Anya: They're related [laughs].

Justin: Duchess had puppies with a dog named Duke at one point in life so it comes full circle. Now, with COVID, it's a little bit different but what are some of your favorite spots to eat at, and now it's almost what are your favorite spots to get takeout out at?

Anya: I'm really big fan of ethnic food. Every time I can get excuse to go to Indian restaurant, I will. I just recently ate again in Indian Palace. I love them. There is Afghani restaurants and there are all kinds of restaurants. There's no Russian restaurant, unfortunately, in San Antonio and it's crossed my mind maybe in my next life I would open one [laughs].

Justin: I don't want to be insensitive but are Russians known for their cuisine?

Anya: Yes, it's a very good cuisine. In general, Russian culture was very influenced by French culture. The Russian ethnic food is based on vegetables and famous borscht, I even made video of me making borscht because people been asking me for years, "Anya, how do you make that famous borscht," so I made a video of that.

Justin: I love borscht and I love beef.

Anya: I'll share it with you. I'll share the video.

Justin: Then, I think, caviar too for whatever reason when I think of the Russian cuisine.

Anya: Caviar is a good stuff too.

Justin: Indian Palace is your favorite Indian spot in town?

Anya: It is, yes and I am not getting paid for this promotion [laughs].

Justin: Neither of us are.

[laughter]

Justin: You've lived in San Antonio a while, how long?

Anya: Oh, I came here in '91.

Justin: What are some of your favorite hidden gems? When I have people come to town, the Alamo and those things are great but I tell them, the Botanical Gardens are-- If you live here, you probably go the further down Missions. I didn't go for 10 years to see the other Mission. What are some of your favorite hidden gems in the city?

Anya: When we bring guest artists from all over the world, we show them around and it helps for us. I've been here for a very long time. It helps me to look at San Antonio through their eyes which is very interesting. We always take people to McNay Art Museum. I think this is absolutely fabulous, fabulous place in San Antonio. We take, of course, Riverwalk and Pearl but where I would lately started to take people to, is wineries around Texas.

We get all these musicians from France and Italy and they're all cocky about their food and wine and all that. We'll say, "Wait a minute. Let's try some Texas wines." I think that's a hidden gem, still, actually the Texas Hill Country with [crosstalk]

Justin: Have they liked the Texas Hill Country wines?

Anya: They say they do. I don't think they have choice when we take them around [laughs] but I do. I think this is great wine and overall the situation is just [crosstalk]

Justin: The experience is fun.

Anya: The experience is fun, yes. Absolutely, and we're so close to this. It's fabulous.

Justin: I was just talking to my wife. It's going to be a good, get out of the house, pretty safe trip, and we're going to go up there and do that. I haven't done in years. It's different now than it used to be. I have a bunch of friends that worked in the restaurants in San Antonio, who are now up there working in wineries.

Anya: You'll be surprised, they're just growing. It used to be 48 wineries, I think they doubled right now.

Justin: Is that right. The state of Texas gives them a lot of support to open wineries, the Go Texan stuff. We have nine appellations in Texas. The state's done a really good job to encourage that kind of wine tourism. You're a musician, obviously, do you have any other hobbies?

Anya: Oh, I have too many hobbies, for normal human being [laughs].

Justin: Any odd hobbies?

Anya: I don't know how odd but I'm a good cook. I like to cook. I had different hobbies in different periods of my life. I used to sew, I even used to sew for living when I was in Russia, and then somehow that was over, then, I was doing ceramic for a while. My latest hobby is interior design. I just remodeled my house, I'm still recuperating. I'm going to survive the next five years. It's like PTSD after a while, but it's very rewarding, and it's a great opportunity to exercise the interior design aspirations.

Justin: What's your favorite type of cuisine to cook?

Anya: Probably Italian more than the French I would say. I like clean products. I don't like to overwork whatever I work with [laughs]. We have this series of home concerts and for many years, I used to cater, pretty much myself so [laughs] that was interesting experience as well.

Justin: I keep saying I'm going to learn how to cook ossobuco, I still have not learned. I feel like it can't be that difficult, but I still haven't tried to really do it.

Anya: I'm sure it's not. I've done it once or twice.

Justin: What's your favorite Fiesta event?

Anya: I'm embarrassed to say, but I'm not very much into Fiesta.

Justin: Okay, but you've been to some events if you've been here since '91?

Anya: Yes, I've been to some events. The biggest event I've been to was the flower parade. I believe it was nice and interesting but overall, I'm not the crowd kind of girl. I like to stay quiet [laughs] which is weird because I run performing arts organisation [laughs].

Justin: I'm not a big crowd person either. Have you been to the Arts fair at the Southwest School of Arts?

Anya: Yes, I have and I love that school.

Justin: If you get there early, the event's great. It's not packed, by four or five, it starts getting pretty packed but early on it's great. It's one of my, if not my favorite event. You're a classically-trained musician, you're obviously into classical music, but what do you listen to in your car? Do you have guilty music pleasure?

Anya: I do, my favorite actually is Bossa Nova. I think in my previous life maybe I was Brazilian [laughs] I don't know [crosstalk].

Justin: I didn't know, I thought you'd say rap or something.

[laughter]

Anya: No, I didn't go that far yet. Bossa Nova touches some strings in me I didn't know existed.

Justin: I think that's fair. We've touched on it but you're a classically-trained musician. You've toured all over the world is my understanding, talk to me about you come from a family of musicians. Give us a little background of how you got into music in such a sort of in-depth way?

Anya: I was born and raised in Soviet Union, for the starters. My father was the violinist in Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra all his life. My mother is a violinist as well and she was a renowned teacher in Russia, as well as she played in the musical theaters in the orchestras. As far as I remember myself, I was always backstage in an orchestra or in a symphony, so that was really not a matter of choice for me to become a musician.

We have this going joke in the family that two violinists needed [unintelligible 00:09:44] that's why they took me to a music school. I started my piano lessons when I was five. Nobody asked if I want to do it. Nobody asked if I have talent. Nobody asked this, whatever. It was what I was supposed to be doing and that's what I did.

Justin: You hear everything about how it was grown up over there, but was that your education was music, or did you go to school all day like you would in America, and then music after school?

Anya: Yes. I went to public school just normal school in the morning. Then I went to music school three times a week since it was socialism, things were costing next to nothing, practically free. I had my piano lessons twice a week. I also had [unintelligible 00:10:32] and choir and music theory and whatever. They really have that system there working well. That's why Russia is still producing enormous amount of fabulous musicians.

Justin: How long was your father with the Moscow Philharmonic?

Anya: For 45 years.

Justin: Wow. That's a pretty competitive thing, right, to become--

Anya: Oh yes. I think he got there. He played auditions for like 10 times to get in the orchestra. That was very competitive. That was a totally different life than what normal Soviet people would experience because he was traveling all the time with the orchestrate at a time when we lived in a closed country, nobody knew anything about the West. It was pre-internet time. You remember that time?

Justin: Yes.

Anya: He had seen the entire world, really, where majority of Russians only saw what they've been shown on TV.

Justin: Did you live in Moscow?

Anya: Yes, we lived in Moscow.

Justin: Did you get to travel with him when you were a kid or did y'all have to stay put?

Anya: No, we had to stay put. I know for Americans it's really hard to understand, but it was impossible to travel or to leave the country or nothing because you needed exit visa. Now I think Russians only need entrance visa to the country they go to all the time. I have this funny story. I don't know how funny, it's funny now. When I was a teenager, my mother was going to go to Bulgaria for vacation. She wanted to take me with her and it was part of the group too. It was not like you're just going wild to the wild West and stuff.

In order for her to take me, I needed to get permission from the college I was in. The college called me to the meeting of a communist leadership, and I was not really into communist, more politics in general at the time. They asked me why I'm not member of the [unintelligible 00:12:31], which was the step on the way to. I said, "Well, I wasn't invited." They thought that it was politically not savvy answer and they did not sign my papers and I've never went to Bulgaria. The first country I came to actually was United States when I was 29, before that I never left Russia.

Justin: It's funny hearing you went to vacation in Bulgaria because it's not known as a grand vacation destination these days, but [unintelligible 00:13:00] limited right?

Anya: Bulgari actually has-- I've never been to Bulgaria to this day, but I've heard that they have beautiful beaches and the sea. For Soviets, that was the place to go at the time. I was not even able to do that because, at the time, I didn't know how to say right things in the right time. I made a lot of progress since then.

Justin: Even though it was within the iron curtain, as we called it, even though it was within that, you'll still had to get special permission to travel within?

Anya: Yes. [unintelligible 00:13:31]

Justin: I went to law school with a guy who's from Bulgaria and his parents hid under a raft and floated down a river to get out of Bulgaria and they're Americans now. It was a wild story he told me about his parents, different time. Were you there when the wall fell?

Anya: No. I was already in the United States. I came to US with my ex-husband and my son, in exchange program. That was the first time I left Russia and it was '89. The wall fell in '91. We were driving from Illinois in the car to San Antonio when we already were moving here and then the car we were listening, the reports from Moscow were like shooters were on the roofs, and gangs were coming down the streets. I remember there was absolutely surreal feeling.

Justin: Was it emotional for you?

Anya: Yes. Although by now I've spent most of my life here already, I'm more American than Russian. Still, I grew up in that country, I know the culture, I know the people, and every time something goes wrong, I do take it personally.

Justin: At the time when the wall fell, you hadn't been here all that long?

Anya: No, I just came. I was worried about people, tanks in Moscow, I've never seen-- I only seen tanks on TV in my life. The streets where I went to school there were tanks, they were showing and talking, CNN was on the roof somewhere. It was still pretty bad. Now looking back, I believe it was a good thing that it happened, but that was pretty scary.

Justin: Tons of uncertainty too at that point. You became an accomplished pianist while you were in Russia or the Soviet Union at the time. Talk to me, you went to school for piano, but then did you, at some point break from schooling and just take up piano, or was it all school, all piano until you were done?

Anya: The system there is like you go to public school and then you enter what's here would considered to be a magnet school or college from 15 to 19, so I did that. Then there's master degree, which is five years in Russia, so I did that. Then there's doctorate separately. I did everything up to my doctorate and then we immigrated to United States.

I did doctorate later, already after I'd been in the United States for a while. I did it in Russia mainly because I chickened out, I didn't think my English would be good enough to go through doctorate here at the time, so I went back and did doctorate there.

Justin: Some of the stuff provided by Rudy, who's a mutual friend of ours and a PR extraordinaire in this city who could be, he's just so calm about it. He's so good at what he does. Some of the stuff he told me was you did a lot of touring around the world yourself as a pianist. Was that in your Soviet time or was that once you were in the United States?

Anya: That was once I was already in the United States. In Soviet Union still, I lived at a time where things were not possible. The only way pianists could go to the West if they take part in a competition or something, that has to be sanctioned by the government as well.

Justin: Was there a real fear that if they let y'all go that y'all were just not coming back?

Anya: I think so, yes. My dad traveled with his orchestra and they always had couple of KGB guys with them.

Justin: Is that right?

Anya: Absolutely, yes. They knew they probably carried a little something in their pockets, but they were young KGB dudes, orchestra had 50 people, so maybe like five to seven KGB guys.

Justin: I assume there'll be in part of the Moscow Philharmonic meant that he was provided some creature comforts that normal citizens were not. I doubt he was having to stand in the bread line because that was a pride of the Soviet Union, wasn't it, so they were probably taken care of pretty good?

Anya: I think that the main difference was that they were able to travel and see the world. They also were able to bring things like where I was telling the story to my friends, they can believe it here. If you see the line, you'll go to the end of the line. When you get closer, you'll find that what is it they selling? Then whatever it is they selling and no matter what size it is, you just buy it.

He was traveling, he was bringing clothes and little souvenirs. I tried Coca-Cola for the first time when I was like 13. There was no Coca-Cola in Russia, you can imagine. There was some privileges in that. Also, it was a wonderful life. He loved his work. He loved music, he loved orchestra. I think he was a happy man. He just passed away two years ago.

Justin: The stories he has I'm sure were just incredible. You came over, how old were you when you came to the...

Judge Monique Diaz, 150th District Court Judge

Justin Hill — Wed, 17 Feb 2021 05:30:00 -0600

Judge Diaz is still in her first term as an elected district court judge, but she is already making her mark on creating new systems to address domestic violence. If you enjoyed the episode with Gary Slutkin, you will enjoy hearing about this innovative approach to domestic violence.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

[applause]

All right. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, today's guest is Judge Monique Diaz, the 150th Judicial District elected judge here in Bexar County, thanks judge for being here.

Monique Diaz: Hi Justin. Thank you for having me, that was quite the introduction.

Justin: Well, we put a lot of work into it. Judge Diaz and I go way back long before either of us were really more than just trying to find our way in the legal, and showing up at political fundraisers for one reason or another, and the lowest of the low people on the totem pole at that point. We met a long time ago and we've stayed in touch and now you're a judge, and I kind of know how to find the courthouse now so we've grown up a little bit.

Monique: We sure have. It's been quite a while and there's no need to really find the courthouse anymore because everything is on Zoom so-

Justin: This is true.

Monique: -you can find it at the comfort of your home, Justin.

Justin: Unfortunately, some of the smaller counties though don't really like the Zoom and there are some places that are requiring people to show up.

Monique: I have heard that that's the case and it's my understanding that under the Supreme Court has issued a series of orders that have helped guide our decisions, in whether we can have in-person hearings or not. It's my understanding that some counties can do that, if they have a plan that's been pre-approved and if their local county officials decide to proceed with that. Here in Bexar County, we're not quite ready for that yet.

Justin: Well, there was a federal court case in Sherman, Texas that got going and last I heard, they had traced it out to 40 people that had gotten sick from just that trial. They canceled it midway and then just, it went gangbusters.

Monique: I saw that Justin, and that's one of the reasons why we're being really careful here in Bexar County. We do have a plan that was approved by the Supreme Court already however, our local administrative judge and our local officials are not ready to proceed yet. They're really relying primarily on the Metro Health recommendations on when it's safe for us to all proceed.

Now, we have plexiglass up in our courtrooms and we're ready to go otherwise, but I think they're looking at things like-- They have some a matrix where they look at the positivity rate, the death rate, and the amount of hospital beds, so that's part of what we're looking to. I don't see us being ready by the tentative April-1st deadline that you may have heard about.

Justin: It's good that we have elected officials paying attention to science in their decision-making. We're going to get to the courthouse here in a second, I want to ask you some questions about that, but just some of the-- We go through general getting to know you, this is San Antonio podcast, San Antonio stuff.

Judge, what are you doing to decompress during all this, because honestly it, at first I think we were all like, “Oh, let's make a sourdough bread,” and now we're watching an insurrection? It's taken on a life of its own, I wish I had a better way to decompress, but instead I've just put on a few pounds but I'll lose them. What have you been doing to stay sane?

Monique: Well, I also put on the COVID-19 as I like to fondly call it.

Justice: Nice.

Monique: I was one of those people that got in line to buy a bicycle and I've been trying to enjoy the outdoors as much as possible, I ride my bike wherever I can. I actually sold my car because I [chuckles] [crosstalk] so little. Besides that, I've been working really hard but I've been enjoying podcasts like yours, trying to catch up on reading and puzzles. I'm a little obsessed with puzzles, they've been a good way to decompress.

Justin: Do you live close enough to the courthouse to ride?

Monique: Well, I don't like to comment on where I live Mr. Hill, but [chuckles] I do like to ride around the city wherever I can. My partner and I have a car, so when I need one or I need to get [crosstalk].

Justin: You have access to a car, okay.

Monique: [laughs].

Justine: I tell people I ride to the office and I do ride to the office, I just don't tell them how close it is because it's way less impressive when I tell them that.

Monique: [laughs].

Justin: I've gone bike-crazy. I bought an electric bike, it kind of got forced upon me, which is really awesome but I also did the Peloton thing and now I'm in that never-ending trap of, “It'll be delivered in two weeks” and then it keeps getting pushed so I don't have it yet.

Monique: Oh, man. Well.

Justin: We're in quarantine, we don't get to go out. You and I have both always been social people, we'd see each other out and about at whatever's going on in town. Have you gotten into any of the Netflix stuff or any of the shows, any of the streaming stuff?

Monique: I have binge-watched about everything you can binge-watch, I've maxed out on that and circled back around the shows that I watched in the past even, but I’ve really been trying to get away from the streaming and really trying to spend more time outdoors. I went fishing this past weekend,-

Justin: Wow.

Monique: -popped my rainbow trout first time I went fly fishing. I'm really trying to stay away from that, and to try to keep a positive outlook-- A lot of those Netflix shows and the news nowadays can really add to the heaviness that we're experiencing [chuckles].

Justin: Yes, I agree.

Monique: There's not a lot of things to watch out there. I did watch The Mandalorian lately, I've binge-watched that, and that was a fun life-hugging show to watch on Disney+ that I highly recommend.

Justin: I've just never got into any of the Star Wars stuff, but somebody told me I'd still like The Mandalorianeven if I did not get into it.

Monique: I am in the same boat.

Justin: Part of my COVID-19 was that early on, “Support local, go to your favorite restaurants and do takeout, let's help them stay afloat.” I could float now because of it, but have you had any favorite places for takeout or, that you've trended into during COVID?

Monique: Unfortunately, so many folks in the industry have really been affected, a lot of my favorite places I've watched shut down, or have to scale back and that's been really hard to watch. I am still trying to support all of the local businesses, at least through delivery, contactless delivery, I'm really supporting that. In terms of specific restaurant, I have specific genres of food that I like. I really like Thai food, so anywhere that I can get some good Thai food delivered to me, I'm really enjoying that. I'm trying to eat a little bit healthier to take care of this COVID-19 issue though, as in my pounds. [laughs]

Justin: I live very close to Thai-D, so I eat there more than I probably should. You're born and raised in San Antonio, right?

Monique: Yes, born and raised here but part Puerto Rican and Dominican,

Justin: Well, you should be good at this question. I always ask people what their favorite hidden gems are in the city, sort of the off-the-beaten-path places. Nurenberg gave me Denman Estate Park or something I'd never heard of. I thought I knew San Antonio okay but I've been put back in my seat from some of them. What are some of your favorite places in town, maybe off the beaten path that you have somebody in town say,"Well, you really got to check this out"?

Monique: Oh man. I know it sounds really cliché, but the extension of the River Walk. People have not enjoyed going on the south end of the River Walk and going all the way to the missions. It is so different from what it looked like growing up which was unusable. That's really been something that I encourage people and I try to take folks to go enjoy. There's some really great gems on the Southside and the Westside, some good restaurants that I try to take people to. I still do take people to the St Mary's Strip and the Pearl and you have to have that experience to see how San Antonio has been developing.

I grew up more so on the Northside so I've been enjoying learning what else there is available. I'm experiencing the city almost as a newcomer as well because it's changed so drastically over the past decade or so, the decade of downtown has been really beautiful to watch. Enjoying watching that development has been wonderful, just taking people on things that used to be touristy, things to do that are now things I think locals can really appreciate just as much as tourists can.

Justin: Japanese Tea Garden was always one for me that I thought, “This is--,” And if I take people there, they're always still just blown away by it. It's just a unique, weird place tucked over by the zoo.

Monique: That's a very good one. I'm glad you mentioned that, some of my favorites.

Justin: What's your favorite Fiesta event?

Monique: Coronation. [chuckles]

Justin: I assumed you were going to say that.

Monique: I used to be able to participate. I was on stage and made a fool of myself quite a few times for a good cause before I took the bench but-

Justin: You can't do anymore?

Monique: As a judge, it's frowned upon. We're not allowed to solicit funds on behalf of other organizations. There's a perception that that could be considered that, that's why I don't participate anymore while I'm on the bench, but support it however I can otherwise.

Justin: I did see Kevin Wolff get on there and make a joke about getting a DUI, but I guess he wants listening funs, so that would be a little bit different.

Monique: Well, he's not a judge. I don't think he has that prohibition. That's specific to judges.

Justin: Okay. It's not elected officials, it's judged-specific.

Monique: It's judge-specific, yes. We can't lend our name to causes like that.

Justin: We're going to talk about a cause you're involved with, but that'll be an interesting question about whether you can be involved in that. You became an elected official, an elected judge in Bexar County in, I guess 2018 elections, sworn in, in 2019?

Monique: That's correct.

Justin: You're halfway into your four-year term?

Monique: I am, yes. I have to start running again this summer.

Justin: Okay. What made you decide you wanted to run for judge, district judge at that?

Monique: Well, when I decided to run was right around the time that former President Trump was elected. I, along with a lot of other folks I think just-- I felt a true sense of helplessness in terms of what was happening at the national level, the political discourse that we were all experiencing and the trickle-down effect that had on families, children here in our community. I personally looked around me and thought I wanted to do something about this more than what I was able to accomplish through my law practice and my community service.

For me, running for judge was an opportunity to show people in my community that you can be treated with dignity and respect no matter your race, or how much money is in your pocket, or who you love. I think that's really critical for-- Especially at the courthouse amongst our judiciary, for us to understand that that is what our elected officials should really exhibit and especially our judges. I saw it as an opportunity to show people that respect, and I love the law and I love community service.

You know that I've always been very giving with my time on the side and done a lot of things for free, much like you're doing with this show as a service to our community. I saw it as a chance to make a bigger impact for the folks here in San Antonio. It's where I was born and raised, so wanted to give back to the city that's given so much to me.

Justin: You were always involved in politics as long as I have known you, then you were a practicing lawyer and trended more into the practicing lawyer. There's lots of different places you can go in elected office as a lawyer. Is there a reason you chose a district court bench over maybe a county court, or a criminal bench, or any of the other options?

Monique: Yes. That's a good question. For me, that was where I had the most experience. I had a general law practice, so I did criminal law but I did more civil law than anything. Before I took the bench, I had a law firm that represented small cities, governmental entities, did a lot of practice in Civil District Courts. I did a lot of family law. That was my home, what I was most familiar with, but having had that experience on the criminal side has really been helpful on the civil bench, and also having had a general law practice. There's not much that comes across my bench that I haven't experienced or dealt with in some form or fashion as an attorney. It's been really helpful for me.

Justin: You decided to run for office, the one thing I always hear people complain about is you got to raise a bunch of money and that's an overwhelming piece of the campaign, but outside of raising money and shaking hands and giving your stump speech, anything surprising about the campaign or actually becoming the candidate that you didn't expect?

Monique: Sure. You're right. I worked on the side of my law practice doing some consulting and fundraising for other people. It really made it a lot easier for me to raise money for myself, to know what the basics were required to run a successful campaign. I wasn't quite ready to talk about myself in the way that you really have to be so self-promoting. I was used to promoting other people not necessarily myself. One of the things that when people ask me that are interested in running for judge, "What should I do to start off with?" One of the things that surprised me was I had to sit down and figure out, “What is my story? What am I about? What is my vision?”

Those really overarching questions were things that I had not thought through for myself or for other candidates before. That was a really interesting learning experience about myself. Reaching out to my family members and asking them what their opinion is of me and what they thought I was going to be when I grew up, and what experiences they feel molded me into who I am today. I learned a lot about myself.

Justin: I've been through quite a few election cycles here and you ran a very different judicial campaign. You pulled from your friends in the industry, you threw--I think it'd be fair to say some of your events were almost backyard parties catching up with old friends. It was a different way of running a campaign, especially for something that's always serious and austere like a judicial race. Was that just a product of who you are in your social circles, or did you make a conscious effort that you were going to run a different campaign to try to draw in more people?

Monique: I'd say it was both, Justin. I think for everyone that runs for any office, it's really important to tap into your circles, your friends, your family and make the most of what you have available. I did make a conscious effort to try to bring more people into the fold that may not otherwise think that who you elect for your judge matters. I wanted to bring in folks that don't usually get involved in judicial races to help them understand the importance of knowing who your judges are, voting for your judges. I'm confident that we had an impact on a different base of people that never voted for a judge in their life before, never knew why it mattered. Now, hopefully do and will continue to vote in judicial races going forward.

Justin: It was definitely a different crowd of people that were at your events. It just really was. It was the crowd I would see at Fiesta events or at social events, but you got people excited about a judicial race. It was fun to see, it was a different set of events and it was a different thing to enjoy when some of these events are-- You've been there. They're like-

Monique: You've got to take people who want to go.

Justin: No, I think that's right. There was one event on the near Eastside, right outside of the Pearl, it was in a backyard.

Monique: I did have an actual backyard paella panchanga, Paella took off where we had a King Pelican playing for the pachanga part of it. If we were not about 110 °, it would have been a little bit more enjoyable [laughs].

Justin: I was going to say I went with Tim Maloney and I just remember watching his suit gets wetter and wetter as the day went on. We didn't stay super long, but it was a great event. Somewhere along that time you've been on the court, Judge Sakai put in head of, or spearheaded the effort to create, and it's a mouthful. The commission on collaborative strategies to prevent and combat and respond to domestic violence. I butchered that, but he became the spearheading main guy on it. He asked you to be a co-chair as best I could tell with Judge [unintelligible 00:18:07]

Monique: Almost correct. We like to refer to it as just the Collaborative Commission on Domestic Violence shorthand, because that is a mouthful. My co-chair on behalf of the City of San Antonio because this was created as a joint city-county collaboration for the first time ever. We had leaders in our community in the area of domestic violence spearheaded by the city and the county. I was the representative and the coach here on behalf of the county.

On behalf of the city, my co-chair was Dr. Colleen Bridger, who you may recall has been our Metro Health Director.

Dr. David Lesch 2.0

Justin Hill — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 05:30:00 -0600

Dr. Lesch was one of our earliest and most popular guests. We could not cover it all in one hour so he rejoined us for some additional discussions of what he has been working on lately. This includes local elections, hostage negotiations and upcoming publications.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello, and bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that makes San Antonio great, and unique, and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

[music]

Justin: All right, welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is our first repeat guest. You may remember he had a giggle fit last time, and said that he met Bashar al-Assad on a dating website. Dr. David Lesch from Trinity University. Thank you for being here.

Dr. David Lesch: I can't talk about that. [laughs]

Justin: Before this, I said I was going to ask him things, because lately in our friendship, he has become very self-important in telling us things he can and cannot discuss in public settings.

David: I can't talk about that either.

Justin: Yes, I know.

David: I'm going to be a great guest, I can't talk about anything. Why the hell you got me on here? [crosstalk]

Justin: Most of this could just me being like, "Hey, tell me about," insert a thing or a person, and then having you turn red as you laugh and say you can't talk about it.

David: Exactly.

Justin: Like our previous conversation about your telephone, I could ask you about that, and you also would have to say, "I can't talk about that." [crosstalk]

David: Well, they're listening on the telephone right now. [crosstalk]

Justin: I think they are.

David: Probably are. Whoever they are. [crosstalk]

Justin: Probably going to advertise-- [crosstalk] I don't know.

David: Here, I am talking about it, so you already got me to--

Justin: On most of my episodes, I normally go through like a top 10 list and what are you into and what do you like. I generally know that about you, but what have you been up to during the shutdown?

David: Writing my next book.

Justin: Yes, what's the title? [laughs] It's not ambitious at all. What was it?

David: It's the history of the Middle East from the Prophet Muhammad to the present.

Justin: 78,000 pages long.

David: I'm through five pages, man. At this rate, in the 23rd century, I will be done.

Justin: I asked you how you broke down what to include and what not to include, and you use the word triage. [crosstalk]

David: It's a historical triage. Absolutely, I've done that before. You just can't go over every little thing, or else it would be 78,000 pages. This will be about 350-400 pages. Oxford University Press will be putting it out.

Justin: It'll be $250.

David: Only for you. Only the hard back copy. [crosstalk]

Justin: You had one book that was approachable and at normal price. [crosstalk]

David: That's only if I don't autograph it. If I autograph it, it's down to $2 or $3.

Justin: I paid $7.80 for your Syria book on Amazon. Does that make you feel bad?

David: [crosstalk] Oh, used? The thing is, you got it used. [crosstalk] It was only out for like a month. It's like, "Okay, who read it and sent it back?" or, "Who didn't read it and just sent it back?"

Justin: What a jerk friend, "I'll buy your book." [crosstalk]

David: Yes, exactly. I was like, "Geez, maybe I can make some money off of this," [laughs] because it's like $15.

Justin: Is that the only book you're working on now?

David: I think one at a time is enough, thank you very much.

Justin: No, I think you said you were working on more than one.

David: Sometimes I am, but this time no. This is focusing on that. I've got a lot of writing done since I'm at home more often than not, not traveling as much, obviously. I'm halfway through. It should be published in 2022. I'll finish the manuscript first draft by the summer. It is for the interest of general public. I'm trying to write it at that level, which is why there's a historical triage, which is why I'm not going into the details of this, and the other thing that would bore people and put them to sleep like my other books, [laughs] this actually will be interesting.

Justin: Between your upcoming book and Tom Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem, which one do you think will be better?

David: Oh, god. Are you kidding me? [crosstalk] No. I like Tom, he's a good guy.

Justin: He wrote one really good book.

David: It's a good book, and I read it, and it's not bad. It's based on a first person experiences.

Justin: That was my first book to read about the Middle East, and it got me interested.

David: This is why you're so tendentious and skewed and prejudice and-- [crosstalk]

Justin: This was in the freshman year of college.

David: Yes. That's the only book, in fact, you read in college, I heard.

Justin: No. I read quite a few in college.

David: Law books, but nothing else [laughs] .

Justin: No. In law school, I read law books. What kind of jerk would say something [crosstalk]

David: That's the thing, I have not read a novel since college.

Justin: Grisham?

David: No. Nothing, because I read for fun books about World War I, or the Civil War, or some other country, just because I like to accumulate knowledge and learn about these other things. Actually, I've read some historical novels that I have assigned for my class, just so they have something other than read and dry academic material, like [crosstalk] books.

Justin: You've been writing a book. You keep quite the social calendar that I have learned to know. Where have you been your haunts? It used to be J-Prime, but you have a new haunt.

David: I'm not quite the social calendar. [crosstalk]

Justin: Oh, god, I went to one of them. I thought it was going to be me, you, and Tim, cutting up and having a good time. Instead, it's you holding court with 14 people.

David: [unintelligible 00:04:37] we had the whole restaurant, we were socially distanced. [crosstalk]

Justin: It's just not than fun. You can't get your butt going with a group of 14.

David: No, because I can't rely on you and Tim's actually showing up.

Justin: When we say we're going to be there. [crosstalk]

David: No. You are so unreliable.

Justin: Hold on.

David: You are so unreliable.

Justin: Tim, maybe.

David: Yes, but he was driving. [crosstalk]

Justin: If I say I'm going to be there, I'm there.

David: I invite all these other people in case you guys don't come, but you guys actually came. [crosstalk]

Justin: I mean, I just usually tell you no.

David: It was a good time. [crosstalk] You just kept moving around away from people [laughs] .

Justin: Oh, god. I felt like they weren't being safe. [crosstalk]

David: Only half of us got COVID, only half of us. I think that's a successful social outing.

Justin: I appreciate you're already making COVID jokes.

[laughter]

David: It's terrible, I know.

Justin: Okay. Where have you been going? What's the name of that spot?

David: J-Prime?

Justin: No, the other one.

David: No? The other one, Frida's.

Justin: Okay, that's right.

Dr. Davis: Frida's. A Mexican restaurant bar, it's in Stone Oak as well. A good friend, Fernando Davila, opened it up.

Justin: I thought it was Davil.

David: One or the other.

Justin: I don't think there's an A at the end.

David: Okay. I guess he's not such a good friend because I don't remember his last name.

[laughter]

David: Fernando is a great guy, incredible musician. [crosstalk]

Justin: We're recording this at 2:00 PM, sober. I just want to be clear about this. [crosstalk]

David: Well, not quite, not for me. Justin Hila [laughs] who is a very good friend of mine is interviewing me right now.

Justin: Anywhere else you've been going? Any other spots, new spots out?

David: I went to Perry's, took my son out for his birthday on January 22nd because he likes that. Just about every places I go, they're doing a good job in socially distancing. Now, with this new variant out, I'm going to be I think a little bit more careful [crosstalk] .

Justin: Which variants are you the most scared of? South Africa, South America, or Britain?

David: Can I get back to you on that? [crosstalk] I haven't studied the South African one.

Justin: I think I'm a little scared of the South America. [crosstalk]

David: South America, just because--

Justin: I think. Did you read about what happened in Manaus? Is that how you say it?

David: Who?

Justin: In Brazil.

David: What happened?

Justin: Is that how you say it? Manaus? Manauss?

David: I don't know what you're talking about.

Justin: There was a city in Brazil that had been completely wiped out by-- [crosstalk]

David: It is Brazil, it's Bolasario, or wherever the hell his name. He's worse than Trump in terms of that. [crosstalk]

Justin: Bolsonaro.

David: Yes, whatever, who is not taking it seriously, and so forth.

Justin: I know, but they had an outbreak. [crosstalk]

David: Not taking it seriously, and cutting down the Amazon rainforest. That's two strikes against them

Justin: I'm trying to give you some information about international affairs, and you just won't accept that I know something you don't know.

David: You don't even know the name of the town.

Justin: Manaus.

David: Manaus, what? Is that a city? [laughs]

Justin: All I think about is Muppets, Manaus, Manaus. All right, you've been writing a book. Same haunts, you really haven't branched out, unfortunately. Nothing to add there.

David: It's places I know, places I trust that I can go, that they take-- [crosstalk]

Justin: Did you just go to Pakistan?

David: No, but I may.

Justin: You were planning on it not long ago. Have you done any international travel as part of your job?

David: No.

Justin: I guess you can't do diplomacy and stuff like that by Zoom. [crosstalk]

David: Or via Zoom, right. [laughs] I can't talk about that either. Well, we're really getting far, aren't we?

Justin: Yes.

David: No, you can't do that stuff. At first, I didn't miss it because I was doing so much, and it was like, "Oh, man. I can just sit back and enjoy," but now I miss it. I want to get on a plane and go to Europe. I want to get on a plane and go to Middle East. Hopefully, this thing develops as it has been developing, and I'll go to Islamabad in Pakistan soon. I know you've been there. [crosstalk]

Justin: You might be the only person that's sitting around right now, pining for the days to go to Islamabad.

David: I'm not pining for Islamabad. I'm pining to get on a plane and go internationally. This is all that's offered me, well okay, fine.

Justin: All right.

David: I'm signing up for it.

Justin: All I thought of was-- [crosstalk]

David: I heard Islamabad is a beautiful city.

Justin: Sure, there are parts of it.

David: I won't be going around-- My contact there said that Pakistan takes the COVID-19 situation about seriously as Texas. I said, "Okay [laughs] I guess I'm going to get it there when I go there." As he said, look, the Pakistanis, they're taking certain precautions, but life goes on. They've been through these wars. They've been through Al Qaeda being in the midst Osama Bin Laden being there, and all the stuff with India. This is nothing. He said, "What are you Texans worried about?" I said, "Well, there is the Alamo." [laughs] Come on.

Justin: [crosstalk] This is self-inflicted wounds. I wanted to talk to you about a few other things because last time we ran out of time. You sent me an article. It's funny, you like to send me articles like, "Talk to me about this thing that makes me sound awesome." We might talk about that.

David: Why would I send you something that makes me sound like an idiot?

Justin: Well, I mean, I want to talk to you about some things that had not come to [crosstalk] fruition yet, but that you have been--

David: I still need to convince you I'm awesome. You're not entirely convinced. I keep trying.

Justin: Well, because I know you.

David: Even making up these articles and stories.

Justin: Let's talk about Austin Tice. I found that to be an interesting story. There's an article that you partly wrote about that situation over there. Why are you looking at me like that? This is public information. This is an interesting story.

David: It's a heart rendering story.

Justin: There's a Texas connection to this, right?

David: Yes. He and his family are from Houston. Austin was a contract photojournalist at the time with the Washington Post. In August 2012, he went into Syria, and he was taken captive. I've been working with his parents closely since that time to do whatever I can to help with my contacts in Syria. For those of you listening don't know, I'm a specialist on Syria, and I've been to Syria quite a bit. As Justin referred to in the beginning, I got to know the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, not over eharmony, but through-- [crosstalk]

Justin: That's what you said.

David: It is what I said, yes. Just through contacts and so forth. Whatever I can do to help in terms of advice and whatever. I just feel for them so much. We have every indication that Austin is still alive. There have been a million different reports on who is holding him. We're just trying to do our best to work with various groups, including the Syrian government, to try to find him and bring him home.

Suzanne Taranto-Etheredge, CEO of Culinaria

Justin Hill — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 05:30:00 -0600

Suzanne Taranto-Etheredge is the CEO and President of Culinaria. She has been deeply involved in the San Antonio food scene and being an advocate for improving the visibility and notoriety of it for a decade. She has a lot to say about our city and the scene.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonioan and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, today's guest is Suzanne Taranto-Etheredge. Suzanne is the president and CEO of Culinaria. Culinaria is a 501(c)(3) committed to promoting San Antonio's area food scene, making it a better food destination and wine destination. They're involved with what everybody has experienced in Restaurant Week, that's something they put together. I learned today I'll have other things like what do you all call them? Food tours.

Suzanne Taranto-Etheredge: Yes. We have a lot, [unintelligible 00:01:00] food trail.

Justin: I didn't know that, I thought that was super cool. I was looking into it. I learned some stuff about our food scene today and I thought I was probably pretty good. I'm the guy that like all the North-side guys who have wives and kids will call and say, "We have a date night, where do I go?" There was a time I was good at that. I'm not as good at that anymore.

Suzanne, thank you for being here. Thank you for joining us. I know it's the middle of Restaurant Week, so it's probably your busiest time of the year.

Suzanne: It is a little busy, but it's a different kind of busy now with COVID protocols in place. It's been very interesting to adapt and change and pivot in the middle of our world. It's never too late to eat out, that's the good news.

Justin: Well, I was looking at the Restaurant Week menus, most of them have to-go options, which is the first time I've ever seen that. We're going to get into Restaurant Week here in a second, but I'm going to do what I do with all of my guests and go through some top 10 questions with you being part of the food scene and the wine scene, yours are going to be a little bit different. You're not going to hurt anybody's feelings so I'm going to ask you some questions and let's start.

Suzanne: You never know, Justin. There's time, you don't know.

Justin: Everybody's thin-skinned these days.

Suzanne: [chuckles]

Justin: I had Stefan Bowers on here and I really appreciated how he was not concerned with hurting anybody's feelings. Let's take inspiration from that today. Starting off, what brought you to San Antonio? How long have you lived here?

Suzanne: Oh, my gosh, a job brought me to San Antonio. I had a choice to live in either Austin or San Antonio. Everyone was cra-- They couldn't believe I chose San Antonio, but I knew the minute that I got here because I was doing a lot of things strategically statewide for another organization, and so I had the choice where I wanted to go. The minute I got to San Antonio, I just was in love. I've been here for gosh, over 15 years now. It's flown by like crazy.

I was just the child when I got here. It's been a really fun ride. San Antonio, more than any other city just, made me feel at home. People here are so welcoming and so gracious, and I just loved it. I'm a Texas girl. I'm from North Texas so it just was a really great fit.

I'm from Canadian, Texas.

Justin: You're from Panhandle North Texas.

Suzanne: I'm from the Panhandle. Absolutely right.

Justin: I'm from North Texas, you're from the Panhandle. My dad was born in the Mineral Wells area, he was raised in Borger.

Suzanne: Got you.

Justin: I grew up in the Wichita Falls area, which still falls, I think is more like traditional North Texas.

Suzanne: Yes. You get it, that North. I really love San Antonio just because everyone was so friendly and kind, and it just feels San Antonio still, to this day, feels smaller to me and I like that. I liked that we get to all be interconnected and [unintelligible 00:03:52].

Justin: Did you go to Texas Tech?

Suzanne: Myself-- Two of my siblings did, but I did not.

Justin: Where'd you go?

Suzanne: I went to A&M.

Justin: Okay, I went to A&M.

Suzanne: Technically, I started at A&M and then I finished at West Texas A&M.

Justin: Well, everybody regionalized as where they end up going to school. You moved here in what? 2015?

Suzanne: Do what?

Justin: I mean, 2005 is that about when you moved here?

Suzanne: Yes.

Justin: All right. Where are your favorite spots in town to eat now? I won't say universally, but now where? I know even though you're culinary, you got to share your love.

Suzanne: It's literally picking my favorite children, so I'll go with pandemic. Right? I'm loving the to-go option from Meadow. They have this great-- They've done a really great job since the pandemic started and I don't want to cook, let's be clear. I'm not into cooking, I don't want to do it, I go out for a reason. They did a really good job bringing everything to you and they have free delivery within a mile.

I thought they did such a great job like they have half-priced burger night and then they do half-priced wine nights so I would just order all my wine on Tuesday and get my burgers on Thursday, it was great. I've been loving that. I love Jardeen, I think great thoughtful new place added into the scene. I just went to Rebelle this weekend, I love Rebelle.

I eat everywhere though, so it's really not fair. I love El Jarro for good Mexican food. I eat everywhere, so I really love all kinds of cuisines. I start popping around the genre wide and then I love Tre at the museum. I think that's a really cool spot. I love everything. This is the hardest question that I ever have to answer.

Justin: Well, they're going to get worse. El Jarro was in your neighborhood, right?

Suzanne: Yes. During the pandemic, I stayed closer as I assume most people did. We're seeing a lot of people who are staying closer to where they live now, because that's where they're working as well and so I found it really easy to somewhere that's close to me when I'm Zooming until six o'clock or whatever and just have my food show up. I was really liking that.

Justin: I have found myself going to Playland more than I should and I also found out Sichuan house will basically deliver anywhere.

Suzanne: They'll take it anywhere. I love that place, it's so good. I think it's so good.

Justin: I live super close to Tidy, so I get to cheat with it. Have you been there?

Suzanne: [unintelligible 00:06:39]. Who hasn't been there?

Justin: Well, a lot of people still haven't and you cannot wear tank tops in there. Just as an aside-

Suzanne: [chuckles]

Justin: -you have to have sleeves on your shirt, which is surprising considering the decor.

Suzanne: You need to dress appropriately to go to Tidy, exactly.

Justin: Well, I have a pool, so there's been moments that at four o'clock, after a day in the sun, having some drinks, everybody's like, "Let's go to Tidy," and the gas station next door sells T-shirts, just in case you need to know. What are your favorite spots for drinks right now? Cocktails, wine, whatever.

Suzanne: Well, I like them all. I wish that bars were open, that would be a great place to start. Friendly Spot is always a great place. Really, I'm sticking to patios right now, I'm trying to do my part to be COVID-free. I like to drink all over town too. I like to drink at Pearl. They all have really-- I really like the people watching at The Pearl right now in particular for a shop for all of my mask so I see what everybody else is wearing and then I go and order a billion masks after I see them walking around, but I love both Pica. Have you been to Best Quality Daughter? That's phenomenal.

Justin: I have not, I saw it though. Honestly, I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion, Hot Joy makes my tummy hurt, so I don't love Hot Joy. It's pretty heavy food. I loved the Granary so I will go though eventually.

Suzanne: Got you. I did love Granary, I'm going to miss that. I love Southtown, I love going to La Frite. I love that patio. I love South Alamode, so really everywhere again. Tick all the box.

Justin: The Pearl needs-- The people watching is great, but in that place where you can watch all the people on the lawn, there needs to be a cocktail bar that you can sit outside because there's really not.

Suzanne: Actually, I agree with you. I don't know why they haven't done that.

Justin: Yes, there's beer and wine, but if you want to have a cocktail-- Like you want to have a margarita and sit outside and watch people play with their dogs and whatever else they do. That's what I want to do and that's not an option yet. If that happens--

Suzanne: They don't have-- You need that in a plastic glass, even when walking everywhere.

Justin: You're allowed to walk around with drinks there?

Suzanne: Yes. You'll walk [unintelligible 00:08:51] but not many people want to drink their wine in a solo cup. Some people do. It's not bad, whatever.

Justin: I'm not above that. Next question, what are some of your favorite purveyors in town of either food or meats? We're now getting this industry in San Antonio that I think is a little bit beyond the normal consumer, but we have The Farmers Butcher. We have some of these specialty meat shops and we've got wineries and breweries here too that people don't know about. What are some of your favorite purveyors of the product?

Suzanne: Oh, gosh, I love Maverick. I love-- Really, what is that one that is right by Elm Creek? I can't think of the name. You're putting me on the spot, Justin, I can't remember it.

Justin: The one what?

Suzanne: The little book shop at Elm Creek and it's like they were so good because during the pandemic, they had stuff for everyone. It was great and nobody was thinking about it. You could pop into any of these meat shops when everybody else was going through chaos and ACB. You could just pop in there and they had all the meat where you couldn't buy it anywhere else. Gosh, it's going to drive me crazy.

Justin: Well, when you think about it--

Suzanne: Ask me another question and then I'll remember that-

Justin: You can tell us--

Suzanne: -and I'll shout it out.

Justin: Something we do with everybody is favorite hidden gems in the city. We're going to cover-- We've already covered beer and wine and all that. [crosstalk] Nuremberg pointed out there's Denman Estate Park. I'd never heard of it, looked it up, still haven't been, it's beautiful. It's a cool, off the beaten path local attraction.

Suzanne: I hadn't heard that either.

Justin: I hadn't either. Do you have anything like that in the city when you have friends that are like, "Anything we should check out?" The Botanical Garden's always one for me-

Suzanne: Botanical Garden.

Justin: -but also the Japanese Tea Garden is really great if you've never been.

Suzanne: I love Japanese Tea Garden. I love-- What is it called? Justin, I'm having a mental breakdown over here. I just can't even think of what I'm thinking of.

Justin: It's my hard [crosstalk] questions.

Suzanne: I don't know where Denman is though.

Justin: It's somewhere in the Northside-ish.

Suzanne: I love Botanical Gardens. I also love to go-- There are those great-- In the North right by-- In-between where La Cantera Resort is, there are those great trails through there and you get these beautiful views of the Hill Country, and they're just these walking trails and I love to take people there. That's one of my favorite spots.

Justin: On La Cantera Parkway?

Suzanne: Yes. Well, it's in-between the resorts. There's those two big resorts right there and if you go to either resort-- You don't have to go to resorts, but I always start there because I know where it is. You can just go on all those walking trails through there and it's beautiful.

Justin: I didn't know that.

Suzanne: It's really nice.

Justin: You've got a good one there.

Suzanne: I always feel that's a definite hidden gem.

Justin: Favorite dishes in San Antonio. For me, it's always--

Suzanne: Oh, my gosh.

Justin: At Cured at one point, he had a lamb in a puff pastry, and I don't know what it was called, but to me, that's still just one of the best things I've ever eaten in San Antonio.

Suzanne: I've never had that. I love-- At Botika, he has that sushi that's piled high with all the things and he puts this-- I think it's apple cider vinegar, but I'm not sure. They're soaked in them and he puts those on top and I am obsessed with that dish. I should know what it's called, but I don't, of course. Then I love-- Gosh, what else do I love? I'm trying to think of really weird things that I love all over town. I love Jason Dady does this great gluten-free bolognese that I love. I know gluten-free is weird but I do love it. It's so good. Then there is a bakery that does these beefed little tartlet things that I'm obsessed with those too.

Justin: Do you like--?

Suzanne: I like things everywhere.

Justin: Do you like pizza?

Suzanne: I love pizza.

Justin: Have you ever had Chicago's deep dish?

Suzanne: Yes.

Justin: At Chicago's on Blanco?

Suzanne: Yes.

Justin: Everybody I've fed that to is just blown away and they're like, "This is the best pizza I've ever had."

Suzanne: It's the best pizza in the world.

Justin: It's so good. That's also walking distance for me.

Suzanne: So good. Have you had to Trilogy? Have you had that? That's up in the North too.

Justin: No.

Suzanne: Have you had Trilogy? Everybody's raving about Trilogy. I haven't had it yet, but I'm hearing great things.

Justin: What is it? Pizza?

Suzanne: It's like dish pizza as well. They've got stiff competition, but we'll see.

Justin: I don't know if I'm considered Northside.

Suzanne: [inaudible 00:13:20] whatever.

Justin: South of 410, is that Northside? It's all--

Suzanne: South-- Yes, you're middle city. You're the middle of the city.

Justin: I'm of the people. What's your favorite junk food?

Suzanne: People. [laughs] Popcorn. I like caramel, I like chocolate, I like salt and vinegar. I like all the popcorn and chocolate. Any time, I'll take chocolate every day.

Justin: I'm a personal injury lawyer by trade and there is actually an injury called popcorn lung that popcorn workers-

Suzanne: Stop it.

Justin: -and people that eat too-- You would have to eat so much popcorn-- [crosstalk] I'm not shitting you.

Suzanne: You are lying. What are you talking about? You're just such a liar.

Justin: I swear.

Suzanne: Are you kidding me?

Justin: If you googled--

Suzanne: Have you had one of these cases? Have you had one of these cases?

Justin: I had one in San Antonio. If you Google-- [crosstalk] It was for a lady who worked at one of those popcorn stores in the mall.

Suzanne: What?

Justin: It only affects people that either are around making popcorn all the time or you-- There are some consumer cases because there are some people that are out there and will eat six bags of popcorn a day. It's the vapors that cause-- It's called bronchiolitis obliterans. It actually can be caused by other things, but people that are around aerosolized, fake butter flavoring can get a degenerative lung condition.

Suzanne: What?

Justin: Eat popcorn, don't breathe--

Suzanne: Well, now I'm giving up pop. I'm super depressed now. What's happening?

Justin: Well, don't breathe the vapors.

Suzanne: Don't breathe-- Okay. I'll try not to.

Justin: You know the old commercials, they would pop it open--

Suzanne: Is that a real case?

Justin: I swear. Yes. [chuckles] As crazy as it sounds, I'm not funny.

Suzanne: I'm going to google that. I'm to google so many things. I'll go to Google.

Justin: All right. Well, you're going to learn this and you're going to step away as it's vaporing when you're done cooking it until it's done, then you can eat it. All right. What has been the biggest change-- How long have you been doing the Culinaria stuff?

Suzanne: 150 years now.

Justin: Well, I don't think so. How long have you been doing it?

Suzanne: Gosh, it's probably since 2009.

Justin: What have been the biggest changes you've seen in San Antonio's food scene since then? Obviously, we have more better...

Christian Archer, Political Strategist and San Antonio Democratic Leader

Justin Hill — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 05:30:00 -0600

Christian Archer moved to San Antonio in 2005. In 15 years, he has made his mark on local politics, bond projects, and the city's move politically to the left. He is full of stories and backgrounds of some of the biggest San Antonio stories of the past 15 years.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin: Hello. Bienvenido San Antonio, welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonio, and a keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

[applause]

All right. Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Christian Archer. Christian Archer is a man of many things, I was learning today. I think best-known to me, is you were good friends with my old boss and former mentor and former guest, Mikal Watts. You all worked on a bunch of projects together, but I knew you also ran Julian's campaign, Hardburgers campaign. You were instrumental in getting Sculley to come to the city and you're also a filmmaker and author now I read.

Christian: [laughs] Yes. That's right.

Justin: When's the movie coming out?

Christian: We're working on it. In fact, I'm working on it today. We've got a guy who is closely associated with Bradley Cooper, who's now taking over the project and he wants to do a several part series. Back when Mikal got indicted on 95 felony counts, most people thought he was going to prison.

Justin: Because most of the people when that one happens.

Christian: 99.7% of them to be exact.

Justin: Yes.

Christian: When Mikal got indicted, a lot of people thought Mikal was done. His story was just beginning I think. Obviously, it was a terrible, terrible time but I lived it with my best friend, a mentor to me. A guy who I love dearly. I know, we both do, Mikal Watts, he's just an amazing person. I wrote a book about that experience and what it was through my eyes, to watch somebody go through 95 felony counts and watch a lot of people turn their back on him. A lot of good friends disappear. You really do learn who your friends are. I went to trial with him in Biloxi. We planned basically live there for four months and he defended himself. It was the craziest thing you've ever seen in a lifetime, and it was enough to make a movie and a book about.

We're working on the book, and the movie, right now, the second part to that is we're looking at an eight-part episodic series on what happened to Mikal because during the trial, I don't know if you know this, but I filmed the whole thing. Brought in a film crew and shot the whole thing.

Justin: I knew there was a crew, I didn't think you were actually the one holding the camera, though.

Christian: Well, I wasn't holding the camera thing.

[laughter]

There is actually usable footage of this.

Justin: When did you all start the film? When did you all know you all were going to start making a book or a movie about this?

Christian: You know what, it was funny. What was it that big Netflix hit?

Justin: Making a Murderer.

Christian: What was it?

Justin: Making a Murderer.

Christian: Making a Murderer.

Justin: Yes.

Christian: Had just come out [chuckles], and Mikal and I were talking about this. Obviously, look, there was severe depression. After so many years of not knowing if you were going to get indicted, then the indictment in the trial and all of the above, and just to lighten the mood I told him, I said, "Wouldn't it be great to write a book about it or do a making of a murderer style, a Netflix doc." It's like a light bulb went off. It gave him a little bit of hope and a little bit of something to take away from his daily dose of 95 felony counts, which was a brutal, brutal thing to watch. [crosstalk]

Justin: Jesus. Because people who listen to the Watts episode, they're going to know, like there was the investigation in the raids, then there was nothing for a long time. Then Ron Johnson put a bug in somebody's ear and next thing we know there's an indictment. When did the film and bookmaking process start?

Christian: It was really after the indictment. After we read the salacious stuff that Watts didn't know about, regarding the other people who were indicted, Greg Warren and Kristy Lee, who ended up obviously going to prison for what they did to Mikal. But it was really after the salacious parts of how they blew through his money and all of the lies that they told. It was like, "Wow, you couldn't even make up that script." Nobody in Hollywood would buy it if you tried to sell the script. Yet, I got to watch my best friend go through that tragedy of his life in the prime of his career. Right smack dab in the middle of Mikal Watts, his trajectory was like the space shuttle at the time.

Justin: Yes.

Christian: Then it all came crumbling down for four years. It just crumbled around him. It was hard to watch. Obviously, there's a redemptive part to that, part of what will be included in the series. I think one very important thing it was missed out was here he was. Our close friend preparing for the trial of a lifetime. The pinnacle of his career and he worked a year just tirelessly on this PowerPoint presentation about BP and everything that went wrong. Kind of the, we were all robbed of watching him and his genius at work.

Justin: People who don't know Watts as a worker, at a different level than you would think. When you say he really worked, that guy's a different kind of animal when it comes to working.

Christian: Yes, and watch that switch, when he realized I'm going to do this and the decision making of representing himself, which every major, every well-known lawyer in the country called either him or me and said, "You are a lunatic. If you think you're going to represent yourself against the 95 count felony charge against yourself--"

Justin: To be fair, he had a good co-counsel and Mike McCrum who was going to be trying it with him. It allowed a little bit of extra padding than just literally trying that alone.

Christian: Yes. Justin, it was a beautiful thing to watch those guys battle back and forth during the trial itself. Mike McCrum is a genius. Mikal Watts, he was wanting to know is a defense lawyer and it's a good thing he had Mike McCrum. It really is, and to watch those guys, it was truly a ballet each day to watch them in court and how they played off of each other. That experience watching the jury, watching the federal prosecutors just do such a horrible job, and two really brilliant lawyers going at them in court, was something special. That'll be the basis of the first part of the series. The next part, a second season we'll actually deal with the California wildfires. This is what we've been working on for the last three years.

Justin: His first season is kind of part Mikal, but also part of the problems with our criminal justice system?

Christian: It definitely is. There are some real problems with criminal justice reform. I'm not a lawyer. Watching the fight that he had to go through each day, when it came to all of the roadblocks put up in front of someone trying to make a defense for themselves, it was incredible. The power that the federal government had over the judicial system and how they just robbed him of knowledge of, "Well, what are you trying to convict him of?" They wouldn't give him who was going to testify him. Who's going to be in court the next day until six o'clock at night. Then they'd give him this long, completely bogus list of 30 people when you know they were only going to call five, but yet we had to prepare for 30 because you didn't know which ones would actually be called.

Justin, it was the craziest abuse of power. What John Dowdy did, who was the guy who ended up indicting him, the wannabe governor of Mississippi, who was the interim federal prosecutor. He just wanted to notch on his belt. He wanted to bring down a big name trial lawyer, and it was embarrassing what he did to our judicial system, what he did to Mikal. Then the guy quit about a month and a half before the trial started because he knew Mikal Watts was going to whoop his and had that guy showed up in court, he would've had his whooped. Instead, these other prosecutors kind of inherited this case and it was an embarrassing thing for the government. Mikal and his brother, David, and Winter Lee, just slammed the door shut, on their case.

But in the end, Justin, when you think about a civil case and how there's remedies. In a criminal case, "It's just go home." You took all of his money, froze all of his bank accounts, destroyed him reputationally, destroyed him during the prime of his career. Then it was, "Oh yes. Not guilty." "Okay. Go home." No repercussions, no slap on the wrist. No, "Oh, sorry. We destroyed your life and everything you'd built over your career, but you can go home now." It's scary.

Justin: Now Mikal's rebound has been quite impressive in itself so, "Destroy yes." I think for most people it would have, but for Mikal, he has bounced back in, I think even a bigger way than he was before, it sounds like.

Christian: Justin, I think the way that he works, we talked about his work ethic, it's unparalleled. The guy just works his tail off, but I don't want to speak for Mikal, but I can tell you, buddy, he went through a real depression. I think his brother, David, who's a dear friend of mine is still suffering from PTSD. Look that year, there was a 99.7% conviction rate. Mikal knew that he was going to go to prison for the rest of his life and his brother, David, was for something that they didn't do. It took a while for him to get out of that and now I think he's out of it. I think that he's just so incredibly driven to go get those four years that were robbed from the guy's life.

He's just not going to slow down. He's just going 1,000 miles an hour. There is redemption. I think that his work ethic and what he's doing now is trying to get those four years back, but his brother, David, still suffering from it. You can see it in his eyes.

Justin: I can't imagine. The toll it takes on everybody around you, not just yourself, your family and your friends and reputationly and people abandoning you. There's just got to be a lot.

Christian: Yes. It was really, really tough to watch somebody who at least in my mind and in my eyes, such a bright light in Mikal Watts to watch him go through it was incredibly impressive.

Justin: I'm glad he had you there to help out and to make sure it got documented because documenting it turned out to be a really good idea. If it had not turned out the way y'all wanted it to, that probably would have gotten tossed.

Christian: Justin, in the end, he ruined the end of my movie. The end of my movie was going to be him going to prison. He wrecked the end of my movie.

Justin: Just have a Choose Your Own Adventure version and people can decide what they want to do. We got off track of my normal process because I was wanting to know about your filmmaking, which now I think I know, but I want to run through a few small things I do with everybody who comes on the show. Obviously, you've got San Antonio chops, but how long have you lived in San Antonio? What brought you here?

Christian: I came in 2005. I just come off of the successful mayor's race in Houston in 2003 for a guy named Bill White and I met Phil Hardberger. My very first meeting, I think I fell in love with him. He was running for mayor in '05. There were three major candidates running, a guy named Carroll Schubert, who was the Republican North Side city council member. Obviously, Julián Castro was the favorite in that race and was blowing Hardberger and Schubert away. It looked like he might even win without a runoff.

Justin: How old was he then?

Christian: Who, Castro?

Justin: Castro.

Christian: Oh, gosh. [crosstalk]

Justin: Yes.

Christian: I want to say he's probably 28.

Justin: Yes, maybe.

Christian: He was young. He was coming off a rough period of time in San Antonio's history. Three of the city council members went to jail for minor bribery charges, but they took $1,000 bribe here and there. We made a joke during the Hardberger campaign that if two more council members went to prison, that they would have their own quorum in jail, so we needed to be careful so nobody else would go to jail, is to be able to hold council meetings inside the Bexar County Jail.

I moved here in 2005 to run Hardberger's campaign. I really didn't think that I would stay, didn't realize how much I would fall in love with the city and like you said in the intro, what a hidden gem the city is. The power that the people have in the city was awesome. In '05 is when I moved here. I ran Hardberger's campaign. My every intention was to run the campaign, hopefully, win, and then go on and run another political campaign, but we came from way behind to end up beating Julián in the runoff.

Phil asked me to stay onboard outside of city. I never wanted to go to work for a city. I wanted to be a outside political arm to be able to get things done from outside City Hall. We made some real magic things happen for the city and it was the funnest time that I had in politics, were the four years that Phil Hardberger was mayor.

Justin: We're going to talk a little bit about Harberger because it wraps into the scaly thing in a second, but you brought me to one of the next things I do with everybody, is some of your favorite hidden gems in the city. Nurnberg brought up a Denman State Park, I think, and some of these things, I've never even known about in the city. Do you have any, those hidden places in the city where you tell people, "Hey, you really got to go check out this thing you've never heard of?"

Christian: I would say it's so sad I wrote about it in the newspaper, my favorite little restaurant. My mother [unintelligible 00:14:54] my family is from New Orleans and there's a restaurant called The Cookhouse, which was my favorite hidden gem restaurant in this tiny little house over off of St. Mary's. I think it's maybe 20 tables in the old place and it was some of the best food-

Justin: They shut down?

Christian: They're going to keep it. He's just changing, I think, what they're doing, but that would have been it. It was in the newspaper that it's closing.

Justin: For good?

Christian: There are so many hidden gems, Hot Wells is probably a hidden gem. It's beautiful. If you haven't been on the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River, you're missing out. Hardberger Park is another one of my favorite places to go in the city.

Justin: I got to check out the landbridge.

Christian: Wait, say that again.

Justin: I need to check out the land bridge.

Christian: A land bridge is now open.

Justin: I went to Cookhouse for lunch one day and I guess it wasn't open but the front door was open. I walk in and it is death metal as loud as you can imagine. There's just some dude cleaning. That was my last time to Cookhouse. The food's great, though.

Christian: Oh, my gosh, the food's great and it's open for another month.

Justin: Then closed or just changing menu.

Christian: He's changing the direction of the restaurant. Restaurants have a lifespan and Peters just reached the lifespan of the New Orleans Style Restaurant.

Justin: It was a trailer in EatStreet at first, wasn't it, in that little trailer park that Jodi and Steven Newman own? They ran across from battalion. I think that's where it started and then they got their brick and mortar.

Christian: Y[crosstalk] It's open, go check it out. I think it's open for another month.

Justin: You covered two things in that answer. What are your thoughts on the most recent election locally? I'm not going to get into Donald Trump stuff, but it was a pretty surprising election. What do you think it told you about San Antonio or San Antonio-based podcast? What did you see in terms of trends here locally?

Christian: First, we elected the first two women to the Bexar County Commissioner.

Justin: Are those the first two ever?

Christian: Yes.

Justin: I didn't know that.

Christian: Rebeca Clay-Flores defeated in one of the biggest surprises of the Democratic primary, was Rebeca Clay-Flores beating Chico Rodriguez.

Justin: Blowout.

Christian: It was a blast. That's right. I certainly didn't see it coming. Chico's a good friend of mine. I think that we thought he was going to win. I wish he had run a more aggressive campaign, but good for Rebeca Clay-Flores and her campaign manager, Frankie. They ran a heck of a campaign. Then Trish DeBerry on the Northside had her own runoff in the Republican primary against a guy who ran against Nelson Wolf, who's one of my clients, a guy named Tom Rakoff.

I was glad to see Trish win and the fact that there are now two women on the Bexar County Commissioner's Court is great. I think Bexar County, every year that goes by is becoming more and more Democratic when you look at the fact-- Used to be Justin, that in the gubernatorial years was the big year for the Republicans to be competitive and then in the presidential years because of the turnout, the county would go wholeheartedly Democratic.

In the gubernatorial races, they were mostly Republicans would win. In the last gubernatorial election, the Democrats swept out all of the judges every seat, if there was a Democrat running for it, the Democrat won and elected a lot of new judges. This two years from now, if it's affirmed and Democrats continue to win, I think Bexar County is going to be a solid Democratic county for the foreseeable future.

Justin: Yes, that was going to be my question to you because when I first moved here, it was like that and it was even what, maybe six or eight years ago when they had that election that every Democratic except for David Rodriguez in the...

Gerry Goldstein, Attorney, Activist, and Defender of Civil Liberties

Justin Hill — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 05:30:00 -0600

Gerry Goldstein has spent his career fighting for what is right. From fighting for conscientious objectors in the Vietnam war era to fighting the Patriot Act's attack on civil liberties. Gerry is a hero to me personally and a great entertaining guest.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello, and bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Gerry Goldstein. Gerry is a criminal defense lawyer with Goldstein & Orr. I could go on and on about all of your lawyer accolades and awards, but we'd be here all day. Recently inducted into the criminal defense hall of fame. Gerry, you're a personal hero to me. I read about you in law school.

I learned about you in law school, and then you randomly show up in a restaurant after I'd had way too many drinks about six years ago, and I thought it'd be a good idea to go up and introduce myself. You were so gracious and so classy, and so was your wife, and I asked you to get a beer with me at some point, and I'm a nobody fifth-year lawyer, and you agreed, and met me for a beer. I thought that was just the coolest thing.

Gerry Goldstein: I learn a lot from my fellow lawyers and brothers and sisters in San Antonio. What a wonderful place to have grown up and continued my practice. Thank you so much, Justin.

Justin: I agree. The San Antonio Express, I read, one of the writers was so gracious to call you a rich libertarian and druggie mouthpiece. That was something you were very proud of, and I found that to be pretty funny when I was doing some research for this.

Gerry: That was Paul Thompson who had a front-page column, and he malign me weekly, and probably was the best-- I'm not a big fan of advertising, but I will tell you it was the best advertising any lawyer could ever get.

Justin: [laughs] That's when the newspaper wrote a little different than it does now, it seems like.

Gerry: It was, but so did the judges and lawyers.

Justin: Fair enough. Okay. I do this with everybody, and it's really exciting to do it with you. A sort of top 10, who knows how many it will be. You have grown up in San Antonio. You now have a house just blocks away from where you actually grew up in the King William area. You throw a Fiesta party that is famous, that I knew about immediately when I moved here. I saw a guy pushing a shopping cart full of booze down Alamo one day. I said, "Where are you going?" He said he was going to restock your party there in Fiesta. It precedes you.

Gerry: Thank you. I take that as the highest form of flattery, Justin.

Justin: No, it's legendary. What are some of your favorite spots in San Antonio?

Gerry: Well, years ago, in the late '60s and early '70s, we actually opened and owned the original Friendly Spot, which was at the corner of Beauregard and Alamo, which the alcoholic beverage commission shut down after the number two then dinners, played in the crowd, spilled out into the middle of the street. We own the Beauregard. My wife obviously has nixed any more bars or restaurants, but I still hang out at La Tuna.

I think it's a wonderful spot, although it's been encroached upon by all these new condos and apartment buildings. I grew my long teeth, hanging out at the Escobar back in the old days. Wine 101 out in Helotes, I think is a wonderful spot. I did my time crawling back home from the local wineries and various alcohol spots in the King William area where I'd grown up.

Justin: Well, so Jody Newman was the first guest on The Alamo Hour, who's now the Friendly Spot owner, and you and I went to LA Tuna. That was where we met for drinks that day.

Gerry: That's true.

Justin: What are some of the biggest practices or biggest changes you've seen in San Antonio in the last 20 or 30 years?

Gerry: Well, having grown up in the King William area before it knew it was historic, it was a serious slum, and it's become gentrified. I think San Antonio is unique in the fact that it has, I think, and I'm very proud of this. We have maintained our historic character, rather than tear down our buildings and building modern structures, like Dallas and Houston in Texas.

We take pride in our historic city. When I grew up, I grew up three blocks from downtown. The river was my backyard. Back then it was like a jungle. It was exciting for a young kid to have that as his playground. It's not at all what you see now, and we had a wonderful relationship with downtown San Antonio, having grown up there. That hasn't changed. It's still-- There weren't the restaurants that we now have, but there weren't the dives.

When I was a little kid, I wouldn't have known a dive if I had seen one. I think San Antonio is proud of its history, and for a good reason. It is a historic place. People all over the country tell me, "We'll go see. You don't sound like you're from Texas." I would like to tell them, "Hey, look, if I had an accent unique to San Antonio, it would be Hispanic."

The truth is South Texas is different from the rest of what people think is the stereotypical Texan, and I think we're very lucky. We've now got wonderful restaurants. I love La Frite, Zocca's wonderful. La Focaccia's great. In the blue star you have, Stella, and Halcyon. Bliss is down there. They're just one restaurant, battalion, one restaurant after another. I can walk to them. More importantly, after imbibing a little fruit of the wine, I can make my way home-

Justin: Safely.

Gerry: -not having to drive through traffic.

Justin: I think Zocca might be shut down. I drove by the other day, and it looks like it's gone.

Gerry: Well, no, it's still open. You just need to be there on the right-- The COVID-19 has taken its toll on everything, but they're still open. I was there the other night. They have wonderful owners, and a wonderful clientele. La Fritte, when I'm in town, I probably eat there twice a week.

Justin: So good. I liked Zocca's run at the fish restaurant that didn't last very long. I thought that was great, too.

Gerry: That was his son, who by the way, was a graduate of the CIA, the Culinary Institute in New York. I understand he's now doing well. He is a chef-- I think it was called Starfish.

Justin: Yes, that's it.

Gerry: He went to California, and then was in Dallas. I think now is in another resort and doing well for himself. His parents are delightful people, who I considered close friends, like I do most of the restauranteurs down there. I hang out, and they treat me very well. I think they treat everyone well. [crosstalk]

Justin: Yes, I had Stephen from Battalion on-- I've gone through a lot of the restauranteurs, I think, because I eat too much.

Gerry: Me too.

Justin: One thing-- [crosstalk]

Gerry: [crosstalk] pretty well in the King William area.

Justin: That's really happened in the last 10 years, really.

Gerry: It has. Absolutely. I'm proud of what we have done. Well, if you look at the Pearl, when I was in elementary school, Kit Goldsbury was a classmate of mine. We got kicked out of the--

Justin: Is that right?

Gerry: We got kicked out for putting the cherry bombs in the girls' toilets in the restroom. When he first married Linda Goldsbury, but it was Linda Pace. When they got a divorce, I think he paid a 100 million or something for Pace, her interest in Pace [unintelligible 00:08:57] . I went around and say that he was the dumbest kid in my elementary class. Within a year, he sold it for a billion and three, or something. If there was only one dumb kid in my elementary school, then it was me.

Justin: What school was that?

Gerry: Pardon?

Justin: What school?

Gerry: Travis Elementary. I went on to Mark Twain, and then Jefferson. I made great friends in the senate. There are still high school friends that we see each other regularly. We still reunite on a regular basis and reminisced about-- I've been to jail in more than one country with some of my [unintelligible 00:09:37] . If you look at what Goldsbury did with the Pearl, that's a unique spot, I think, in Texas and around the country. What a wonderful tradition San Antonio takes pride in.

Justin: He's left a lasting legacy with the Pearl and everything that's going to grow up around it.

Gerry: [crosstalk] I want to apologize publicly to him for all of the bad things I said.

Justin: [chuckles] One of the unique things about San Antonio's Fiesta-- What's your favorite Fiesta event other than King William Parade?

Gerry: Well, I have to admit that that Fair is my favorite. As a kid, I could walk down to- all night in San Antonio, and we would take inner tubes, and ride down the river for the parade and into La Veta. We got in a lot of trouble as kids. I still find all that wonderful and fascinating. San Antonio really is unique, like San Francisco and New Orleans. Fiestas like Mardi Gras.

I only got into two colleges that I wanted to. In Brown and Tulane. I went to Providence, and it seemed dreary and cold in New Orleans. The French Quarter was wide open, and I felt very fortunate. My father claimed that he paid for our matriculation, not an education, and he's probably right. San Antonio has that same kind of flare. Unique food, unique music, unique culture, that separates it from other places. I wear my badge as a San Antonian probably.

Justin: I'll say the same thing about New Orleans because every time I go there, which is similar to San Antonio, if I go out to a bar, I'm going to make a new friend. People are friendly. They're going to chat you up, and you're just going to end up wherever the night takes you with the new people that you meet. San Antonio and New Orleans are the only cities that I've been to, I've run into that kind of friendliness, and just kind of a joint party.

Gerry: I think that kind of character builds a community's ability to be eclectic and to reunite. When you think about what we left after Katrina, New Orleans is a more historic and a unique place than Boston or New York or Philadelphia, and just as old. It has a troubled history with slave trade and other things, but we're going to get over all this. We're going to take pride in the unique cities that we have. There's a reason why.

I have to admit that having the opportunity to spend four years in a French Quarter, and called it college, it was a wonderful opportunity for a young kid from San Antonio. I was only 17 when I got to college.

Justin: How cool. I have friends that went to college there, and I was thinking, that's not fair.

Gerry: It really [crosstalk].

Justin: You're a criminal defense lawyer. I want to walk you through some of what I've learned and some of the stuff I found interesting. There's a big lawyer in town named George Salinas, who's an injury that was doing this. He said, "Man, ask him if he'll ever meet me for a beer." There's that weird-

Gerry: Of course.

Justin: -amount of enthusiasm for people that want to hear your story and get to know you. Let's talk about it. I know you started--[crosstalk]

Gerry: Tell George I'm very flattered. Thank you.

Justin: Well, I will. Then, he'll say, "When can we get a beer?" Then I'll bug you when you're back in town.

Gerry: First thing.

Justin: You started working as a lawyer with your dad's real estate firm. Then somehow, you transitioned into criminal defense by defending those that you just felt were wronged. Talk to me about how that went about, and talk to me about Maury Maverick, who seemed to be such a big influence in your life and your development as a lawyer.

Gerry: Well, yes, he was. It was 1968 when I graduated from law school. I had gone to law school. My dad was a lawyer. My mother was one of the first women stockbrokers in town. Her first job was being a doting Jewish mother. I was a spoiled only child. I got back and I met my bride. Can I tell you that story because I think she deserves this tribute?

Justin: Yes.

Gerry: I had met her, and she had been at Trinity. She was somewhat disappointed. A friend of ours at the time, Julia Armstrong, who was a friend of mine when I was in law school. I walked up to her at a party and slapped her on the back. She was about to go back to the Sorbonne in Paris. She's a Brit, and Julia slapped her on the back and said, "You look like a girl likes to have a good time," and brought her to my house. I will love Julia till the day I die for that.

That summer, she went back to England as she had planned to do. I met my parents at the airport. They were coming back from a nation trip. My dad told me- I had just gone to work for him. I was making $10,000 a year. He thanked me for coming to pick him up. I said, "Well, actually, I'm about to leave, dad." [phone rings] Let me turn that off. I explained to him that I'd met a girl and I was heading to Europe. He said, "Oh, really?" He said, "When do you plan to come back?"

I said, "Well, I'm not sure." He said, "Well, you may not have a job when you get back." I said, "Well, I thought about that." He said, "Where did you get the money?" I said, "Well, remember my grandpapa left me the gold coins that I hid in that lockbox." He said, "You'll know the time when you want to use it." I'll be honest with you, it was probably the best money I ever spent. I cashed in the-- Norman Brock, had a little coin shop on Houston Street, and he probably paid me face value for the- probably got $1,500.

I left, and met Chris. We hitchhiked and traveled through Europe, and Morocco, North Africa, for four months. I proposed to my wife in Morocco. She laughed at me, and I thought, "[unintelligible 00:16:24] could have been a lot worse." I [unintelligible 00:16:26] said something terrible, but we got married in 1969. It was the year of love. I married my bride. We had a Volkswagen bus. We had taken the seats out, put a Persian carpet down, put little pillows in it, had a big peace symbol on the back of it, Ramsey Clark for president on the bumper.

We got run out of more counties than we were invited back to. I met Maury Maverick. Well, I'd known him. He was a close friend of my family's, but I met him as a lawyer. Maury was very special to me. That's a picture of me and Maury, let me move over a little bit, back in those days. Maury was wonderful to me. We tried cases together. He took me to the Supreme Court. I met Supreme Court justices. I would have lunch with Hugo Black, who had been in the US Congress with Maury Senior, Maury's father.

By the way, he really did keep a Bible in one coat pocket, and the first 10 amendments in the other one. I got to meet Thurgood Marshall. We argued cases in the Supreme Court. We argued wonderful cases in the Fifth Circuit, and we tried cases together. He was an inspiration. He was my mentor and patron saint. I owe a great deal, serious debt to him in terms of the practice of law. One of the things that-- I want to read this to you just because it's worth reminding everybody.

We had a case, Piper versus-- Adrien Spears had appointed me to represent all the inmates in the Bexar County Jail, who had a civil rights suit for their jail conditions. By the way, after I convinced Judge Spears that it was unconstitutional, he declared the jail unconstitutional, and the Bexar County built what was then the new jail, which is now being- it's in a state of flux once again. By the way, as a consequence, the county refused to allow federal detainees to be kept there. They had to go all the way to Bastrop.

The marshal service hated me because they'd have to get up at three o'clock in the morning to go pick up prisoners. It was an all-day, all-night, affair, and it was my fault. In the process, the district attorney had-- There was a gag order, but it seemed like every day he would make Paul Thompson's column or the front page, bitching about my lawsuit. I filed a motion to hold him in contempt for violating the gag order. This is the letter Maury wrote to me, and I'm going to read it to you because it's too hard, unless you're really young to read that.

He says, "I'm not going to let you get off the hook with a mere telephone call where your motion to a federal judge to have assistant DA's, or whomever held in contempt for talking to press. You, you, you of all people are the last person in the world next to me who should file such a motion. What you should have done was file one like this. Comes Gerry G and moves the court for an order setting aside its gag order because the district attorney's office is violating the same and because your undersigned attorney would also like to have the right of free speech. This would have put the judge on the spot."

"Go in there with a straight face, not a smile, not a smirk, and speak up for free speech and mean it. It would have run the judge wild. Out of sight, out of mind is the rule of the establishment. I told your mother about this. Show this letter to her. You keep this letter, and the day I die, you read it, and you read it once a year for the rest of your life." We'll count that as the one for 2021 in your honor, Justin. [crosstalk]

Justin: How cool. Will you share that with me so I can post it?

Gerry: Absolutely.

Justin: How cool. What just a great take on what you were trying to do and to throw it in your face.

Gerry: Maury had a great sense of humor. He was harder on his friends and his pals than he was on his enemies, and for good reason. He always made so much sense.

Justin: You said he had an old Texas sense of righteous indignation and a keen sense of righteousness. What does that mean to you? You're in a world where you better be righteous as a criminal defense lawyer, especially in the civil rights and our civil liberties context. What did it mean to you in terms of Maury Maverick? How did he exemplify that?

Gerry: Well, and he called me out for this regularly in his articles in the newspaper. I admit that I fell prey

Molly Keck, Bee Keeper, Entomologist and Beekeeping Teacher

Justin Hill — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 05:30:00 -0600

One of the most consistent questions we get is about beekeeping. I am a beekeeper and always learning about it. We asked Molly Keck to come on our show and discuss beekeeping. She taught my class and is full of good information.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right, welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Molly Keck. Molly is an integrated pest management program specialist with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension. Did I get that right?

Molly Keck: Did. Yes, you did.

Justin: She has a master's in entomology. You and I were at A&M at the same time. I'm '04, but then I went to law school and you stuck around and got your master's in entomology.

Molly: I did.

Justin: She's a professor, adjunct professor. She teaches adult education courses, writes, presents on a wide variety of topics. I saw you do a YouTube video on murder hornets. You taught the beekeeping class that I took at the San Antonio botanical gardens. I wanted to get you on and talk about something that has consistently been one of the most common questions I get since people found out that I keep bees is a bunch of questions about that. I wanted to have you on to talk about it.

Molly: I'm happy to be here.

Justin: Thank you. We had somebody on last week talking about real in-depth media issues about San Antonio's return to work $150 million initiative. This is going to be a much more fun discussion I think.

Molly: Good.

Justin: I always start it with just some general background information. When and why did you end up in San Antonio?

Molly: I never left San Antonio. I was born here. I'm a San Antonio native. I went to Buena Elementary, Rudder Middle School, and Clark High School. My husband is from San Antonio also. His parents are from San Antonio. My kids are a third-generation San Antonian, probably, actually, more than that because actually, my husband's grandparents were from San Antonio as well and I'm pretty sure his great grandparents. We always joke that we don't know where we came from. We're just Texan. I went off to A&M. That was the only time I left San Antonio. Then because my family and life is here, this is the best place to live. We moved back home.

Justin: I've had a lot of people on the show and most people are like, "Me. I moved here 12 years ago, 13 years ago." A lot of people moving in.

Molly: There are a lot of people moving in, but also if I look at the majority of the people that I went to high school with, maybe 15% left San Antonio and the rest of us came back home. When you're born here and you're from here, you don't really want to leave here.

Justin: It's great, it's great cost of living, people are nice, and it's a great secret place in Texas I think.

Molly: It is. It's also a really, really good family town I think. Also, you get the small-town feel in a big city. It's like everybody knows everybody or it's the Kevin Bacon thing. Eventually, you'll figure out a way that if you meet a stranger, you have some ties somehow.

Justin: When we did our beekeeping class, we did fill [unintelligible 00:03:03] I think that was at your house.

Molly: It was, yes.

Justin: You're in the Northside of San Antonio. You also have chickens. Do you keep any other animals?

Molly: Just pets. The only livestock we have really are chicken and bees. Then other than that, dogs, cats, and a parrot. Yes, dogs, cats, and a parrot.

Justin: How many dogs?

Molly: We have three dogs, we have two cats, and we have one parrot. My dad is a vet. I've never not had a house full of animals. It would be very unusual not to hear animals everywhere.

Justin: I'm going to butcher all of the words wrong today. I'm going to say bugs instead of insects. I'm sure. Is he a general vet or is he a livestock vet?

Molly: He's a small animal vet. He's semi-retired now, but what he really did was emergency veterinarian with small animals.

Justin: I spent a small amount of time in Houston and Gulf Coast Veterinary Clinic is there. I had a friend who had an open account because apparently, people will fly their animals in from around the world for that place and you just set your account limit. I thought that was the craziest thing that you just say, "Here's the max I'll spend." You're an entomologist. What is entomology and why did you get into that?

Molly: Entomology is the study of insects. I got into it by accident I think like everybody gets into whatever their profession is. I started out school in science because my mother's a nurse and my dad's a vet. I really didn't understand that there were other careers other than science. I took an undergraduate class, an elective in entomology and I just got it. It just made sense, I really liked it, and I thought, "Well, maybe I'll stick around and get a second degree in it." To be very honest, I got really lucky that this position opened up at the time when I was finishing up my master's work. I was very blessed to be able to come back home and be able to stay here.

Justin: We're going to talk a little bit about that because y'all get to do a lot of different things in your AgriLife Texas and Agro Extension program it seems like.

Molly: We do. I always say I'm like a event planner for insect stuff because I get to-- like with beekeeping, I thought that a lot of people wanted to learn about it. I learned about it and then I started putting on classes. We do outreach education to the public, and then whatever industries that we support. Mine is the pest management, pest control industry. We get to listen to the public and hear what they want to know about. I talked to my friends and we have leadership advisory boards and then we base our classes on what people want us to talk about.

Justin: Some of them are taught at the Botanical Gardens, some are taught at facilities you all have around town it seems like.

Molly: We only have just our extension office and we have a very small classroom, but we have a lot of wonderful partners like the Botanical Gardens and even in San Antonio and just other groups that we work with. We can borrow their facilities or get it at a much cheaper venue cost.

Justin: Sure. The Botanical Garden one was fantastic. The classroom was great, the facilities were great, and it's very close for me.

Molly: Yes. It's beautiful there. They're working on a really big event center for giant weddings for hundreds of people. I'm excited to see when they finish that, but we're really lucky to work with them a lot on different programs and partner with them and be able to use the space because they're even on an ugly day, it's not an ugly day there. When you take a break, you can actually walk in the gardens. I think that makes anybody happy to see flowers.

Justin: It's always different. Something's always in bloom different than the last time you were there. Funny question, but do you have a favorite insect? Is there an insect that in your time, you thought this one really fascinates me?

Molly: I have different favorite insects based on different groups. If you asked me what my favorite butterfly is, I like a zebra butterfly. I still get excited when I see praying mantises even though they're like a dime a dozen, but I get excited when I see them. There's weird unusual insects like snake flies that get me really excited. Seeing one of them is like I say is akin to seeing a mountain lion in your backyard. It's just they're there, but they're just not commonly noticed. One day one landed on my shirt and my neighbor was over and he was like, "What is your problem?" You don't understand how exciting this is to have it land on your body.

Justin: Do we have walking sticks here?

Molly: Yes, we have tons of walking sticks.

Justin: I haven't seen one. You did a lot of work in research. You mentioned it in the class, but I saw your CV or bio today on fire ants. What is it that drew you to researching and studying fire ants?

Molly: I got my masters in a lab. My advisor is an urban entomologist. That's really my background. In that lab, you worked on ants, cockroaches, or termites. There was really a project that was available on fire ants, but I wasn't really wanting to do any other insect necessarily. I studied them. Then when I got into beekeeping, I realized I studied the wrong thing. Bees were much more interesting than fire ants, but they're both social insects and they're-- I don't know. I just think they're really fascinating how they're their own little community and they work with each other so much better than humans do and there's just a lot of interesting things about them.

Justin: I ask everybody on the show and you're going to have a different take on this since you're from here and been here so long. Do you have any favorite hidden gems in San Antonio, off the beaten path places that you should check out, but a lot of people don't know about?

Molly: Oh, gosh. The Botanical Gardens, but everybody really knows about that. Mexican Manhattan is a really good one downtown. If you're going downtown, if you're thinking of food, my favorite place to get Mexican food is always La Fogata. I don't know if that one's hidden anymore, but it was at one point.

Justin: Is Mexican Manhattan getting raised? They might be tearing down that whole block I think.

Molly: I think so. I know that they were having some issues and some problems and then when COVID hit, I thought I saw some stuff on social media about having a hard time making it. I don't know where they stand right now, but if they are still around, they are a great place to go there. To me, it's the best Mexican food on the Riverwalk.

Justin: It's a low bar for the Riverwalk though.

Molly: That's true.

Justin: Are you seeing any changes here locally in our insect population? There's a lot of discussion on climate, weather, and all those types of things. Is that relating to changes in our insect populations around San Antonio? Are we having more pests, less pests, less insects, generally?

Molly: It just depends on the specific weather that we're having. What's weird about insects is that sometimes when you have very wet months, you would assume that you'd have more insects, but there are some species that don't do as well. Like ground-dwelling species will have more fungal issues that kill off the eggs. Texas and San Antonio, you cannot ever predict the weather. There's just no telling what's going to come out. It's hard to know what insect is going to be a big issue. I don't think that we have seen populations decrease at all. I think habitat destruction plays a much greater role in that than climate probably. Even just worldwide, I know The Times came out with the thing about how all insects were going to go away at some point. Our Entomological Society of America has worked really hard on trying to combat that article because there were a lot of things that were incorrect about it. It was very Doomsday and not likely to happen in the next several generations.

Justin: Okay. I really care that my yard has a lot of diversity and plants and all kinds of things. Anything normal backyard, I'm a backyard beekeeper, I guess I could say, but do you think just somebody with a backyard could do to increase the diversity of the bugs that they see in their backyard?

Molly: They could plant more flowers, and they'll definitely see more pollinators of all different types. When you think of pollinators, you usually think bees and butterflies, but there's lots of wasps which you may or may not want. Lots of native or solitary bees that will come to flowers, flies, beetles. There's a lot of other species that pollinate, so I would plant color, and then just cut back on your pesticide use. People that have those mosquito misters are knocking down a huge fauna of insects that are out there and oftentimes causing more issues because they're killing off a lot of their beneficials that kept the bad guys in check.

I'm absolutely not against the use of pesticides, I use them, we talk about, we teach how to use them properly. I'm just more of the mindset of know who you're trying to kill, don't just do it because you think you might have an issue. Use more of a targeted approach to know who you're killing and do your best to do your research to figure out how to not harm the beneficial or neutral insects that are in your landscape.

Justin: We have a ton of carpenter bees, passion line or I think is what it's called.

Molly: Are they carpenter or bumble bees?

Justin: They're carpenter because they're just like that hard, shiny thorax, right? That's carpenter?

Molly: The abdomen. Yes, so no joke, this is what we learned in school. The carpenter bee has a shiny hiney.

Justin: Okay, well, that's what I looked up because as a kid I saw we had trumpet vines and we had a ton of bumblebees, but I've never seen a bumblebee here in my backyard but lots of carpenter.

Molly: We have bumblebees, I had a lot of bumblebees last year, and then I've seen a fraction of what I saw last year. I don't think I've done anything different and people say this all the time. I had so much and now this year, I don't see anything of whatever insect they're talking about. It's just nature. They move on and sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't.

Justin: Let's talk about beekeeping. I saw another clip you did where he just generally talked about it. What are the benefits of bees for all of us every day? Why are they important to our society.

Molly: Simply put, we wouldn't have food or we wouldn't have the amount of food that's available to us. We eat a lot of grains and corn, and things like that, but even then we would have a decrease in pork and chicken and maybe not beef as much because they eat a lot of grains. We wouldn't see a lot of meat on our tables either because those things eat fruit and vegetables also. They are not even arguably, they are hands down the most important pollinator for agricultural crops. A lot of people will argue that they're really not that great for flowers and things but that's what our native bees take care of.

Honeybees are super important agriculturally because they have massive numbers, and they can pollinate these huge acres of land and we wouldn't have the Poteet Strawberry Festival if we didn't have honeybees.

Justin: European honeybees were introduced, but before that we just didn't, I guess have the yields of fruits and those types of things in America naturally.

Molly: Right. We also didn't have the amount of people that we have today. Those native bees could handle Native Americans.

Justin: We hear a lot about colony collapse, and I think you talked a second ago about some articles we read how alarmist they can be. Is colony collapse something we should be concerned about on a real long term, macro level, or is that a natural thing that occurs every so many years or something?

Molly: It's a little bit of both. We have in the past seen major declines in honeybee populations. Our honeybee population decline we've seen as a result of varroa mites, and when those were introduced, we just never really got our populations up enough, but I think that there are so many people that are doing backyard beekeeping. If you talk to people who are an older generation, if you talk to your grandparents, they'll all say, "My grandparents did beekeeping." There was a time when everybody kept bees. Then we stopped doing that when we started being more urban and suburban, and now people are doing it again.

I think we're helping the honeybee population and helping with colony collapse quite a bit. Then there's just other organizations that are teaching people about treating for mites and recognizing different diseases because it's pests and diseases that caused the major decline. Colony collapse is not like one single thing, it's a combination of eight different things really, that you see these giant collapses in huge numbers of colonies. You and I won't see it or be able to really diagnose it in 10 or less beehives, but if somebody has hundreds or thousands of hives and they lose 10%, that's a lot of hives, then you can say something weird happen.

Justin: Can mites just hit and knock them out that quick for someone who has that many hives?

Molly: They will if you're not treating, or if you're not monitoring for mites and making sure they're in the proper threshold that they're below the mite load that you want for that time of year, then your colonies will 100% die.

Justin: Okay. I didn't realize this till I took your class, there's lots of different species of honeybees and something I didn't realize was you talked about that if you don't requeen, your hives will likely breed with a what we used to call Africanized honeybees, which was all the fear whenever you and I were kids that people were dying by honeybees. I have one of those hives now that is what you call hot. They just cover me and they're all trying to get me. What are some of the other species of honeybees and what's the most common that beekeepers keep?

Molly: Well, they're all the same species. They're all apis mellifera, but then their subspecies or called races, which are like a hybrid of multiple species, or subspecies, sorry. There's probably the most common one that people can get their hands on are Italian honeybees, and they're very gentle and that's why most people like them. Africanized honey bees are a hybrid of the Africanized bee. They bred with a lot of our European honeybees also, so it's like a muted version of what flew in in the '90s.

I have hot hives too and there's some benefits to having them. If you had a little small backyard and your neighbors were close by you probably wouldn't want those mean bees. I don't have to take care of them very much. They find food very well on their own,

Stefan Bowers, Cook, Industry Advocate, and Social Media Must Follow

Justin Hill — Mon, 28 Sep 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Stefan Bowers walks us through his career as a cook--not "chef." He discusses the struggles in the industry, the challenges of growing too fast, and his exciting new venture. Stefan is an advocate for his industry workers and a good person who tries hard to build up his colleagues. We had a fun exchange.

Transcript:

Justin: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right, welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Stefan Bowers of the Goodman & Bowers group in San Antonio. Stefan is first and foremost a chef, I think it'd be fair to say, right?

Stefan: Yes, I call myself--

Justin: I don't want to call you an executive or one of those things.

Stefan: Yes, you can call me chef, I'll call myself a cook.

Justin: All right, there you go. Not only that, he's a veteran, a prolific social media poster, which we'll get into in a little bit. I think one of the more interesting things about you that set you apart from whether you like it or not, you're a celebrity chef in this city is you are less about the self-promotion than a lot of our celebrity chefs. You're very big in promoting your industry to the lowest level employee in the restaurant. I think that sets you apart in a lot of ways and that you glorify and you celebrate everybody that's back in the kitchen as opposed to people that are glorifying themselves all the time.

I think that's an interesting part of your persona. I think it's an important part of your persona and I like reading about it. I know that you have a very loyal following, not only from people who love your food, but also people that work with you, it seems like. We're going to have you on to talk a little bit about the food industry. I don't want to belabor the point of what's going on with COVID. Everybody's talking about that ad infinitum, but we're going to talk a little bit about that. I'm going to blame you probably for me putting on about 15 pounds during the shutdown due to your pizza, right? I get the pizza a lot.

Stefan: Right.

Justin: I do this with everybody, I start and I think you're going to have insights that a lot of people would want to know. Just some general questions about who you are in San Antonio, when and why did you end up in San Antonio.

Stefan: I ended up in San Antonio in 2005 via Houston. I moved to Houston in 2003 to go to culinary school, moved there blind. I was living in San Diego with my wife. Believe it or not, San Diego didn't have any culinary schools.

Justin: Is that right?

Stefan: That's right. They had one in, I want to say-- I don't want to say La Mesa, but there wasn't one anywhere local to where I was when I was living in Pacific Beach. All my wife's family's from Texas. She's got one of these cliched giant Texas families. She wanted to move back to be my family, so we moved to Houston. Then I did school there. My wife got in two really bad car accidents while we were in Houston. After the second one, we wanted to get the hell out of there. I was time to go to San Antonio, and that was it, we moved here in 2005.

Justin: What was the school in Houston?

Stefan: It's called the Alain and Marie Lenotre Culinary School. Just small French school, and that's why I picked it. It only had financial aid for GI. It didn't have government financial aid at the time, so of course, classroom size was tiny. There was around three to five people in each class. We even went down to around two people. All Expat type chefs that were there, that were recruited or brought over from France that were there, basically, almost enslaved. They were paid very little and they were held on in order to get their visas by Alain Lenotre. They were grumpy, underpaid, and very qualified.

Justin: So classic French training?

Stefan: Very classic.

Justin: Did you work in Houston [unintelligible 00:03:49]?

Stefan: Yes, I worked in Houston. That was where I springboard was. I worked in San Diego for a couple of time [unintelligible 00:03:54] but the real first full-service kitchen that I worked in on the line was at a place called The Sam Houston Hotel Downtown. At the time, it had just relaunched their new restaurant 17 and the talent there was special. Everyone that's worked there that I know of, that I worked around has gone on to very successful things today.

Justin: That was a great place to start. I lived in Houston for a little bit no 09, 10, 11 time and Mark's was just about to close and that was the nicest place ever in Houston.

Stefan: I have forgotten about Mark's. [crosstalk] Aries and Mark's and those were--

Justin: And Da Marco down the street from Mark's. How did you get into cooking?

Stefan: Looking back at my childhood, I should have known that I wanted to be a cook. I have just a natural pension to just go into the kitchen and create. It was an easy way for me to exercise creativity, I was not good at drawing, I wasn't good at painting or any of that sort of thing. It seemed like in the kitchen, I could walk in there and I could just throw things together. As high school progressed and we cut school and smoked a lot of weed, we'd go into the kitchen and I'd start to cook and I would just start to make stuff, barbeque, steaks, whatever. milkshakes, anything, hamburgers.

[laughter]

Justin: Milkshakes.

Stefan: Yes, milkshakes all the time, cheap milkshake non-stop. We did that. Then it never materialized in my head that I should cook, no one ever suggested to me, "You should maybe go into cooking." It wasn't until I was in the Navy that I realized, once I had gotten married that I did like to do the cooking.

Justin: I'm going to ask you about restaurants in a second, but are there any off the beaten path, hidden gems in San Antonio that you like? I've had people mentioned weird trails or historic homes, are there any sort of things in San Antonio that you recommend, out of town guests, "Hey, this isn't going to be in the guidebook?"

Stefan: Restaurant wise--

Justin: I'm going to get there. Touristy type spots.

Stefan: Touristy type spot, my ashes are gonna be spread at Hardberger Park, right on the Savanna Trail. That's my favorite place to be in the world in this city. I've walked that path countless times and I walked it even to the-- The resurface did about five years back, that was heartbreaking to me because it was such a pure simple three-foot trail. That to me, I take anyone in my family that comes here on that park in an oak loop on that part, that trail and it's very personal to me and I love it.

Justin: Savanna Trail is your trailer?

Stefan: The Savannah loop within Hardberger or the--

Justin: I've never done it.

Stefan: You got to do it.

Justin: I know, I need to.

Stefan: It's good, especially in the morning. Plenty of rabbit, deer, plenty of armadillo just peaceful, quiet. That's where they're going to be putting over the land bridge.

Justin: Now, restaurants.

Stefan: Restaurants are always tough in terms of being asked where I like to eat because once I had kids, the options really dropped off the table. They were adventurous in the beginning and as I've gotten older, they've gotten less and less adventurous and all the places that that most people do. I've loved Carnitas Lonja's for lunch. I think that's just one of the more solid place I get.

Justin: Have you been to Loncheria del Popo?

Stefan: No, I haven't been to these new--

Justin: This is a strange place that has three sandwiches, they're 225 and they come with a bag of Lay's chips. It's on San Pedro. It's from Laredo, 50 years there, but it's got just this weird cult following.

Stefan: I've got a confession to make, over the last, of course, it's-- I've got a horrible short term memory. It's terrible. Remembering names and remembering places and having a kick out places on the spot, it never works out. I'm going to get my car and I'm going to remember 50 when I'm driving home. Something has happened, there's definitely been a sea change in San Antonio over the last year, I'd say where there's a lot of killer small places that I'm seeing, especially on social media.

I am definitely the one that needs the inside on where to go because there's so many-- it's hard to stop--

Justin: Your social media following, I'm sure you could just ask and you would get thousands of recommendations.

Stefan: I do. I do get them and then I've just--

Justin: Loncheria del Popo, even your kids would like. I think it's like a hamburger, like a weenie burger. It's just this strange place that has this huge following. You get a little thing of pickled peppers and onions as part of the deal.

Stefan: That sounds great.

Justin: Super simple menu. You're talking about the food chains you've seen over the last year? How would you describe the food chains since you've been here? I moved here right after you moved here in '07. Back then there was like two nice places to eat and then lots of chains, but it's been a quite a big progress for our city in terms of the culinary scene, right?

Stefan: Yes. The first restaurant that I had introduced to me while I had first moved here and my brother-in-law was moving here was driving down I-10 and then pointing out Mama Margie's to me, that was the option for me to get a job at. I thought I was completely, I was like, I'm fucked." I've done some research, I knew that Weissman was here, I knew that. There was the four guys at the top, there was Weissman, Auden, Mark Bliss-

Justin: Daddy?

Stefan: -and Daddy, but I didn't know about Daddy.

Justin: You'd been then.

Stefan: It was Weissman, Auden, Bliss, and Damien Watel. Those are the godfathers of San Antonio fine dinning in my opinion in the city. I was going to work for one of them when I was coming here. I wrote a letter to Andrew I got no reply so screw you, Weissman. I did letters to all of them I got replies, but they didn't have any jobs and I mean that in jest, but I did end up getting a job for Jeff Balfour at Valencia in 2005. That was the right Hotel experience, worked there for six months, and then discovered Danny in a little pamphlet. Went out and literally tracked him down while he was building Bin555 and got my job.

Justin: When you moved here did Damien have that monster complex thing-

Stephan: No

Justin: -they were building over there? That was after that?

Stephan: Damien was still in his almost location. 2005 Weissman was just really ramping up to become just the zenith that he was about to attain with the New York Times about a year away from that New York Times article where he got I think it was three stars. Then big on the banks was what it was I never really inquired what have you but-

Justin: It's still just solid.

Stephan: Yes, it's probably the same then as it was as it is today other than a few decore changes.

Justin: I don't think many decore changes. [laughs] Still a bunch of big dried gourds. I always look at those every time I come on there. You told me one time what is your favorite cookbook. For anybody listening who wants to try their hand at cooking what would you recommend? You recommended a Mediterranean cookbook and I opened it up and thought, I don't know what the fuck any of this stuff is. I didn't even know the ingredients.

Stephan: Was it a person or was it generic?

Justin: If you said the name I would remember.

Stephan: Mediterranean cook oh, was it a Silvena Rowe cookbook or?

Justin: I say Mediterranean there was just a lot of Mediterranean ingredients in there.

Stephan: I'm sure there was so when Feast opened in 2011. I feel I was a little bit ahead of the game and I was trying to bring something new into the city that hadn't been done. I really went deep into eastern med and basically Gaza Strip style food and brought a lot of those North African flavors. Now it's commonplace to see Harissa and all these things all over menus, but back then I thought we were pretty much the only ones doing it on a non-ethnic base restaurant scale.

Justin: For a beginning cook any books you recommend-

Stephan: The Joy Of Cooking. The best cookbook in the world is the Joy Of Cooking.

Justin: That's not the one you told me. You told me one and I remember thinking, I don't even know the ingredients.

Stephan: I was probably still a snob at that time and still really cared about it, but no The Joy Of Cooking.

Justin: Your lamb lollipops over there those had a lot of Mediterranean flavors in them.

Stephan: Big time totally taken from definitely readapted, but taken from a Silvena Rowe recipe. She's a chef out of England, but she's, plus I don't want to probably overstep myself here, but I feel like she's Hungarian. That's the direction I went. I bought all our cookbooks before we open Feast and I just studied anything I could that had Eastern med flavors.

Justin: People get drunk and they talk about stupid shit and one day we we're sitting around talking about the best three things we've eaten in the city. Mine were lamb lollipops, your steak at Rebel right when you all opened and you all had those duck confit potatoes that came with them right?

Stephan: I'm so glad you remember those.

Justin: Yes, so good.

Stephan: That's badass that you remember those. Those are the rooster potatoes that we had sourced out through Benny Ki to make duck to make confit potatoes.

Justin: Yes those two things and then the third was it was almost like a Beef Wellington that McHugh did right when Cured opened. It was fantastic, but you made two of the top.

Stephan: Thanks.

Justin: Then I remember you all were retiring the lamb lollipops and I was very sad, but I wasn't sad to see Feast go because that building seemed it was about to fall down.

Stephan: Rock hard and put up wet.

Justin: It smelled like it was put up wet sometimes. You have a feud going with burger boy I see on Facebook? Soul feud?

Stephan: A foe feud yes. They got upset. I think there's more of a deeper there's an undercurrent going on between they're very busy during the pandemic fast foods boom.

Justin: They are long line right now.

Stephan: Everybody's it's easier obviously it's safer feeling to go through a drive-thru. They blocked the parking of people that are trying to that are at little desk shopping and they can't get out. They probably tried to be reasonable whatever and there's just nothing we can do about it situation. One morning when we were doing our pop up the guy was just out there and he's just stickulating at me definitely as we were setting up and on his phone and what have you. Then the cop showed up at the end of the day. The cop came and said there's nothing I could do. I was called because no one's wearing masks, but it's everybody sitting down eating not wearing masks.

Justin: They're allowed to, also outdoors.

Stephan: Also outdoors. It's chill now.

Justin: Nobody likes having competition next door.

Stephan: I'm not picking a fight with Burger Boy. I know who, I respect the hustle.

Justin: You go sell 100 and they sell 100 every two hours probably.

Stephan: 15 minutes.

Justin: What's your favorite thing to cook and what's your favorite thing to eat?

Stephan: I would say my favorite thing to cook is I love making Sunday night pasta. I love making a good simple, but very long stewed beef ragu with spaghetti.

Justin: You post a lot of it.

Stephan: Yes I love that. We usually this is thrown through a loop because it's Sunday night dinners every night. Back when there was really an important night right before school started. We would sit down every night for sure and have pasta. Eating wise I love hamburgers.

Justin: Me too.

Stephan: Straight up. I'm simple. I've always have been my dad's taken me to all kinds of places growing up. I just like a good burger.

Justin: That's my favorite thing to drink with wine or take it with wine.

Stephan: Cheeseburger?

Justin: It's a cheeseburger and a good glass of wine. I actually had that as one of my questions. What do you think the secret is to a good hamburger? Me smoke. I do grill put mesquite wood in it and just smoke the hell out of them. That's my way of doing it.

Stephan: To me that question is crazy because what you've got is each category within inside from top to bottom bun. One thing that I feel that the bond can ruin everything. Patty that has no flavor that's too thick. The quality of meat. To me, the most important the best burger I ever had in my life was at Zuni grill in San Francisco. It was as basic as it get, but it was about a six-ounce burger. It was a thick guy, but the flavor of the meat was just beyond anything that I've ever tasted. I just never had tasted ground beef like this. They're probably getting real sustainable. Really well cared for beef. It was unbelievable in its flavor in its simplicity.

Justin: You still remember it?

Stephan: I remember it like yesterday. Buns to me ruin burgers. That's why the bun we'd use it when we do them, we get a very small bun because to me a burger is not a two-handed meal. I'm really real picky about it. Burgers

Jorge Urby, Campaign Manager of SA Ready to Work and Local Political Heavy Hitter

Justin Hill — Mon, 21 Sep 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Ron Nirenberg is committed to retraining and training San Antonio workers for higher paying jobs. To that end, in November, voters can vote on an initiative creating a fund of $150,000,000 to do just that. The campaign manager for this initiative joins us to discuss this campaign and what it can do for the city.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, a keeper of chickens, and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

[applause]

All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Jorge Urby of The Glider Group in San Antonio. Jorge and I have been friends for a while. We actually took a break on The Alamo Hour, so we're getting back on. We've got Jorge on to talk about a few things. He's been tapped by our mayor, Ron Nirenberg, to run a campaign that the Express-News call Build SA, but it's actually been now changed and named to SA: Ready to Work. He is one of the most sought after political consultants and political communications guys in towns of San Antonio. Express called you a heavy hitter. Did you know that Jorge?

Jorge Urby: I heard that. Somebody told me that.

Justin: [laughs] You've worked on Beto O'Rourke's campaign, Julian Castro's presidential campaigns. You're very involved in our city. Thank you for being here.

Jorge: Thank you, Justin. Thank you for doing what you're doing. I think it's a great thing for the community and I just appreciate you having me on your show.

Justin: Yes, it's a new medium and San Antonio is just far behind on things, sometimes technologically. I wanted to be in the front end of this, and I get to interview interesting people. I had the mayor on as well.

Jorge: Nice. Nice.

Justin: I would start and just get a little bit of color commentary on who you are. Just a few questions, background, your thoughts on San Antonio. When and why did you move to San Antonio?

Jorge: Absolutely, man. I'm from Del Rio, Texas originally. My family goes back there many, many generations and loved it, man. I loved growing up in the small town and the small community feel, but as most people when you turn 18, you start to look into wanting to go to college and what that experience is going to be like. I went to school at Texas State and I was there for some years. I always had a kinship with San Antonio, man because I loved the Spurs. I grew up not too far away. We would come up for family vacations or gatherings or something like that. I always knew that I would end up here, but I did bounce around definitely, especially in my 20s and early 30s.

I got involved through the Castro brothers and other people in the community, and I just fell in love with it and the people, so I just thought, "I want to make my life here." I really moved here, I guess it would be late '04, maybe early '05, something like that, and then I did a stint in the Dallas area, Fort Worth area. I lived in DC for a while, Austin and then I came back here.

Justin: What was the DFW run for?

Jorge: When I moved up there the first time, I was working for the mayor of Forth Worth actually. I worked at city hall there and really came to love that city as well, but then I got an opportunity to move to Washington to pursue my master's degree. I got a master's in public administration from American, then I worked at USDA and I worked at HHS.

Justin: Okay. I didn't know that. Your big city was San Antonio. My growing up, big city was Fort Worth. I grew up two hours from Fort Worth. That's where we'd go if we wanted to go to the big malls or one of those things.

Jorge: There's a lot of similarities actually between the two cities that I found. I like that city a lot. I go visit when I can. My dad used to live up there for a while. I would go up and see him. He lives in Illinois now.

Justin: Del Rio reminds me a lot of where I grew up, which is Wichita Falls because they're both real heavy Air Force bases and a regional big town with a lot of agricultural-type country living people around. They've always reminded me very similar of one another. I asked Ron, favorite hidden gem in San Antonio and he said the Denman Estate Park, I think, was the one he said and I'd never heard of it. Do you have any hidden off the path places in San Antonio that you think are these great hidden gems that you tell people, "Hey, you've got to go check this place out if you haven't been."

Jorge: Yes, for sure. The Botanical Gardens. I know they're popular, but I don't know if a lot of people have been there, but that's a great place to check out if you haven't checked it out. You know what I love about San Antonio? Is obviously the hidden gems. There's great restaurants, for example. One in Southtown called QPV. I know a lot of friends of mine haven't checked it out and I'm always like, "That's a great place if you haven't seen it." What I love about San Antonio is there's a lot to do in a lot of different places. [inaudible 00:05:03]whether it's the North, the West, the South, the East, of course, downtown in Parole. Then it's also the small cities surrounding it like Gruene, Fredericksburg, and Blanco. You also get to experience that and I think it adds to it.

Justin: I hear those towns brought up and I had a guy on my show who has the Texas State Trooper program. It's a PBS program where he goes to Texas cities all over. He's done hundreds of episodes, and he swears by Seguin, and I thought, "I don't know." [chuckles] He thinks it's great.

Jorge: You know what? I've been there maybe once or twice. They have a nice little downtown, but I don't know it well.

Justin: They've got the river that runs through it and all that. Who are your political heroes?

Jorge: That's a great question. I would say I admired Obama a lot. I thought some of the stuff he did was really good. I will caveat and say that there's never been a perfect person or somebody who served that I could say, "Oh, I loved everything they did with either side." I just admire the guy because, number one, he broke barriers. Number two, such an eloquent speaker and his character was unbelievable. The way he carried himself, the way he was a family man, all of that because I think that stuff matters, especially at that level. I admired him a lot.

One of the guys who helped me grow and maybe understand the way politics was, was Congressman Joaquin Castro, who I think the world of. I know him personally and I can really say that his heart's in the right place. His brother, same way. Mike Moncrief, man. The mayor of Fort Worth. I learned a lot from him, working for him for a little over a year. Very gregarious person, got a lot done. Bill White in Houston; honorable man, super smart.

All these people that I've been blessed to work with and count as mentors. When I have a big decision to make in my life, I'm able to call them and they walk me through it. Those would be some of the people. On the national level, probably Obama and LBJ in some ways just because, again, not perfect, did some things probably I didn't agree with, but I thought he got a lot done. He's a fellow Texan so I have to add him in there.

Justin: His ability to influence people is just-- They said there was never somebody that ran the senate as effectively as he did.

Jorge: Oh, unbelievable. If you read the books by Robert Carroll, which I don't know if you have or not, but, man, you're just in awe of the skill that he had to really get legislation passed. You know what I mean? I don't know if we had somebody that effective ever.

Justin: The Johnson treatment, they called it.

Jorge: Yes, yes.

Justin: I was just reading about this the other day. I watched his last interview he did which I guess was with 60 minutes. He was 67 when he died, I think. He was pretty young.

Jorge: Yes. He was young.

Justin: You've been involved on the political side in this city, which means you hear and see the issues and they are brought up day to day because politicians run on issues for the most part. What do you think, personally, are some of the biggest issues facing our city that keep eluding us?

Jorge: Absolutely, man. Look, I have my business which is The Glider Group. I do communications. I used to manage campaigns and I've been involved in politics in government and stuff like that. The reason I got involved with what I'm doing now is because of what you just asked. I've always felt and I've heard other people say this as well. That San Antonio was missing that knowledge-based economy. The jobs that pay higher wages. When companies look at the cities in Texas, we might get looked at, but they may go to Austin or Houston or Dallas or even Fort Worth.

We're the second-largest city in Texas. We absolutely should be getting looked at and also landing those types of businesses. For me, I think that's the main thing in San Antonio. Our literacy rate is not that high. I think investing in that. Also, what they did with the Pre-K 4 SA, which is investing early because the studies show that it'll help in the long run. Homelessness, I think, is another big issue that needs to be dealt with in the city and of course, COVID showed us that we are absolutely in need of helping folks break that generational poverty and elevate themselves so they can create a better quality of life for them in terms of economics. For me, that's why I took a step away from the business, man, because this was important. I said, "You know what? I'm always talking about this. I got a chance to do it so I'm going to do it."

Justin: Do you think our rising tide in the cybersecurity world is going to be that wave that gets us where we need to be because every city that has ended up with this high education, knowledge base workforce, has had some industry that has brought them there, it seems like. Rackspace didn't really do it for us, even though we had this cloud computing thing pop up for a little bit, but it seems like maybe cybersecurity will be that impetus to get us where it needs to be. Do you think that's a likelihood? Do you think that's going to be a small part of our industry? What's your thoughts on that?

Jorge: I think that's one of them. For sure, man. We're doing a lot of work in that sector, but I think tech in general. If you look at all these tech entrepreneurs that are moving to San Antonio, some of it's because they're getting priced out of Austin. They're coming here and you're seeing these bubbles pop up and these folks are really investing in the community, creating this energy downtown that I've never seen before and I used to live downtown. I think tech is going to help us get there, but there's other opportunities besides that that we need to build upon.

Justin: I want to talk to you a little bit because it sounds like SA: Ready to Work is exactly what we're talking about here. Talk to me a little bit about about The Glider Group and your past. I spent some time working on campaigns. It's funny I worked on Alex Sanders senate campaign in '02 against Lindsey Graham, the first time he ran and did some fieldwork in Missouri and South Carolina. I was familiar with it. I thought about maybe working in politics and I decided to go this route. Sounds like you're in communications. What got you to that and because in the politics side, there's field, there's direct mail, there's communications, there's polling? What brought you to the communication side?

Jorge: Yes, sure, man. I've done all of that. I've worked enough in it that I got to see every department division, every aspect of the political campaign. Honestly, I was going to go to law school. I had moved up to Dallas. I was working in health care. I was working at Parkland Health and Hospital System and I really loved that job. I'm doing it, I'm really loving it, but I'm thinking, "I might just go back to law school because I've been doing this for a while." I moved back to my hometown because we had a family tragedy and I wanted to be home with my family. This was about four years ago. I moved back home. I hadn't been home in 17 years.

Justin: Wow.

Jorge: That was a long time. I'm getting acclimated to my community again and I just thought about it and I said, "What do you really love? What do you want to do?" I think for me, it wasn't the legal aspect. I just said, "You know what? That's just not really what I want to do." I just really love communications. I started thinking about what I was good at and what I thought I could put together. That's why I started the company. As you start anything, it's like you start thinking it one way, and then as you go, you start shaping it based of what it is that you can do.

Justin: What does communications mean at The Glider Group? What type of services do you provide to clients?

Jorge: Absolutely. Strategy work, we do production, commercials, documentaries, that kind of stuff. We do design, creative. We do digital. It's like an all in one because I had studied the market and I felt like there wasn't that many places that you could go to one place and say, "I need all this stuff." That's why I was like, "You know what? Let me go ahead and see if I can get this off the ground." I started with one client and then it was two and then it was three and then it just took off.

It's funny, man, because when I was younger, I worked really hard throughout my 20s and my early 30s. I was just really, really, really working hard and that paid dividends without me even knowing because you're not thinking that. I wasn't thinking this grand plan of I'm going to start a business and all these people I'm helping, I'm going to be able-- It's just like people remember me and they remember that I was a hard worker so they gave me a chance. I'm almost five years in, man. It's been a blessing.

Justin: Is there any lobbying or more communication side?

Jorge: No, no, no. Not a lobby. I do public affairs sometimes. Education, letting people know how to attack something or who may be to talk to and stuff like that, but I don't lobby per se. I'm not even trying to get votes for people or anything like that. There's a lot of good ones in town, but she's not something we do.

Justin: What are campaigns have you worked on in a major role?

Jorge: [crosstalk] I'm not even sure.

Justin: [laughs]

Jorge: I'm not even sure.

Justin: That our San Antonio listeners would know about.

Jorge: Sure, sure. I was involved when Jessica Rodriguez ran for state rep and then when you ran for commissioner. Phil Cortez in the Southside. I helped [unintelligible 00:16:08] Donya a little bit. Julian, for sure. Joaquin. Not that it not sounds very specific, but when Bill White ran for governor, I was in charge of Bexar County for him. I've done big county races.

Tommy Calvert is another one that I've helped. Now the mayor, of course, through this initiative. Honestly, one of the things that I wanted to do when I knew I was going to go into this, was I wanted to know all of it from the grassroots all the way to the top in both sectors; in government and in politics. I've worked school board races, for example, in Edgewood. I've worked on presidential races. All the way from school board to presidential. On the government side, I've worked at the local county state, and national level. I did that on purpose because I really wanted to know everything. That's how I did it for myself.

Justin: All people campaigns or have you done bond campaigns and initiatives or is this your first foray into the initiatives?

Jorge: No, I've done some initiatives. I did one recently for water, for example. There was a campaign to provide water infrastructure for communities that were lacking that throughout Texas. It was called Turn the Tap Texas. I did that recently and then, of course, this one that we're doing now, SA: Ready to Work, Pre-K 4 SA a few years back in some ways.

I've been involved in both. Actually, I enjoy the initiatives or the propositions a lot, especially if I believe in them because that's the thing. If you ask anybody who moves [unintelligible 00:18:01]. I'm involved, but I'm involved in the things that I would like to do. If I think it's important and something that I really care about, I get involved and I go 110%.

I'm not one of these guys, honestly, that's jumping from campaign to campaign to campaign and just trying to help everybody. I want to meet the person. I want to know what they're about. Are they really in it for the right reasons? Then maybe, "Okay, let's go," or something like SA: Ready to Work, I just think it's a game-changer for the community and I didn't want to not be involved.

Justin: You've been named the campaign manager by Ron Nurnberg for the SA: Ready to Work campaign. Talk to me a little bit about how the mayor is involved in this initiative that has its own campaign and we'll talk about it, but seemingly it's own financing for the campaign. What is SA: Ready to Work, to begin with?

Jorge: SA: Ready to Work is a program that's going to help people get training and education to get higher-wage jobs. Here's what happened. The mayor, COVID hits, and he's trying to help as many people as possible, keep them safe first. Let's save lives, let's make sure everybody's good and then I don't know if you remember that photo for the food bank that went viral?

Justin: The long lines? [crosstalk]

Jorge: Basically what happened was, the food line went from 60,000 to 120,000 like that. [snaps fingers] All of us are looking at each other like, "This is messed up. That's our city." Everybody in the country-- If you probably think of one thing that encapsulated that time, it's probably that photo.

Justin: Yes, I think that's fair.

Jorge: It's like, "You know what? Enough. We got to do something about this." The mayor sat back because if you remember before that, he was really pushing something called SA Connect, which was the transportation initiative that he [unintelligible 00:20:15]. Priorities had to shift. It was like, "Okay, how do we not let that happen again?" That's why he came up with SA: Ready to Work and he's like, "Okay, here's what we can do. We...

Nico LaHood, Former Bexar County Criminal District Attorney

Justin Hill — Fri, 21 Aug 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Nico LaHood was the Bexar County Criminal District Attorney for one term. During his time, the District Attorney's office was changed in many ways with the inclusion of new programs. Outside of his time in elected office, he is a well-known criminal defense trial attorney and now hosts a podcast called R-Rated Christianity. We had a great talk on a broad range of topics.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian and a keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right, welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Nico LaHood. Nico's the former criminal district attorney of Bexar County, criminal defense lawyer. He's got his own podcast, R-Rated Christianity. He's a public persona. he's very vocal about his faith, being a father and a husband.

Nico LaHood: Thanks for having me [unintelligible 00:00:53]. How are you doing?

Justin: Nico, thanks for joining us. I'm doing great man. I'm doing great. Are you hanging in there?

Nico: [crosstalk] no complaints. I was shocked to hear that you're a keeper of chickens and bees.

Justin: I do. I have two beehives. Well, I've got to keep my hands busy, I think. It's idle time, right?

Nico: I'd like to-- we're talking about a garden, God Willing in this next season, especially with all this craziness, you can't find toilet paper or food during these last months. I'm not going to do anything about the toilet paper but the chickens has been an idea and people have suggested the bees because we have some land that it might be beneficial.

Justin: The chickens are really easy, and they're funny and they're social animals and the bees are set it and forget it.

Nico: We have foxes and coyotes in my area though. We have to be really thoughtful.

Justin: You've to have a good coop that you close at night. That's the key. Nico, I start all these with usually about 10 questions. If there's any way you can speak up a little louder or get closer to your mic, I want to make sure that I don't sound completely overpowering. I'm going to do fewer questions with you because I want to get into some stuff. First, I always ask people, what are your favorite hidden gems of the city? You're born and raised here, so what are some of the kept secrets you think of the city?

Nico: Being around my family. [chuckles] I love my kids, [unintelligible 00:02:11] my wife is too good for my stupid ass. Oh, I'm sorry, [unintelligible 00:02:15] podcast. [crosstalk].

Justin: Go for it.

Nico: I married up. I'm really kind of a, it's either church, workout and I work out in my garage now. I've been doing that for years since I've been in public office. I started working out at the house to save time. I just enjoy my family now. Now that I'm not out speaking six, seven days a week in this meeting or that meeting, I have rediscovered weekends. We just have occasional dinners, invite a lot of friends and fellowship. We're just really simple.

Justin: What about visitors who come in? I always tell them go check out the Japanese Tea Garden. I think that's a great [crosstalk] thing in the town.

Nico: I send people to the missions. I love history, now. I think I got a D when I was in history, younger.

Justin: There you go.

Nico: I can't get enough of history now. I've gone back and started setting the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation, the federalist papers and Bill of Rights and all that declaration and constant. I just love it now, I can't get enough of it. I like to send them to historical places. Of course, they already know about the Riverwalk. That's it.

Justin: That's a good one. I think the other missions-- I was here three years before I finally saw them and was disappointed it took me so long. Next question. Have you caught up with Chasnoff lately?

Nico: I have nothing for him anymore because [unintelligible 00:03:34].

Justin: You all had such a public spat. I didn't know if I have to get [crosstalk].

Nico: If Brian reached out to me and he wanted to talk, if he ever needed prayer, if he ever needed counsel, if he was ever accused of a crime, I would fight for him like I fight for all my clients and I would minister to him like I minister to anybody with I'm doing prison ministry or somebody in our Bible study. I also tell him when he's wrong, and I'll tell him the truth and I'll tell it harshly or softly. However he wants.

I have to admit that he is irritating because I don't believe and this is my opinion that he's an honest person. I can prove that if he ever would ever talk to me, but he hasn't. Even though I'm called in my faith, Justin, as you know, to forgive, and it's a choice, it's not a feeling. I've chosen to do that with a lot of people and I forgive him. If he ever needs help or if you ever need anything, I'm here for him.

Justin: That was really just messed up.

Nico: That's an honest answer.

Justin: No, no I appreciate it. I didn't know if after it was all said and done there was like a call of, "Hey man." How would you describe R-Rated Christianity? I've listened to a few episodes.

Nico: The R-Rated catches people's attention. It stands for real raw and redemption. The real is we talk about real topics. We're not very Christianese language, obviously. We don't talk about the typical Kumbaya topics in a church to feel good. We talk about real topics. We do it in a raw way. I use some slang that that pisses off some church people. I never use the Lord's name in vain. I don't drop any f-bombs on that podcast because I consider my audience and my faith and Ephesians 4:29 tells me to consider my audience. [crosstalk].

Justin: [unintelligible 00:05:14]

Nico: I didn't get close on some of these, but it's an apologetic style podcast. What that means it comes from the Greek word of Apollo Gaea to give an answer. When you look at the Greek Apollo Gaea, it's to give a defense almost like a defense attorney defending your client. I always tell people my number one client is a first-century Jew named Jesus. He went by Joshua, but as they translated it to Jesus.

I give a defense for why are you a Christian? What does that mean? Tell me about this topic. I think the church has done a crappy job answering some really good questions that people have and especially our young people. I think that sucks and they don't honor God, [unintelligible 00:05:48]. Did you say I could use slang every once in a while? Is that okay?

Justin: Do whatever you want.

Nico: It drives the shit out of me when people, they falsely accuse and convict my faith and God for something He didn't do. Bill Maher's really good at it. I would love to talk to him someday. He just has a misunderstanding of the faith. I went through a deep dive, Justin, as you've heard probably in some of my talks. After my brother was murdered, I was pissed off at God. I asked a bunch of questions. Questions that the typical Christian or the typical church person doesn't ask and there's answers to that.

It was a hard road. It was a rough road, I lived in the prism of anger and unforgiveness for years. I was released from that and I'm forever grateful to God for that. I had answers for why I'm a Christian. This podcast in a raw way, not fake Kumbaya way talks about a real guy, who I believe was the Messiah and God incarnate. Then there's answers to all these questions people have, and so we try to address the real questions.

Justin: I was the editor of the law review at Baylor and one of the articles we published was a analysis of the criminal prosecution of Jesus. That Professor then went on to write a book about it. That was [crosstalk].

Nico: I would love to read that. Let me tell you, because that is the most famous murder scene in the history of mankind, Jesus Christ. You should describe it. In this first-century, he was murdered by the Romans and they were really damn good at murdering people. He did not get the due process as you know from doing that review, there was a Jewish law in place that due process they tried Him at nighttime.

Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate and Herod, nobody could find anything wrong with Him. They just gave into the mob mentality, kind of what we're seeing today, ironically. Pilate just said, screw it, man, give them Jesus. I don't know what the hell you want Him for. We'll give you Barabus, kill this guy. He couldn't find anything wrong with him. There was no due process. He didn't confront His witnesses. He didn't have effective assistance of counsel. He wasn't tried by his peers, and it was done in a very expedient way and in the night. It was a murder scene. It was not done justly. It's interesting you did that article. I didn't know about that.

Justin: I didn't write it. I published it though. I will send it to you. That Professor went on to write a whole book on it and it's been redone. I think they did a video of it too. You're an attorney, you're a trial lawyer, I have heard people that even have said, "Well, I'm not a big Nico fan but man that guy's good in trial." Some of these prosecutors that you ruffled their feathers back in the day. I've heard many people say how good you are in trail. What are your thoughts on Zoom trials?

Nico: None at all. [unintelligible 00:08:24] There's no way. You've got someone cross-examination, your read body language, walking, and talking evidencing, objecting. How do you approach the bench? How do you know that if you're not or in a jury box right now, how do I know that [unintelligible 00:08:39] my uncle was in the back watching too, and he gives me history's damn sense and nobody asked for. It's a horrible idea. I have a lot of opinions about what's going on right now. Zoom trials it's not constitutional and I would never support it or advise it for a client.

Justin: Yes, there's an ABA article and there was some jurors, one of them was on a peloton working out for another one cuddled up in their bed with her cat. I want to talk to you a little bit about your run as DA. I think, to some extent it unfairly got clouded in some of the controversies that happened, but you actually did a lot and changed a lot of the processes within the DA's office that I don't think got enough attention at the time. You did pre-trial diversion. You changed the Public Integrity unit. Maybe I said that wrong, how you titled it, but talk to me about some of your accomplishments in the DAs office.

Nico: We went from [unintelligible 00:09:30] public integrity unit. We started a law enforcement integrity unit that of course, pissed off some of the union at first. They realized damn, if I'm in the right Nico is going to stand in front of us. If I'm in the wrong, I got some problems. That's the way it should be, by the way. We started a conviction integrity unit because it was like only the ninth in the country, third in the state only at the time, because we should have honest and good convictions.

Our oath was to ensure justice was done not to secure convictions. That means did we get it right? And people are, why are you starting to conviction integrity unit? Because I'm the DA and my responsibility is to protect the community from itself, but also from the government. I'm not a big government guy, I'm a libertarian leaning Republican now but I've always been the same.

Even when I ran as a Democrat, I was a blue dog Democrat. I was proud to be a Democrat back then and a blue dog Democrat but I believed in small government [unintelligible 00:10:23] take care of my roads, make sure we don't get foreign invaders, make sure we can do business and protect us from each other, and that includes a good justice system, and I was honored to serve as District attorney. I never thought I could. Justin, as you know, I was arrested for selling drugs when I was younger. My brother was murdered in my driveway. People thought I was going to go straight to prosecution and I ended up being a defense attorney for almost a little over 13 years and I did it passionately, as you mentioned earlier, and I was honored to serve as DA and I think I did a different perspective.

What I am not good at, brother, is I am a shitty politician because I don't tell people what they want to hear. I tell them the truth. My no is a no my yes is a yes, I'll give you my answer. I won't try a case in the court of public opinion and I'll meet with anybody. I never--you can ask anybody that worked with me at the time. Anybody would--I never said no to a meeting. I've been in the toughest meetings, Justin, you can ever imagine in meetings where the prosecutor's like, damn, Nico, why'd you do that to their family? Because I either chose against the death penalty or something.

Everyone thought I was going to be this pro death, which I am. I'm a responsible supporter of the death penalty. Responsible, that's the keyword. Many times I chose against it because of the facts or law or the way juries were moving in that season and I met with every family. I never told a family no Justin, and because that wasn't given the respect to us by Governor Perry at the time, I made sure that I didn't-- I wasn't a hypocrite.

Justin: Talk to me about the pretrial diversion because Susan Reed was very staunchly against any type of pretrial diversion program. What is a pretrial diversion program and then how did you Institute it or what did you bring to pass as you [crosstalk] with the DA?

Nico: Yes. We did a couple of things. We did the first adjudication on obstruction of highway, which is different on DWI cases. Before they changed the laws, we were ahead of the curve on that because people were forced, their lives are being substantially altered and rightfully so, they've taken responsibility, but come on, man, they had a conviction on their record. So we started there and then pretrial diversion, think about pretrial, diverting the adjudication of any type of adjudication of guilt or even deferred adjudication and the key to pretrial diversion is you can get it expunged.

That's the key so it's a special type of supervision. It doesn't--we ran it through the probation office. I worked very well with the probation department. It's just a no brainer. It's in the statute. We allow it. Why would we want to do it for certain nonviolent crimes? You know, I had a huge advocacy and I think we instilled a restorative justice model because I think I'm a product of restorative justice from what I went through with the justice system when I was young and very foolish, but yet I was harsh on violent crimes.

Genene Jones, no one said could be prosecuted and we prosecuted Genene Jones because of the hard work that one of my law partners, Jason Gossan and Jay and other people and myself, we worked on together, she's going to meet the Lord from prison where she belongs and that's justice, that's the right result.

Pretrial diversion, you get back to that answer, it's a wonderful opportunity for a first time offender or for whenever a prosecutor used their discretion and feels that it's appropriate for someone to expunge a case if they fulfill all the stat, the requirements of their agreement with the state and with the government and the judge, so it doesn't go on their record and it can be expunged. So we implemented that and I think it was the right thing to do.

Justin: What would you say were your biggest accomplishments at the DA's office?

Nico: The culture change. I think people enjoyed-- there was a lot of things and you'll never hear me say, and I never did when I was in office, me or my or I, it was always we, us and our. I was the leader of that organization for a period of time, the buck stopped with me. I never passed on, threw people under the bus. I took responsibility. I stood in front of the folks that worked with me, but the culture, I think people even now are saying that the culture was very different. I like to think that people enjoyed coming to work and took pride in being prosecutors. There was-- it's right here on my where's it at?

Oh, it's up there, everybody that left my office, it's right behind me said, do what's right not what's easy. Everybody knew that. Do what's right not what's easy is whatever-- here's where the only rules in the office don't do anything illegal. Obviously it's a DA's office. Don't do anything unethical. Obviously that's fine but do what's right. Do what's right. Not what's easy. I might not agree with you. You might get spoken to about it and learn from it, but you're never going to lose your job if you did what was ethical and what was legal.

For me, I always add in their moral, but I don't impose on anybody else, but so that was it. I think people enjoyed coming to work and appreciated the environment. Around 200-500 employees roughly.

Justin: Okay. We're a little different than some cities because our DA's office is also our County attorney, in which other counties have a County attorney and a DA. In our County, the district attorneys is in charge of both of those functions, right?

Nico: It's called the criminal district attorney, so in Travis County, they have a district attorney and to have a County attorney. The County attorney is the county's civil firm and they're also the misdemeanor prosecutors and then the district attorney handles all felony. For us in Harris County, I believe Tarrant County, there might be one other one. I can't think, I think there's one other one, but they're criminal district attorneys. That means that they handle all the felonies, child protective services, all the civil work and all the misdemeanors, so it's a big operation to overlook.

Justin: Yes. You would always say you were the criminal district attorney, even though you all had the civil function in house. I never really understood why. Your time in the DA's office and to be fair, I helped out with your first campaign where you were unsuccessful, your second campaign where you were successful. Your first campaign, those meetings at Panchito's I made friends that I still stay in touch with.

Your time in office, there was some controversy. There was the vaccine issues and there was the people that you would kind of engage with on social media or in the comments section of the San Antonio express. Do you think those took away from the good...

Sheryl Sculley, Former San Antonio City Manager, Runner and Author

Justin Hill — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 05:30:00 -0600

When Sheryl Sculley was hired in San Antonio to be the new city manager, she was confronted with a variety of issues that had long been neglected. From internet usage to wages, she had huge hurdles to overcome immediately. By the time she left, she had become the face of the police and fire union's fight with the city over their contract. She joins the show to discuss her new tell-all book about her experience.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello, and Bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, keeper of chickens, and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great, unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

[applause]

Justin: All right, welcome to this episode of The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Sheryl Sculley. Sheryl was the city manager of San Antonio from 2005 until 2019. Under her tenure, there are so many accomplishments that we're going to discuss a lot about today, but for most of us, who just look around The Henry B Convention Center being redone into what it is today, our Mission Trail, the Mission is becoming a world heritage site. Some of the behind the scenes things include how our government works, and our new contracts for our police, and fire unions. She discusses in her book a lot of these accomplishments, we're here to talk to her about some of those accomplishments discussed in her book, and her new book, Greedy Bastards: One Cities City's Texas-Sized Struggle to Avoid a Financial Crisis. Sheryl, thank you for joining me.

Sheryl Sculley: Thank you, Justin. I’m happy to be with you.

Justin: Before we got going, I made sure that we could see some of the books behind you on the shelf that people can know that this is a book tour, and I’m part of your book tour today.

Sheryl: Thank you for doing that. This morning I learned that I just made the Amazon bestseller list. I’m excited.

Justin: That's awesome. Now, you're going to be scrolling through, and paying attention for reviews as they come in?

Sheryl: Yes. I’m sure we'll get a few of those.

Justin: Okay. I start all these with a little bit of background information. Everybody knows who you were, and are, but I don't know how many people know much about you, I learned a lot about you in the book. Unfortunately, for a lot of us-- I moved here in ‘07, a lot of what we heard about you, and learned about you had to do with the public union fight. There was a lot of information put out about you, which was I think a little bit unfair obviously. Let's give a little bit of background to who you are, you came from Phoenix, Arizona. What was your experience with San Antonio prior to coming out here to work as a city manager?

Sheryl: I was the assistant city manager in the number two position in the city of Phoenix, I worked there for 16 years, watched, and was a part of that city growing, doubling in size, and expanding. We worked on major initiatives for that fast-growing city. Before that, I was city manager of Kalamazoo, Michigan. I actually grew up in the Chicago area, went to school in Indiana, and my first job out of college was with the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan. My husband Mike is from Kalamazoo, and our children were born there. I worked for that city for a total of 15 years, I wasn't born a city manager although I am the oldest of seven children. My siblings accused me of trying to city manage the family.

I started in a research position, joined the city manager's office as an assistant city manager, and worked there the last five years as city manager. Then I was recruited to Phoenix. We've never been there, but our kids were pre-school age, it was good timing to move across the country, take on that new challenge, so we did. I never thought I’d leave Phoenix, I was in the number two position and hope to become the city manager when that manager left. Then San Antonio came knocking, I did turn down the position the first time it was offered in 2005, Mayor Garza was mayor at the time. They were going through an election. After the election, Mayor Hardberger was elected, he contacted me, and convinced me to come to San Antonio.

I did, I was appointed in the summer of 2005. The hurricane Katrina hit the coast the following week, which perhaps was an omen as to the experience I’d have in San Antonio. I signed a two-year contract, it was a really great experience to work with Mayor Hardberger. He's a wonderful man, he had never been on the city council. I think for both of us, me being not from San Antonio, being new, the council was looking for an outsider to come in, improve the professionalism of the city government here, develop some big bond programs, and improve their service delivery to the community. Here I am, 15 years later I just retired from city management a year ago. That's after 45 years in public management, but it's been a great ride and I've loved working in San Antonio.

Justin: You make a joke in your book that-- You speak very highly of Phil Harburger who's been nothing but a nice man every time I've met him. He's previously a lawyer in another life like I am as well, but you made a joke that he did more courting you than his own wife. It wasn't just he convinced you, there was a lot of back and forth before you finally decided to come over. Then it sounds like baptism by fire straight into hurricane Katrina.

Sheryl: Yes, that's pretty much the case. Actually, his wife introduced me once at an event and she is the one who said that "Heck, he spent more time courting her than he did me for my hand in marriage." Yes, Linda is a wonderful person and she, Phil, Mike, and I have become close family friends. They're wonderful people.

Justin: Good. I'm hoping to get him on the show because he's got some just wild stories about his adventure stuff he's done. I ask everybody on the show what are some of your favorite hidden gems in San Antonio, you probably know the city better than almost anybody at this point. What are some of the things in the city do you think, maybe don't get enough attention, or people should go check out?

Sheryl: Yes. Let me say that you had asked me earlier about the Where I Live Column that I wrote during the COVID shelter-in-place situation this spring. I wrote it because as someone who lives on the Riverwalk, we live downtown and it was just so exciting for me to see more people coming to the Riverwalk and using it for exercising. When we first moved here, I'm an old marathon runner, I would go out and run in different parts of the community and I would rarely see anyone out running in the community. There are so many wonderful places now to run in San Antonio.

The Riverwalk is full of people walking, running, strollers, bicycles, no scooters, but there are even people kayaking on the river. Now the extension to the South through the Mission Reach, all the way to Mission Espada it's gorgeous and beautiful. I encourage people to take advantage of it to even drive to one of the locations and you can cycle, run, walk the entire length of the Mission Reach without crossing a street, and likewise to the North.

I worked with Mayor Hardberger and others on the Mission Reach extension to the north that goes all the way to Brackenridge Park. It's beautiful as well, so there are some great spots. Hardberger Park, if people haven't been there, there's a gigantic dog area as well for dog lovers, but great places to run there. Government Canyon for running is spectacular and beautiful, so lots of places to get out and about in the community.

Justin: Yes, I think I've done all of the Riverwalk and the Mission Reach, but there's that weird chunk between where you live and King William that I've never done. Last show that was somebody's hidden gem that I needed to go do that chunk, so I learns something every time I asked somebody.

Sheryl: It's beautiful, yes. It is beautiful.

Justin: Yes, sure. What are you doing now? I know you're a consultant, but what does that mean and what are you working on?

Sheryl: Yes, I'm working a little bit on consulting, not a whole lot with Strategic Partnerships. They're out of Austin Mary Scott Nabers is the CEO of that organization. I help them think through with companies that are interested in doing business with cities. Not San Antonio, because I don't want to bother my staff there, but cities around the state that are looking for help on how to improve different systems and companies that have products that can help them help. I've been helping them think through some of those issues and how to put those proposals together in those strategies, but mostly, what I've been doing is working on my book this past year.

I'm also probably over-committed on my non-profit work. I did join the Texas 2036 board that's chaired by Tom Luce and Margaret Spellings, the former education secretary, is the CEO. We're working on the bicentennial 2036 for the state of Texas, what do we want it to be in that year, in what areas does the state need to improve, in terms of education, government performance, health care, environment, transportation and infrastructure, business development? What do we need to do to be better and that's been an exciting statewide project. Here locally, I'm still involved with the United Way, working on the International Piano Competition for musical bridges around the world.

I'm also working on the campaign for the renewal of the Pre-K for SA program. Some of your listeners may recall that the voters approved that program in 2012. We implemented that program successfully. We have four schools that educate 2000 four-year-olds annually, and provide professional development for early educators throughout the city and all the school districts and also give grants to private schools as well as public schools to help them expand their early childhood education.

We have outside people that its evaluated success. It's proven to be very effective for families, and it's free to the lowest income families in the community so, educationally it's important to San Antonio more so than ever. Now through COVID and that's on the ballot for renewal November 3rd, so I'm busy working on that effort.

Justin: Well, you make a comment in your book about how you're a marathon runner and you're in for the long haul and it sounds like you haven't slowed down really since you've retired.

Sheryl: Not really full days.

Justin: Before we got started, I said you're my third Anchovy. The other two actually have commented on this post on Facebook already. You also auctioned off your great sachets full of metals for charities after you retired, what are your favorite Fiesta events?

Sheryl: Well, my favorite is cornyation. I confess I was king anchovy in 2009 at the urging of my friends, Tony Bradfield and Dr. Kevin Black and others and it was a great experience. Probably the most fun I've had since I've been in San Antonio. My husband Mike managed the green room and we have lots of--

Justin: I want to know what that means. [laughs]

Sheryl: Well, liquid refreshment before, at intermission, and between shows. It was a great time. Those who have participated know, it's a lot of fun. We raised more than $150,000 for the AIDS Foundation that year. It was a great experience. Had a lot of fun, and all my sachets and there were hundreds and hundreds of metals and we did auction those at my retirement event, and from the proceeds from that event, the auctioning of the Fiesta items and my own $10,000 contribution, we donated a total of $40,000 to the Young Women's Leadership Academy at San Antonio Independent School District to help those girls go off to college so very, very excited to have done that.

Justin: That's fantastic.

Sheryl: I know you said that you bid on one of the sachets, but you didn't bid enough money.

Justin: Well, there was an online bidding process and I think I just didn't pay attention at the time I really needed to.

Sheryl: Okay. All right.

Justin: We're going to get into the book, but what was your outfit for cornyation?

Sheryl: Oh, boy. You've probably seen it that's why you're asking. It was a one-piece red Wonder-Woman, Superwoman outfit with a big royal blue cape, red leather boots that laced up above my knees. It was definitely out of character for me.

Justin: Appropriate for cornyation.

Sheryl: Very appropriate for coordination. We had a lot of fun. Phil Hardberger, Mayor Hardberger even did a voiceover as part of the skit for my opening number?

Justin: Well, good for him.

Sheryl: It was a lot of fun.

Justin: I could talk to you about San Antonio for a whole show, but I want to start talking about your book. I learned a lot about your book. Like I said, at the start, I think my first knowledge or seeing you in the public eye other than articles in the Rivard Report or the Express was this deluge of bad publicity and ads and Facebook stuff about you during the police negotiations. I learned a lot about that process through your book, but let's just start generally, San Antonio has a different form of city government than a lot of cities. Can you explain how we run our city different than other cities?

Sheryl: We have a council-manager form of government that was adopted by the residents of the community by city charter in 1951. What that means is that the mayor and council members who are elected, and we have 11 elected officials, the mayor is elected at large and then we have 10 single-member districts, so that all areas of the city are represented that happened actually the single-member districts in the 1970s. They serve as the policy directors or the board of directors for the Municipal Corporation, and they hire a CEO to run the business of city local government at their direction.

The city manager functions in that way. I'm responsible to hire and fire all city employees and we have a total of 13,000 city employees. What they asked me to do when I was recruited here was to assess talent, make changes, get the financial house in order, I'm not sure they understood the condition of the city government when I was recruited here in 2005, but it definitely needed a lot of improvement. The city manager functions as the CEO of the Municipal Corporation to run the business to hire staff.

Justin: The alternative to that-- You just clicked off for a second we're back. The alternative to that is just a regular a city council and mayor-- Where the mayor serves the role of the CEO?

Sheryl: Well, in a strong mayor form of government, let's take Houston, Sylvester Turner is the mayor. He's also the chief executive. The mayor is appointing department heads and staff in that case. The council-manager plan is what's considered a professional local government system and so I'm not hiring friends of elected officials. There's no political patronage system. I'm trying to hire the best and the brightest from the community as well as nationally to provide the best service for the residents of the community. Chief Bill McManus was one of the first people I recruited to San Antonio. I considered internal candidates, but in the end, I thought that he would be the best, and I think most residents agree he's done an outstanding job as chief of our police department.

Justin: He tried to leave at some point and just had to come back it sounds like?

Sheryl: He did he went to CPS for about nine months I told him, I thought that he was too much a cops cop and that he would miss that adrenaline rush constantly and sure enough, he called me that summer and said, "Okay, you were right. I want to come back." I was able to hire him twice.

Justin: I was surprised. In the council-manager form, Phoenix is the largest city of San Antonio, the second-largest city who has that sort of structure?

Sheryl: Yes, we are the second-largest. Dallas is the third-largest?

Justin: Is that trending one way or another nationally, are more cities moving to the council-manager or is everybody stuck in their ways at this point?

Sheryl: Well, it's the most popular form of government nationally, more so in the medium and smaller sized cities, so there aren't as many large cities so if you think about New York, Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Houston those are strong mayor form of government cities, but Phoenix San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Corpus Christi, El Paso here in the state, are council-manager form of government. I'm a huge advocate for professionalism and as I have discussed with the mayors I've worked with here and I worked with four different mayors during my tenure here and a total of 47 different elected officials.

There's so much turnover that you need professional management for the continuity and yet we take the policy direction from the elected officials but because we have experience at delivering those services and understand what it takes to recruit, to manage, and to service deliver in those specific fields, then if you think about it, we're a very diversified Corporation. We do everything from policing, to firefighting, to emergency medical services, to building roads, to maintaining parks, to running the libraries, public health departments, social services, municipal court, and then all the backup house that goes with those major corporations. I'm an advocate for professional city management.

Justin: Even more so we have some involvement with our water and our electric that a lot of cities don't deal with, would that be fair to say?

Sheryl: That's true. Yes, we own as a city-- City of San Antonio owns the San Antonio Water System and owns CPS Energy. If CPS Energy were a private utility, they'd be paying taxes to the city. They don't pay taxes to the city. Instead, the city is entitled to 14% of gross revenue, and that represents about 30% of the city's general fund budget. It's an important part. Then the city manager has charter responsibility to make recommendations on their rates.

We have a division within our finance department that actually studies and works with both utilities, water, and energy to discuss what their needs are. We collectively make recommendations then to city council that decides the rates for both of the utilities. Running a municipal corporation is a big and complicated job. It takes someone who has experience at doing that and understands the fundamentals and also can work within a political environment.

Justin: You talk about being a juggler. Now we're starting to get some sort of...

Poncho Nevarez, State Rep, Attorney, and Recovering Addict

Justin Hill — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 17:00:00 -0600

Poncho Nevarez and Justin have been friends for a decade. Poncho was elected as a State Representative in 2013. Since then, he worked his way up into powerful positions. In 2019, he ran into trouble with drugs, got clean, chose not to run again, and joins us to talk about his journey into the dark and back. His honesty is refreshing.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello, and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonioan, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to the Alamo hour. Today's guest is Poncho Nevarez. Poncho is a current state rep of district 74?

Poncho Nevarez: Yes.

Justin: Covering Eagle Pass all the way out through Big Bend. I think it's one of, if not the biggest political district in the contiguous US.

Poncho: In the world. [chuckles]

Justin: Well, probably not. He's an injury attorney. He's a musician. He's a rancher. He has a Watusi or three, maybe, a father, husband, friend. Admittedly, and he just wrote a big article about it, we'll talk about some, an alcoholic and an addict. When he's not running for reelection, he is working on an album, apparently, which we're going to talk about a little bit as well. Poncho, thanks for being here.

Poncho: Thank you for having me. I couldn't help but catch in the promo you were talking about, "This is about San Antonioans, for San Antonioans," and I would ask-- I spent a good part of my adult life in San Antonio for law school, and then because of my law practice, so if they'll claim me, [chuckles] I'd say I'm somewhat from San Antonio.

Justin: So, you're co-opting me here. It's a show about San Antonio, but there's a lot of people that have some interaction or have lived here in the past that they have something to add about our city as well.

Poncho: Well, it's like Eagle Pass, I'd say. It doesn't matter where you go. There's some connection to Eagle Pass. You could be standing outside the pyramids of Giza [chuckles] and there's somebody from Eagle Pass there. I think the same thing applies with San Antonio. It's the same thing.

Justin: Well, good. You've got something to add. When I met you, you had a home here yet, an office here. I think you still practice law here on occasion.

Poncho: Yes. I think that was back in maybe 2005 or 2006 a bit.

Justin: Well, you went to law school here, and then you and I would have met around 2007, 2008, and then we worked on that case through '11 probably.

Poncho: I graduated from law school '99 and then I was away. I was here in Eagle Pass for a few years and then I moved back and then Miguel Chapa and I were partnered up and we're in San Antonio. That was back in 2005 when Miguel and I got together. He'll deny this, but we put that firm together at a Hooters.

[laughter]

Justin: I'm not surprised by this.

Poncho: True story. We were going to go to Vegas, that night, I think. It was me, Jason Hoelscher and Miguel, we were going to go to Vegas and we were killing some time and that's where we formed the firm.

Justin: Well, I do a top 10. It's just a general number of questions. Sometimes it's 3, sometimes it's 10 with all of my guests to give some sort of flavor and background on who you are. The first one was, "Talk to us about your time in San Antonio." We've already knocked that one out. The next thing I want to ask you is what are some of your favorite places in San Antonio that people maybe don't know about? We talk about hidden gems in the city.

Poncho: I liked the McNay, the museum a whole bunch. I really do. I lived in that neighborhood, different parts of Alamo Heights through my last two years of law school. Then it was the first home that I bought over off of North New Braunfels. I really enjoyed the McNay. There's a cafe there, two Twin Sisters. I really like South Florida Street. To me, Latin America starts in downtown San Antonio. That's where Latin America begins. So I have an affinity for that. I love the Mission Trail. It's great. I can go on and on, but those are places that I-- I love the Alamo man. That's just one of those places that I'll never not want to go to or experience. It's just one of those places.

Justin: The Missions are like that with me. The first time I went, I'd lived here four years and thought, "How did it take me so long to get there?" What does prone to brawling mean?

[laughter]

Poncho: I don't know. When I read that, one, I'd forgotten they said that about me and it reminded me of a speech that Dr. Evil gives in the first Austin Powers that he said his dad was prone to buggery.

Justin: Yes, that's right. That's right. I forgot about that. For background, Texas Monthly did a little bit on Poncho and they said, of many adjectives, that he was prone to brawling and I didn't know what that meant.

Poncho: Well, I don't know. [inaudible 00:05:17] I think maybe the session before, or two sessions before, they had likened me to Sam Houston and I'm starting to think, not the good parts. [chuckles] Not the good side of Houston.

Justin: Well, maybe you'll have an 80-foot marble statue made of you at some point. [crosstalk]

Poncho: [unintelligible 00:05:34]

Justin: Right. [chuckles] One time I was in DC and I got a tour of the Capitol and I learned all these neat, weird tidbits about the Capitol. Do you have any of those about Austin Capitol that people might not know about?

Poncho: Yes. There is, one, it's a fantastic place and if you haven't been there when we get past all this madness, you should because it's just great. I want to say by just a little bit, it's taller than the US Capitol, which is by design. Then I was told my first session that my desk had been Sam Johnson's desk which had been Lyndon B Johnson's dad. I was told that Lyndon B Johnson would play at his father's feet at the desk. I don't believe that to be true.

Justin: Cool story.

Poncho: I thought so. One of the other things too is the original. During the session, the original battle flag from San Jacinto is exhibited behind the speaker's dais. Only during the session as the original battle flag there, which is pretty damn cool. It's just one of those neat places. I remember my first session, I would look up at the place and think about, one, all the characters that had been in there and then two, just the amount of history. The conversations, all kinds of stuff. It can't help but affect you in a good way, I think.

Justin: How can a normal Joe like me go get a good tour of the Capitol?

Poncho: I got four more months there. I can give you one. [chuckles]

Justin: Do you just contact your Congressman or your state rep?

Poncho: That's exactly right. That's probably the best way is to go. You can get a tour and the tour guides are phenomenal. I used to sneak away on Sundays when stuff would get really heavy and follow the tours. I learned a lot following the tours but your state representative's office should be able to guide you on a pretty good tour.

Justin: I asked Ina this when she was on the show a couple of weeks back, any unlikely friendships in Austin that you formed?

Poncho: Wow. You'd be surprised. I got along really good with a lot of these guys that you would think publicly, I wouldn't have any business with them. Guys like Briscoe Cain.

Justin: Oh, that was going to be the name because her, I did Stickland and she said they actually were really good friends.

Poncho: Sometimes we'd get into it. Especially Briscoe, I could really relate a lot to him because he was trying so hard all the time and he's a really smart guy. He's got this [unintelligible 00:08:26] that I don't understand but I guess he looks at me the same way.

Justin: He looks very young.

Poncho: He's pretty wise when he's not. [chuckles]

Justin: Was Rinaldi the one that you butted heads with?

Poncho: In hindsight, one of the things that you do as a recovering alcoholic and addict is you try to make amends where you can. I probably only got an apology for getting physical with him because you should never do that. Although I say that, I'd probably do it again. [chuckles]

Justin: Well, now I know what prone to brawling means.

Poncho: There you go. In all seriousness, I think there was something about him, he just wasn't a very happy guy. Unless he was taking lunch money away from school children. He just wasn't happy.

Justin: [chuckles] Is he still there?

Poncho: No. He lost. I hope he's doing well. I really do. I don't wish the guy any ill.

Justin: You've got a new album coming out. We'll talk about it a little bit but who would you compare the sound to?

Poncho: I hope it sounds like T. Rex and The Sweet had a love child with Jason Isbell and Bryan Adams, but I know it doesn't. I started thinking about when I started writing songs, some of the artists that influence me, and I grew up listening to a lot of rock and roll in the '70s. I wanted it to sound rough and it does. There's something really grainy about it. I can't describe it, it's really mean where it needs to be mean. It's a rock record. Somebody was asking me like, "What kind of music is it?" I don't know. It's fast sometimes, it's slow sometimes, it's loud, it's [unintelligible 00:10:29] and it's rough. I take credit for all of that shit.

Justin: Is there a release date?

Poncho: I'm trying to pin myself down but I'm avoiding that because-- I may have told you this last week when we were texting back and forth, is that we're finishing up most of the vocal work this week so it should be in a form for us to be able to start mixing it next week. I can't wait because I'm already hearing some of the stuff that we've been doing as we finished each track. There was one song that I had some doubts about and I just went back and I reworked it and I'm a lot happier about it.

I resisted the urge to allow myself to be married to certain things and saying, "This is the way it's got to be because it's got to be." I allowed myself to be guided by what I call a really talented producer and musician too because he's helped me musically on the record too. It's worked because I'd been reading this biography of Tom Petty, and he made a point in stressing about how you can change everything up until the last minute. I'm very indecisive about a lot of things but it allows for a lot of flexibility. I think that long answer to your short question is I don't know when the release date is.

Justin: It's not the longest answer I've gotten before. What is your current lineup of animals at your home menagerie? You bought a house that had almost essentially a zoo in it, you kept some of them. What do you have now? Do you still have a kookaburra?

Poncho: The kookaburra was eaten by a [unintelligible 00:12:14]

Justin: [laughs] Is that true?

Poncho: True. There was one lone feather in an orange tree that survived the attack and then a very traumatized waka maya that, because of the trauma of surviving the attack ,pulls the breast-- He died an untimely death, I think he committed suicide. He would pull his breast feathers out and I can only surmise that he had survivor's guilt. I hate to diagnose--

Justin: No, go for it.

Poncho: I think he had PTSD, dude and he had some depression. I really believe that he ended his life untimely. I had a vet that came by to help me with some other animals, I went to high school with her. I asked her, I said, "Dahlia, what do you think?" "She needs a bird psychologist." I'm like, "Huh?"

Justin: [laughs] That's a thing, or a joke?

Poncho: I guess. I did my best but look, two sick people together can not help each other so I was [crosstalk]

Justin: That's a good point. Do you still have the watusi?

Poncho: Yes. I moved him out to what we affectionately call the bigger ranch that we got, about 500 acres. I moved them out there and they're doing real well. I've got another herd of about 50 [unintelligible 00:13:41]cattle that we got on there. They've got a better chance out there. We still have fallow deer, the axix deer, I've got Dorpers now too. Those Dorpers are something else, bro. You can put them in a parking lot-

Justin: What's a Dorper?

Poncho: It's a sheep. They're lambs, so you put them in a parking lot, they'll eat rocks, they'll eat anything. One of them ate half of my catcher's mittens which is pretty sad.

Justin: Why did it have it?

Poncho: I was playing catch with my son, I set it down and when I looked at it again it had eaten it.

Justin: Any other animals in the cages?

Poncho: We have a parrot that is-- The kookaburra was really good at mimicking voices, not necessarily the words, but the sound of your voice and the cadence. So you'd say something, he'd say it right back to you in a few minutes almost the way you said it. It was obviously nonsense, but also what you were saying was probably nonsense anyway. The reason I believe the bird learned that is because we leave the radio on, so he was always constantly mimicking whoever the DJ was.

Justin: If you take this too far, I'm going to start wondering how bad your addiction got in those time periods. Now your kookaburra is talking to you and--

Poncho: I didn't talk back to it.

[laughter]

Justin: All right. So you were city councilperson at one point, you were state-

Poncho: School board.

Justin: School board, state rep, are those the only two elected positions you had other than class president or whatever?

Poncho: That's it.

Justin: Have you been to any Fiesta events?

Poncho: It's been a long time, I think the last one I went to was in 2019. We went to the IBC parade. We were at the IBC bank building for the river parade. That's always nice, Fiesta is such a great time.

Justin: I love it, I'm a huge advocate of it. I want to talk to you about the legislature. The last thing I want to ask you in our top 10 is what has been the most important piece of advice that you have been given in your path to recovery?

Poncho: There's been a lot, but if I had to pick one, it's, "Live in the present," that's the biggest one. Live in the present. One of the things that overwhelms people that are sane or that are not suffering with this disease, is living too far in the past or futurizing everything. A lot of times people will mistake, "The guy's nostalgic," or if you futurize things, "He likes to plan ahead or he's thinking several moves ahead." You can do that without living in the past and without losing what you're doing today. That living in the present applies to a lot of things, I just keep things in front of me that I need to keep in front of me.

It's not that I don't think about my future, I think about it and I hope I have one and that it's healthy but my future won't matter if I don't do the things today that I need to do that are important to me and that make me happy. I'm not talking about indulge some petty notion of happiness that I have, I'm talking about happy. It was always there for me, I just lost it. The further I got along in my disease, the further I got along in feeding my dark angels or the worst part of my angels, I lost sight of that. Winning wasn't something to be happy about, I was relieved. Losing was gut-wrenching and I don't feel like that anymore, I don't feel like that today.

Justin: Good. I want to talk more about that but I want to talk about something. You wrote a big essay that was just released and a bunch of people on Twitter passing it around, but some of the things that stuck out with me were about your frustration in working in the legislature. Just for a little bit of background, you're in your third term?

Poncho: No, this is my fourth term.

Justin: Last session you were given some really big committee chairs, you were appointed to some really powerful committees. What have been your roles in the legislature and how has it progressed?

Poncho: Just like anybody else, you start at the bottom and I was fortunate in my second session, worked my way up from there and speaker Straus was good enough to see something in me and give me an opportunity on some good committees. That carried over to the last session that he was a speaker which was my third. This is my fourth and what will now be my final session. Speaker Bonnen was good enough to give me that responsibility.

Up until that point, I've been vice-chair of that committee for two sessions going in. So it seemed logical that I would get the chair, but nothing's ever logical in the legislature, but I got it. I think I wrote in the essay that I'd become a more influential figure. I think I had, but the amount of pressure that one feels to be able to deliver some things, especially when you're in the minority party, you have to dodge 141 days of stated and undercurrent opposition to just about everything you do.

I just wasn't enjoying myself. The process was so frustrating to me, so dehumanizing in terms of what you can do, the pandering you have to do sometimes to get it done. '

Frankly, I'll say this. I felt that way. The process is what it is. I can't sit there and say, "These people are to blame for it." I'm the one that allowed myself to feel that way. I let it overwhelm me. The truth is for most of us, if we're being honest about the process as we were there, there's a lot bad about it. That's just unavoidable. If you can keep yourself sane and healthy and readjust your attitudes about a lot of things on a continuous basis, then you're going to be okay. I just couldn't anymore. A lot of...

Gavin Rogers, Pastor, Podcaster, and Social Justice Advocate

Justin Hill — Fri, 07 Aug 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Gavin Rogers has been a pastor at Travis Park church for many years. He has been actively involved in serving immigrant communities, the homeless community and bringing attention to many other social issues in our city. He also runs the very successful Pub Theology that was once an in person meeting but has moved online. We did a joint podcast and it was great fun.

Transcript:

[silence]

Gavin: Good evening friends on Facebook. We are having a special Pub Theology with our good friend Justin Hill with the Alamo Hour Podcast. Welcome, Justin.

Justin Hill: Hey man. Thanks for having me.

Gavin: If you're confused, what this is going on, Justin Hill runs a podcast called the Alamo Hour. It's a destination podcast for those who want to take an in-depth look at different people, places, events, and happenings in San Antonio, Texas. He's a local attorney and this podcast is going to dive deep into the city that we all love so much. He hosts that about every week. You can listen to his podcast on YouTube or various podcast channels like Apple and SoundCloud and all those things. Justin is a graduate of Texas A&M University graduated in 2004, we just learned that we're the same age. We have merged platforms today. The Alamo Hour and Pub Theology are of the same broadcast. Welcome, Justin.

Justin: Hey man. Thanks for having me. Since we're kind of co-host, I will [inaudible 00:03:58] Gavin is associate minister at Travis park church. To me, I always like to have people on that I think a little bit more about than the resume. To me, you've always run a really good live as you speak way of life with all of your social justice stuff. I look up to you in terms of you put your money where your mouth is, but really your time where your heart is. I appreciate that.

I think you do so much for people, but you're also the host of Pub Theology. Pub Theology is a dialogue group that usually meets at The Friendly Spot, but because of COVID we're meeting online, you talk about faith, the community in San Antonio, creating common good and I love the slogan, “Different brews and different views. All perspectives welcome.”

Gavin: What are you drinking today, Justin?

Justin: Well, I've got a sparkling water from Kirkland, but I also have a Saint Arnold's art car, IPA.

Gavin: Good Texas beer. Right now-- I've never had this one, the Freetail Bat Outta Helles. Pub Theology themes, so there's a hell theme there, but it has a San Antonio scene there.

Justin: [unintelligible 00:05:01] Dortch Law and I drank other people's beer the whole time and he seemed offended, but he didn't bring me any beer to drink so I did [unintelligible 00:05:11]

Gavin: That’s fair. It’s good. Now, I really respect you, Justin, you've been serving in around town at various events and been supporting political candidates you are involved in everything I know about. You're also good friends with my good friend, Phil Walkins, who goes to our church and a great local attorneys in town. The stuff that you promote it always connects with me. I think a lot of the people who listen to Pub Theology and probably Alamo Hour. You started this Alamo Hour maybe at the start of 2020?

Justin: At the start of the shutdown. I didn't want to do it, and all of a sudden I had time on my hands, so I was able to do it. I had started buying the equipment, troubleshooting, but then once the shutdown happened, I didn't have an excuse anymore.

Gavin: Wow. That's great. Who has been your favorite guest so far? Now I've had maybe like 20, maybe 15, 20 episodes.

Justin: This is 25.

Gavin: Oh, wow. That's great. Yes.

Justin: I like the meaty dense stuff. I've had some really interesting-- These epidemiologists, including Dr. Rohr-Allegrini from here in San Antonio, Dr. Lesch is a Syrian expert. Some of those things have been really interesting. A surprise one is I had a guy who was the Texas League Commissioner of baseball for 27 years and wrote books on it. I thought it was dry and boring and really it was just super interesting to hear the story of Texas League AA Baseball.

I've had some really great storytellers and I walk away from him and feel one way, but then I get a whole bunch of people responding about what they think about him. It's just been fun. It's been fun to get to know new people and kind of share their stories.

Gavin: I want to remind our listeners that as you listen today, if you're listening through the Pub Theology live Facebook stream, I know we share this with different watch parties and different groups, but if you're watching it on our Pub Theology live page, you can post comments and we will see those, Justin and I will see those. We'll answer any of your questions. Justin believes that any topic is up for discussion. So do we at Pub Theology, we talk about everything. That's why it's different views and different brews.

You can go to his website, thealamohour.com to learn more about all the different podcasts that he has had 25, including Mayor Ron Nierenberg and great doctors during COVID. Go to there. If you can always follow us at Pub Theology SA, on our Facebook page or YouTube channel. He's been going online for 25 episodes. I think we started right after the pandemic and we never have been online. We've always promoted our events live at The Friendly Spot. I think we live in a new world now. We live in a new world where all this is going to become a new reality for years to come.

Justin: It's a new deal. It's funny, I started a podcast and you're doing a podcast about San Antonio essentially with this, and I joked that if this was in any other city, I would be way behind the curve, but San Antonio we're slow to adopt technology and new things. We're both at the forefront of this. Good for us.

Gavin: No, that's great. I really enjoyed your episodes. I did listen to the COVID doctor recently. The epidemiologist, I believe, right?

Justin: Yes. Dr. Slutkin has been advising with governors and mayors, including Ron Nuremberg. A million things you could talk about with that guy, but he was really interesting and very gracious to agree to do my lowly little podcast.

Gavin: That's great.

Justin: I want to start with you Gavin. I do this on all of-- I see Phil reaching out. I do this on all of my podcasts, since this is joint, I'm going to go through at least my general top 10. This is supposed to be kind of short and pithy. When and why did you move to San Antonio?

Gavin: I moved to San Antonio after I graduated grad school. I think we probably went-- Did you go to law school right after A&M? Did you jump into it? Yes, three-year degrees. I graduated at Duke Divinity School, after I went to Baylor and I had a few jobs lined up after at various churches, one in Houston, I remember one was in Tyler Texas, and one was in San Antonio. My sister still lives in San Antonio, after graduating from A&M she became a teacher and a principal here.

It was like, “Oh, my sister is here.” I thought it was a great city to live in that I hadn't really experienced much other than vacations. It felt like a different story I could create than moving back to Houston where I'm from or the Woodlands, or I didn't really want to go to Tyler, Texas. I landed in San Antonio. My first church was a University Methodist Church on days of De Zavala Road.

Justin: Tyler is beautiful. I have a [crosstalk] I’m surprised how petty it is.

Gavin: I didn't want to probably move there as a 26, seven, eight. I can't remember how old I was. You’re able to--

Justin: [unintelligible 00:09:47] I think we met through Jody Newman who's been on I'm sure your show, my show. I met her when she was first Queen Anchovy. Next question, what was your favourite [unintelligible 00:09:59] character that you played?

Gavin: Well, I played only three. Two of them have been the same. I played Ozzy Osborne and two of those-- The first time we played Ozzy, obviously I didn't really want to play Ozzy the third time, but it was just the skit Lean that we had to do it. The first time I played Ozzy probably got the most rousing laughter when we made fun of the downtown loo that was put in by Roberto Treviño. Jody, and I wrote that skit along with the [unintelligible 00:10:33] we just had a blast with that. I think the next character was the Confederate statue that was removed. I had to play a Confederate soldier. That was fun in a way, but Ozzy Osborne for sure.

Justin: I was wondering how Ozzy is still relevant. My next question you already answered, which was what beer were you drinking? We talked about-- This is the only one I gave you the heads up on. I was going to be asking you is what are your favorite hidden gems in the city and you said a restaurant. I want to know restaurant, but also, non restaurant location or a thing in the city?

Gavin: Good. My favorite restaurant is Maria Cafe South of Southtown I think it's not Nogalitos. I believe that I love that place. The family run restaurant there is a blast, you can get brisket nachos and you could really make anything you want there. I think they have a name for everything. Justin, if you order something different, they'll make it the Justin Hill enchilada special. I love that. I love Maria's.

Justin: Do you have a dish named after you?

Gavin: I don't. I know John Berrera does. He's part of our- [unintelligible 00:11:32] group too, but I just love the family that works there and runs that operation.

Justin: The first time I really hung out with John other than meeting him was watching Obama's first inauguration speech in 2008. That's my history with John Berrera.

Gavin: Mine is [unintelligible 00:11:50] through Jody as well. By the way, we really want to support The Friendly Spot it's back open and social distancing we really want to support that. Please support local, support places like The Friendly Spot and all things around San Antonio that are open during this Covid crisis.

Justin: Favorite hidden gem that's not a restaurant or a bar?

Gavin: This is going to be a tough one. My favorite hidden gem is probably the trail that's right behind King William, that crosses into Blue Star and you cross the river on those rocks. I love that rock and I love walking around that part of the Mission Reach and down into, obviously now you can always go all the way down, but I've always really cherished that one strip, especially when it was more not known. It's known now, but 10 years ago when I lived by Brackenridge High School, I loved that spot.

Justin: I've never done it. You drive by and you see it and it's got the little weird carve out there and I've still never done it.

Gavin: There's Alamo Street, then you go toward the mission just by probably 200 yards and you can crawl down me stairs off of Blue Star and you cross the river and some stones and you get into the King William. It's like a back way to get into King William. I love that little area.

Justin: I'm going to do it. You meet with a bunch of leaders, you talk about a lot of social justice issues day-to-day. What do you think the biggest issue facing the city is right now? Outside of COVID?

Gavin: Well, that's good. We don't have to talk about COVID. We've talked about COVID so much. I only speak to certain leaders about certain topics. I don't speak to everyone about everything. Mainly, I think generational poverty is probably the number one thing. The report that came out that said San Antonio does not do very well. We're top on the list depending on what you looking at?

Justin: The most stratified financially or economically of all major cities. Right?

Gavin: That’s right. I think that the way we need to tackle that is difficult. Especially when it comes to issues of race and redlining in the past, and the skeletons in the closet there that really keep us from moving forward. I'm guilty of it. We're all guilty of it. We’re people of privilege even in this gentrification movement and I'm learning where I'm at fault. I think that we just have to have honest conversations about that and really how to work with the homeless situation in downtown too. Obviously, that's something that I'm passionate about, but I think homelessness is part of that discussion of the overall poverty in San Antonio.

Justin: I always talk to people about what they're passionate about. That's what got me going on the Alamo Hour, and the sort of check myself on what really I'm passionate about. Homelessness has always been one of those things since I was a little kid. That's one of the questions I had for you. You're really involved with Corazon ministries. What is the best way the average person like myself who is not embedded with the ministries or the homelessness outreach, what's the best way they can help?

Gavin: I think this is always important. I just actually spoke to the Alamo Heights Rotary Club. I speak to Rotary Club. I'm in the Downtown Rotary Club. I've been a member of the Downtown Rotary Club for, I think 12 years now. I'll sit at the table at Rotary still and they'll be like, “Sir, did you just join? “ I'm like, “No, I've been a member for 12 years,” because they think everybody is old there. When I speak at those places they always ask the question, “What can we do? What can we do to serve the homeless?”

I think a lot of people want me to respond in a way like, “Go volunteer at a soup kitchen, go volunteer at Haven For Hope. Serve food on a plate.” All that requirement of serving food on a plate is a risk turn. If you risk and turn and put the mashed potatoes on a plate, you qualify to volunteer, it's a very low bar. I really want people to start volunteering with the homeless differently.

I would actually love instead of the Rotary Club coming down to volunteer and fold clothes or serve food, I'd want them to actually eat meals with them once a week. They're like, “We don't want to eat food. That's the homeless food.” I'm like, “No, that's cheap. Food is very, very cheap. Cook.” Having conversations with people to be vulnerable with one another. That's the hard part. I think those are when relationships can be formed because you start learning what you have in common. You can start learning where you can provide opportunities. They can teach you things that you don't know.

I think that's where transformation happened. Homelessness is really about trauma care. Trinity Universities freshmen, did a study years ago with Edwin Blanton. I don’t know if you know him, he's a Chair around town. I don't know where he is now, maybe Texas in San Antonio, but he led his freshmen group to talk about trauma care. They said, there's different levels of trauma care Haven For Hope with a state level two or three. There's advanced counseling, there's religious groups.

Those are advanced levels of trauma care. What San Antonio does poorly on and a lot of cities do poorly on is level one trauma care and that's just interactions between me and you. Interactions with anybody that we can treat normal areas of trauma by just conversations the way we look people in the eyes if we say their name or not. I think we need to better understand how to treat level one trauma care because that's not the responsibility of the doctors. That's not responsibilities of the caseworkers, that's responsibility of all citizens in the community. That makes sense.

Justin: Being human.

Gavin: Yes, being human.

Justin: I wanted to do that. Do I come down to one of the kitchens or a feeding opportunity and just [crosstalk]

Gavin: You can reach out to Corazon Ministries or Travis Park Church, or probably even Haven For Hope and say, “I really want to mentor people.” They have mentor programs. I got to give a shout out to my favorite nonprofit that works for the homeless and I’m not going to say Corazon, it's the SA Hope Center run by Meghan Legacy and team. On the Westside and now they have a downtown location at First Presbyterian Church. They do counseling, job training.

They just got a huge grant to house about 80 people in apartments during COVID. They really do a holistic look. They don't do the bandaid operations that we often serve in homeless work. They're pushing us to be more holistic in our homeless services and they do a wonderful job so check them out SA Hope Center, our San Antonio Hope Center.

Justin: Two more questions, Duke or Baylor, those are your two Alma maters.

Gavin: Yes.

Justin: Which one? Who do you pull forward? Which one is [crosstalk]

Gavin: I hadn't really have to worry about this too much until Baylor played Duke in the elite eight. When Duke won the National Championship in 2010 and they played in Houston and I wore a Baylor shirt in the sweet 16 game and I wore a duke short, and then they had to play each other and I wore a Duke shirt. I was actually in charge of the basketball committee at Duke, you could run for it. It's like being a yell leader at A&M. I managed the Cameron Crazies for one year.

Justin: While you were in seminary?

Gavin: [unintelligible 00:18:43] in seminary, yes. It was the coolest thing I did in seminary. I met the best friends because all those people in that basketball committee were like chemists, lawyers, doctors, undergrads. I had a blast and now my heart bleeds blue. Now, if it comes to football and they played Duke, I'd probably go for sure. I would root for Baylor in football.

Justin: Duke has been coming up in that too though.

Gavin: Duke has gotten better because the coach. People were like, “What are y’all talking about?” Yes.

Justin: Last question. People always ask me, why did you become a lawyer? What brought you to the ministry?

Gavin: I grew up in the Churches of Christ, which is a denomination that-- Max Lucado is a Church of Christ Minister. Both my grandfathers were Church of Christ Ministers. So both my parents are preachers’ kids. I really loved my granddads. One of them was very, very progressive, went to Southern Methodist for seminary, which is totally unusual for a church of Christ Pastor in the 1940s. That influenced my life and I really wanted to do what they did.

The more progressive pastor died when I was 10. Then the other one died when I was like 21 and I knew him better and when I was growing up, he would allow me to go to his

Leo Gomez, Brooks President & CEO and San Antonio Heavy Hitter

Justin Hill — Sat, 01 Aug 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Leo Gomez was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley but moved to San Antonio after finishing school. He has moved up through the city ranks through multiple Chambers of Commerce, the San Antonio Spurs, Toyota Manufacturing and various charities. Now, he runs one of San Antonio's most exciting developments.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, proud San Antonio, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right. Welcome to this episode of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Leo Gomez. Leo's been involved in everything currently president and CEO of Brooks City Base but been involved with the Spurs, with Toyota, with the Hispanic chamber, with the San Antonio chamber. I watched a video on you and maybe they called you Mr. South side. Did I hear that correct?

Leo Gomez: I've been called a few things Justin.

Justin: All right. We've had your wife on here, and she was nice enough to help us convince you to come be on the show. I met you years ago, just out having beers with Tim Maloney. It's good to see you again and thank you for doing this.

Leo: Beers with Tim Maloney, huh?

Justin: I feel like beers with Tim Maloney could-- that go anywhere.

Leo: I sure could.

Justin: A lot of people can say they've had beers with Tim Maloney too.

Leo: That's terrific. Good to be on here with you.

Justin: I usually start this and I told you just some general information about your interaction and thoughts on San Antonio. Let's just start when and why did you end up in San Antonio?

Leo: San Antonio is always that big city to the North for me and my extended family. I'm from the Rio Grande Valley, grew up in McAllen, not far from the Rio Grande river and our neighbor to the South there. I grew up in the Valley knowing only the Valley pretty much. The closest metropolitan area, the closest thing to a city that was a real city when I was growing up was San Antonio Texas.

I actually visited it once or twice while I was very young to visit an aunt and some cousins in San Antonio and spend a day at the zoo. Going back home and I got into my late teenage years, and I'd never still really been outside the Rio Grande Valley except for San Antonio. San Antonio was always that big wonderful city that had me in awe to the North of the Rio Grande Valley.

Justin: Did you move up here after high school or after college or?

Leo: I moved here right after graduate school. It was in the late eighties.

Justin: Did you get your masters in public administration? Did I say that?

Leo: Public policy? That's what we call it. Public affairs at the LBJ school of public affairs in Austin.

Justin: All right, so you've been here ever since?

Leo: I've been here ever since. Justin, little did I know. I thought I'd come here and learn and get a career started in a real city and then take a look at real big cities on the East Coast or the West Coast and had some opportunities, but I fell in love quickly with San Antonio, fell in love with other things in San Antonio and here I am 30 something years later.

Justin: Well, that's a great city.

Leo: It absolutely is.

Justin: You did some time in DC, right?

Leo: I did as an intern when I was in graduate school. I spent six months there.

Justin: I interned there for the DCCC in 2002, and it's a great city too. It's very young, it's vibrant, it's great.

Leo: Oh, Justin, to go from the Rio Grande Valley, to graduate school in Austin and then intern six months in Washington DC, I was a young man that was just soaking in everything I could soak in and the experiences of DC as well as Austin during those two years of graduate school.[00:03:46]

Justin: Similar, I grew up in a town of 500 people in North Texas. Similar, San Antonio still a huge town even though it's a big small town.

Leo: They have small towns in North Texas?

Justin: On the border of Oklahoma. People try to avoid Oklahoma so there's only a few that say up there. All right. Favorite hidden gems in San Antonio and your wife said [unintelligible 00:04:07] house, so that's off the board.

Leo: Oh, well, that's not fair. I will tell you hidden gems in terms of food but in gems period.

Justin: Anything that you've got friends and you say, "You got to go check this."

Leo: I got to tell you the first thing that came to mind is you were saying it and that's the Jose Antonio Navarro house, the Navarro house. In downtown San Antonio, close to the courthouse, close to the police station, close to City hall. If folks don't understand who will say Antonio Navarro was, I encourage you to spend a day at the Navarro's house.

His contributions to the constitution of Texas, the development of Texas, a setting of the stage for what would become Texas, his friendship with Steven Austin, that [unintelligible 00:04:58] history, Justin of contribution to establishing what became Texas is evident in the letters between him and Steven Austin.

You can read some of those letters. You can walk around the house that he lived in. You can walk-- I'd love to do a little reception, a little party in the little courtyard of what's Navarro House. It's an incredible gym and those who have a hunger for understanding culture, understanding a little history and such, and wondering why is that street named Navarro? Go take a look.

Justin: Where is it at?

Leo: It's literally just South of Market Street, almost catty-corner to the new police station. There's a big parking lot between the police station and the Navarro House. It's a little wooden house on the corner of that block.

Justin: That's a new one to me. I've never heard of it. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that.

Leo: Someday I'm going to invite a lot of people there with a charcuterie board and some bottles of wine if we're allowed, and we're going to learn more about Jose Antonio Navarro and his contributions to the state of Texas.

Justin: I would love that invite.

Leo: All right, you're on.

Justin: Need a show about it. What is the thing you miss most about the Valley?

Leo: Besides family? What I remember as an incredibly tight-knit community, incredibly tight-knit community. That's probably something that can be said about a lot of small communities but McAllen wasn't exactly a small town yet it was very tight-knit. It's also where my entire extended family lived and so the family feeling and how close we were is what I miss. Justin, I had 16 uncles and aunts on my mom's side and 10 on my dad's side.

Justin: Big family.

Leo: I like to say if this language is allowed on air here, I have Chingos of cousins. If I had 16 uncles and aunts on my mom's side and 10 on my dad's side, I don't know how many cousins I have. We were all there in close proximity in the Rio Grande Valley. I missed that.

Justin: A ton still down there?

Leo: Is who's still down there?

Justin: Are a ton of them still down there.

Leo: Yes. My extended family is still for the most part is down there. I and just one other set of cousins represent those that ventured out of the Rio Grande Valley into that great city too.

Justin: Well, it's not that far. All right. Are you a reader?

Leo: Absolutely, read a number of books at the same time? Well, not literally at the same time, but I have them open--

Justin: What's in your Kindle right now, or your bookshelf?

Leo: Dream Big by Bob Goff. I love his stuff. It's a combination of leadership development with a Christian foundation. That's a book I'm just really soaking in right now. At the same time, I'm reading a biography of [unintelligible 00:08:21]. I am reading Lincoln on Leadership. I am reading-- well every day I read from a good book that gets my conversation with my heavenly father started. Then there's a few more. If I can look here, I can spit off some more, but those are the ones that come to mind.

Justin: Big reader.

Leo: Yes sir.

Justin: All right. This is a personal question that I want to know. In Brooks City Base did I read something about a salt cave being created there or some strange spa?

Leo: Oh, it's already here.

Justin: What is there?

Leo: It's incredible? It shouldn't be a secret. I'm sorry that it's a secret, but we have a wonderful hotel [unintelligible 00:09:11] ago, the Embassy Suites and the Embassy Suites has a spa in it. I would offer that it's the spa spas in San Antonio. Literally we built a rock salt cave or a salt rock cave within the spa. The rock was literally imported from Europe and brought here installed by some craftsmen from Europe. The quality of the air in that cave is just fantastic.

If you allow yourself to fall asleep in there just for a 30-minute nap and you breathe that wonderful quality of air is just an incredible experience. On top of that, you can get a massage, you can get foot massage, you can get a facial, and then right across the hall from it is Linda's, which is a hair salon run by Ms. Linda, who's been operating a hair salon on another location on the Southside for 20 plus years.

Justin: That's great. It's a legitimate like salt room, right?

Leo: It absolutely is.

Justin: Okay. It's still operational?

Leo: Yes, it's operating today. You can schedule a massage today or you don't even need to schedule a massage you can schedule 30 minutes at a time or an hour, or an hour and a half, or three hours in the salt cave, and people literally rent time or buy time, 30 minutes at a time in that salt cave.

Justin: I saw something about that and thought I've got to ask you questions about that.

Leo: If you're interested, anybody that is interested, please call the Embassy Suites at Brooks and they'll connect you with the folks at the spa and come visit us.

Justin: All right. Do you have a Spurs championship ring?

Leo: I've got four of them.

Justin: Geez. [laughs]

Leo: I'm not wearing them but I've got four of them, yes. They're in my safe at home.

Justin: I saw that you were there in stints but I didn't know which stints covered championships.

Leo: I got a ring for all of them but the last one, I wasn't there for the last one.

Justin: Okay. Favorite Fiesta event.

Leo: Oh, my team would kill me. I should say [unintelligible 00:11:22] Justin. You know what that is, Justin?

Justin: I mean, I know what it translates to, I don't know that that's a Fiesta event.

Leo: [unintelligible 00:11:27] yes, it is an event in the making for Fiesta. We've qualified to be an event. We're in our second year, you got to operate for three years before you get qualified as a Fiesta event so that's, Brooks' contribution to Fiesta. It's [unintelligible 00:11:44] on the green line park at Brooks.

We've got our green line park with five ponds, it's a 43-acre linear park and we literally use those grounds as a chancla [unintelligible 00:11:57] drink beer and throw chanclas at stuff and it's fun. Everybody who's grown up in Texas or South Texas, in particular, knows what grandma used to do with her Chancla when you misbehaved, and that's basically what we are building on as a thing.

Justin: What month do y'all do it now? Do you do it with Fiesta?

Leo: We do it with Fiesta.

Justin: Okay. All right, and who's the beneficiary of the charity?

Leo: Brooks Gives Back, which is our own foundation to build a sense of philanthropic activity right here on the Southside. We raised the funds to support nonprofits that are implementing initiatives in the zip code that surrounds Brooks.

Justin: That's great.

Leo: This nonprofit raises money to help-- this year we awarded for the second time money to the boys and girls club, for example, and their programming in the Brooks area. SISD foundation in their programming for their schools in the Brooks area, Caste Med in particular, which is actually located on Brooks.

We're also supporting Meals on Wheels, not their food serving program but they have a home repair program for the elderly folks that they serve through their meals on wheels program, and so they've got a number of homes in the area that they are serving with that home repair program, and the Brooks Gives Back is supporting those three initiatives. We raised the funds in part from the activity and the fundraising that comes along with [unintelligible 00:13:30].

Justin: Y'all proved out two years in one more or you've done one?

Leo: Well, this last year would have been our second year.

Justin: Okay. All right. Are they going to count that?

Leo: I don't know when we're going to get to the second one.

Justin: Yes, true. I think that's a good point, so for a new Fiesta event, you have to prove that you're viable and can raise money essentially, right?

Leo: Correct. Absolutely.

Justin: I think that would have to be the Southern Most Fiesta event, right?

Leo: I'm going to claim it.

Justin: I mean, I can't think of anything. I'm kind of a big Fiesta fan, and I can't think of anything that's sort of South of South town really. That'd be a good selling point as well. What do you think some of the biggest challenges facing San Antonio are right now outside of COVID? This is a question I've asked a lot of people, COVID obviously is the biggest challenge but outside of that, once we get through this, what are some of the things that you think the city's facing that they really need to tackle head-on?

Leo: Same challenges we've had before COVID. It starts with unacceptable levels of poverty in certain parts of our town. Poverty shouldn't be acceptable anywhere, but the levels in certain parts of the town are just not-- I mean, we as San Antonians should not find it that acceptable. What that leads to in terms of an impact on education for example, and many other things as you might imagine but it starts with a level of poverty. We've got to decide we're not going to be okay with that anymore.

It's a problem we had before COVID, COVID is really showing us how real a problem that is for us, and we've got to band together one way or another tackle that. It is the biggest challenge for San Antonio for a number of reasons, including economic development. We're trying to attract really good companies and good jobs and we got to keep fighting this perception of a poor town. It doesn't help us if we're doing well, it doesn't help us if we allow our neighbors to be poor.

Justin: Do you think COVID-- I talked about this with the mayor, do you think COVID will sort of light the fire under our collective butts to approach poverty as a sort of community or do you think we're just going to go back to the way things were before, after COVID?

Leo: I think it already has. I mean if you listened to the mayor, I mean, certainly has lit up the mayor and that's lighting up the council, and it's lighting up community leaders around town, showing them support for those kinds of agendas. I'm a believer in investing in San Antonio and I know there's taxpayers out there who don't like hearing those code words, so to speak, but if we don't invest in ourselves, what do we expect? If you have a business and you don't invest in your business, what do you expect?

If you have talent working for you and you don't invest in their development, what can you expect from them? We as San Antonio have got to invest in our city and Justin, I'm going to say this, I hope I don't get in trouble or step on any toes. I love San Antonio, and I'm very grateful for what past leaders have done for our community in leading us forward, but too many times we have taken the less challenging route, the cheaper route, if I may, to address issues we need to address. I think we've got to address transportation and connectivity throughout San Antonio.

We're growing and we're going to continue growing, and we should be connected. Our neighborhoods should be connected so we've got to do that. We've got to address this poverty level and help folks get a good job that pays well and has good benefits. We've got to attract the companies that bring them in, we've got to keep investing in our infrastructure. Kudos to the mayor and community leadership, the County judge moving forward and making those investments.

Justin: I'm going to brag on Ron a little bit here, I mean, Ron's really taken up the mantle of it, sort of attacking some of the transportation issues in light of the fact that polling shows very few San Antonioans feel it's one of the major issues that need to be addressed. It doesn't affect everybody the same way but the people, it affects, it affects in a big way and Ron's kind of taken an unpopular opinion on some of that, and you got to give the guy credit for having courage to do what he thinks is right.

Leo: Absolutely. I would challenge that notion. I've seen research that says that a lot of people in San Antonio actually support and understand it, and a lot of people in San Antonio know now more than ever that we need to invest in [unintelligible 00:18:18], in our transit system, like we should have 30 years ago, Justin.

Justin: I was just reading that article where they talked about

Dr. Gary Slutkin, Physician, Epidemiologist, and Founder/Director of Cure Violence

Justin Hill — Fri, 24 Jul 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Dr. Gary Slutkin has provided counsel and advice to elected leaders and health leaders across the United States regarding COVID-19. He has advised Mayor Ron Nirenberg and other Texas mayors. He has proven that epidemiological methods for disease reduction work and they work on things like violence. This was a fascinating discussion with a very interesting guest.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello, in Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right. Welcome to today's episode of the Alamo Hour. My guest today is Dr. Slutkin. Dr. Slutkin is a medical doctor and epidemiologist. I'm stealing from your TED Talk bio a little bit. You're an innovator in violence reduction which we're going to talk about. Currently, founder and executive director of Cure Violence. Also, consigliere of sorts to some Metro health and mayors and city officials who are seeking your guidance on COVID.

Dr. Slutkin previously served as a medical director for the San Francisco Health Department. He's worked for the World Health Organization. He's worked on epidemics all over Africa which we will discuss. Importantly, he is a well sought after epidemiologist on using data and science to cure issues and specifically, issues that people probably didn't think could be cured that way. Dr. Slutkin, thank you for being here.

Dr. Slutkin: I'm happy to be with you, Justin.

Justin: You're in Chicago, right?

Dr. Slutkin: Yes.

Justin: All right. You are my first non-San Antonio local or someone who's lived here for some amount of time but our show tries to have a real connection with San Antonio and Dr. Lesch, a previous guest and Mayor Nirenberg, also previously a guest have discussed COVID with you. I know you've provided some guidance and counsel. Talk to me about what you're doing right now in your role as providing some guidance to cities and leaders including our very own Mayor Ron Nirenberg.

Dr. Slutkin: Well, I'm aware that the US has not really seen anything like this before, that's to say an epidemic of this nature that's so fast, so contagious, so lethal and many other parts of the world have. I had the opportunity to be helpful with World Health and some of the others. Although I myself have largely been working on reducing violence in this country and in other places recently, I had to quickly switch into a role of helping, supporting, guiding and training where there were needs, which is basically wherever you look and how to manage this because it's not clear.

Besides the fact that it's new, a lot of behaviors need to be changed. People don't like to change behaviors, people don't want to change behaviors and there's so much misinformation as well. I've been talking with mayors and governors and the Mayor's Associations and the Governors Associations and trying to help understand what needs to be understood here. Which is that you can't tell who's infectious and who isn't, which is a really counter-intuitive thing that someone you know or someone who looks well, could be carrying it. That it's really that serious.

That you can get it even just by talking and screaming or talking loud or it doesn't require coughing and that the results are really quite bad. For policymakers, they need to really make this so serious, and whenever we don't, we see the consequences and that has to do with the fact that the virus jumps when given a chance. Opening up, it means opening up for the virus and that's what everybody saw but not everybody knew it. Then also what the people themselves have to do. I've been guiding and training in this arena since late February, early March.

Justin: We've all seen what's in the news and we know what we're told in the news but San Antonio did really good at first and we were all very excited and we were patting ourselves on the back. Then our state opened up fast for which San Antonio had to follow lead because mayors like Mayor Nirenberg had very limited authority to out step what the mayor says. Did you see that across the board throughout mayors and policymakers who you consult with at cities that opened faster had the bigger problem or are there still some unknowns to how it's spreading or why it's exploding in certain areas?

Dr. Slutkin: There may still be some unknowns but the main things are known and just weren't paid attention to enough or taken seriously enough or confused intentionally or unintentionally. What you said about San Antonio and probably for other cities too, but San Antonio, I seem to know better because I've been talking with the mayor and other people there, is that it's exactly true. San Antonio was doing terrific, amazing actually. The rates and numbers were exceedingly low and Mayor Nirenberg and the city responded extremely fast.

They're aware of this in January. They called a health emergency in February. Restrictions in late February and early March. It seems they were being followed on the number of cases. It was maybe even the lowest of big cities in the country. Certainly one of the lowest. Contact tracing was getting going.

It seems that there was a reversal that the mayor and other mayors were not able to manage so well because of the conflicting communication and conflicting orders. It's an exceptional tragedy. I have a lot of confidence in Mayor Nirenberg and the other mayor, several whom I met just last night that they're going to get on this, of stopping the spread now but they are behind. It's clear as to why--

Justin: When Mayor Nirenberg was on the show, it really opened my eyes because they started sending San Antonio some of the people from overseas that were Americans like the cruise ship. People that were infected that were Americans got brought to San Antonio and as a normal person who lives here and some of our electeds were very unhappy this was happening. Ron pointed out this allowed us to get ready. We already had people in our backyard that we knew had it. It allowed us to get ready for this coming wave. He credits a lot of that with why they were able to jump on it so fast which I thought was great.

Dr. Slutkin: Well, there's so many things that need to be done right. They all were being done right. In terms of anticipation of visitors and in terms of tracing and in terms of restrictions. You have to do them all and they were all being done. The good news about this is if you do them all, as San Antonio was able to do, you really do control the virus and you can stop its spread. [crosstalk]

Justin: Proof is in the pudding. I hate to 101 with you but I think it's really important for our listeners to understand who you are and your history and epidemiology. Honestly, we're in an era of social media science and social media experts. Talk to me generally about what an epidemiologist's real focus is and how you yourself got into it.

Dr. Slutkin: I'll tell you that. Let me just say there are-- My story is basically this. I'm a physician and I'm an infectious disease physician first, and then an epidemiologist, and then I have been working on epidemics full time for about 40 years. First, I was asked to run the tuberculosis control program for San Francisco in the early '80s' when they had the worst epidemic in the country of tuberculosis. I then moved to Somalia to do tuberculosis among a million refugees in 40 camps, and then we got confronted with a cholera epidemic in Somalia when I was living in Somalia.

I left that country when it was moving into civil war and got picked up by the World Health Organization and got assigned the management of the global program on AIDS which Central and East Africa, the 13 countries in Central and East Africa, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and the countries around there. I co-led the cholera epidemic in Somalia. I led the TB efforts in Somali refugees. I led the efforts in Central and East Africa on AIDS. I just want to say for almost all of these things, these were problems in which behavior was all we had.

From 1980 to 1995, there was no treatment at all for AIDS and 30% of the populations in some of these cities were already infected. We had a community spread. We had a contagious virus. You couldn't tell who was infected and all you had is behavior. We got 70%, 75% drops by behavior change, and not an easy behavior which was sexual behavior. Not an easy thing to change.

To your point about what an epidemiologist is, I want to say there's many people who are now using this phrase, some are from biologists, and some are from our clinicians, and care for patients, and so on. The management of an epidemic, epidemic management is a subspecialty of epidemiology. We're not the people who are doing projections or models, we're managing epidemics, and we have to succeed at reducing them. It's a subspecialty of epidemiology, which is epidemic management and control. That's what I've been doing.

Justin: I listened to your TED Talk when you said you were going to Somalia that your boss said you made the worst decision that you could make to go over there. What was the impetus from saying, "I'm living in San Francisco and I've got a nice job managing something and learning, but I want to go to Somalia," which at the time was not a nice place to be is my understanding?

Dr. Slutkin: I was asked to consult in one refugee camp, the Boho refugee camp because other people from San Francisco General, including close friends and colleagues, were working there in the refugee situation. I went there to consult and I got really excited about the people and the situation. I was then commuting between San Francisco and Mogadishu even more upcountry for a few years, and then myself and my colleague Sandy Gove, we decided to move there.

There's over 1 million refugees in 40 camps, and there were only 6 doctors. I felt that the TB program in San Francisco was pretty much under control at the time or most of what had to be done was done. I was younger and I took it as a challenge and a necessity. We did the math as to how many cases, there were 25, 000 to 50,000 I thought. We had about 500 in San Francisco and I thought we had it managed. It was like, I felt I had to do it, that's the way I grew up.

Justin: You then got into the World Health Organization and you had some incredible successes specifically in Uganda in addressing the AIDS epidemic. Can you talk to us about how that was approached differently or how you were able to get more success in Uganda than maybe some of the other countries?

Dr. Slutkin: These are such great questions. I'm lucky. I got picked up by World Health. Sandy and I were working on our own in a way in Somalia. I've been working at San Francisco General with a great team, now I'm back at a great team at the World Health Organization with the best epidemiologist in the world. My boss and mentor is Daniel Tarantola who had eradicated smallpox from Bangladesh, right down the hall was, all these superstars and I'm young. I'm in my 30s.

They gave me a very big assignment. They gave me the epicenter, the 13 countries in Central and East Africa. They were the hardest hit. I went at it and they gave me a team. I built a team. What did we do? We had to first find out how big the problem was by testing. We had to do a bunch of testing to find out where it was, how fast it was moving because it's invisible without the test, and then we had to set up infrastructures and networks.

We saw that we had to do training and that we had to figure out a strategy. It was a brand new disease. What are we going to do? We landed on public education, information, and behavior change. Uganda is the best example because it did the best implementation public education to scale, billboards, leaflets, flyers, pamphlets, media, spokespersons, ministers, clergy, refugee situations, military, everybody trained in very, very visible public education on sticking to one partner and then on condom use.

Then we had outreach workers who can help people understand why they need to change their behavior. Now, you can recognize what's missing here for COVID because we need very, very strong, very visible public education, on wear our mask, keep your distance, no gatherings, and wash your hands. This needs to be repetitive over and over and over and over again and we need outreach workers to reach people who might not get it, who needs it explained.

Justin: We have our own cultural pushback in America for whatever reasons are those reasons, but what was the cultural pushback you were getting in Uganda because you're talking about sex, which every country has its own cultural hangups or different views on discussing that publicly. How were you able to overcome those, I'm sure there's some cultural conservatism in those countries about those issues? Was it government was just fully on board or y'all had carte blanche, or how were you able to overcome those cultural hurdles?

Dr. Slutkin: You never have carte blanche in anybody's mind. Everybody's mind is their own, but to a certain extent, it isn't their own because they are influenced and they're influenced by others and they're particularly influenced by their friends and what they think their friends are doing and what's acceptable. We used that. There's a science behind behavior change, just like there's a science behind the contagion of a virus or of a behavior. This is really interesting, this question about culture.

Everywhere I would go in Africa or in Asia, they would say, "Condom is against our culture or this isn't our culture. We're different than that place." That was basically overcome by allowing everybody to really understand the way this is transmitted. We underestimate how important it is for people to really understand transmission itself. I

n that particular case, it was that because they thought it was other things but in this particular case, people need to know that it's in someone else's mouth and you can't tell that whose mouth it is. Then that goes into the air around them when they're just talking to you and you just, by simply inhaling that and breathing that stuff, can get that, and it can go right into your lungs. Then you're checking into the hospital a week or two weeks later, even though everything seemed fine, and he looked fine.

The mask blocks that and that the distance blocks that, and people need to fundamentally get transmission. That's part of it. Then the other thing is that what they need to get is the messaging over and over, and then beginning to see that their friends are doing it. We need to actually hire friends locally. Now, in this COVID-- I'm switching from Uganda to COVID because people need to know there's certain things we all need to get.

The young people who aren't getting this, other young people are people who are acceptable, and credible, and trusted by them need to begin to talk to them, and get them, and show them that they're wearing and say, "Listen. We can't be gathering like this. It is time for us to be wearing the mask. We don't want to get it ourselves." I don't know if people know that half of the x-rays among asymptomatic people show something wrong and there is healthy people who are making mistakes.

One of whom I heard as he was dying said, "I made a mistake," but basically, he was at what was called a COVID party. Then his last words to a nurse, he's 30 years old was, "It looks like I made a mistake." People need to understand this transmission, and so the public education to scale, and the peer-- This is what we did in Uganda, and we got enormous success and the countries and places that didn't, were lagging or they didn't.

Justin: From that perspective of public education and getting friends to do it, it almost sounds like a little bit of a peer pressure feeling. How important were the leaders in those countries because I think just generally, those cultural boundaries and how they were overcome should give us some education on how we overcome. Were the leaders that important in that role, or was it more a neighborhood approach?

Dr. Slutkin: You get benefit from all of this. The leadership in Uganda was particularly good from President Museveni. He made sure he talked about it all the time and he made sure there was training done. We at World Health had a very good partner and they mobilized their population for the education and the training. Leadership in some other countries wasn't so good.

With good local leadership, with a good mayor like Mayor Nirenberg or the other the mayors who I met from Austin, Houston, Laredo, Brownsville, and other places, they are able to and from what I can see, are standing up and speaking, communicating, educating, and showing the data, and showing where things aren't going right and what we all need to do.

In the more that everybody, these multiple channels is really important. A leader can't do it on his own. The behaviors themselves need to be done by the population themselves. It was the population of Uganda that got rid of its AIDS, and it is the population of San Antonio that we'll get rid of it's COVID.

Justin: I saw elected representative recently even encouraging the Freemasons and if you're a part of a membership, all of you pass resolutions encouraging your membership to sign on that you'll wear masks and that you'll avoid gatherings. I hadn't really thought about that but we are all really part of a group of probably 30 in our day-to-day life. I thought that was a really smart leadership role for one of our electeds to take.

After you left Africa, you came back to Chicago is my understanding. Then based on your TED Talk, it sounded like you almost stumbled into this idea of applying infectious disease principles to address the violence in Chicago. Can you talk to me a little bit about how that came about and what your framework was?

Dr. Slutkin: Yes. That's really my day job is I run Cure Violence Global, which is a global NGO nonprofit, which reduces violence. It's doing this in the US and Latin America and to a certain extent in the Middle East and some other places. We are listed as the ninth-best NGO in the world now. What we do is our workers and our partners apply epidemiology and infectious disease methods to reducing violence.

We see violence, exactly like any other epidemic disease. In other words, there's one case which leads to more cases which leads to more cases but the interruption of the transmission of it is what controls it, and you need outreach workers just like we were talking about COVID, you need outreach workers and we call them violence interrupters.

These are specialists for stopping a shooting from happening and stopping the spread, and if there is a shooting or if there is a COVID case, to prevent it from leading to more COVID cases or more shootings depending on which epidemic you're working on. We've been doing this for 20 years. There have been between 40% and 70% drops in shootings and...

Ina Minjarez, State Representative, Rookie of the Year, and Attorney

Justin Hill — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 05:30:00 -0600

When Ina Minjarez was elected in 2015 to finish the remaining term of Senator Menendez, she only got one month in the legislative session to learn. The next year, after winning again, she was named Rookie of the Year by Texas Monthly. She has passed a lot of important legislation regarding bullying, foster care, and is a huge asset to San Antonio. Also, she loves Real Housewives and Chinese food.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello in Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right, welcome to episode 22 of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is representative Ina Minjarez. Representative Minjarez represents District 124 which is West along 90, up from 90, 1604 area. She was elected to a, partially, over term really in 2015, joined the legislature with only a month or so left, went back to her next full session, and was named rookie of the year by Texas Monthly. Even though I accidentally called her freshman of the year, it's been a huge accomplishment. You've been given some incredible appointments, I guess, you call them recess appointments as well regarding the judiciary. First, thank you for being here.

Ina Minjarez: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be on. I'm going to remember this as lucky 22. [chuckles]

Justin: There you go. Repeating numbers are supposed to be a lucky thing. I didn't know this.

Ina: It's a good number.

Justin: I do a top 10 with everybody. I just want to get some color, some background information. When and why did you end up in San Antonio?

Ina: Law school, St. Mary's University School of Law and I wanted to practice in Texas. Texas has one of the hardest bar exams and I just wanted to take it one time and be done with it. [chuckles]

Justin: That's a good plan. Born and raised in El Paso?

Ina: Born and raised in El Paso.

Justin: College, El Paso?

Ina: Excuse me?

Justin: College wa in El Paso or undergrad at St. Mary's?

Ina: No, college was at Notre Dame South Bend in Indiana.

Justin: Okay. South Bend is not that nice of a city.

Ina: When I was there it was just a different type of place to be. I tell people when I got to Notre Dame I didn't even really understand where it was located. I had no idea. I was just going to Notre Dame. I remember getting on the plane and looking down and seeing [chuckles] a lot of farm country, I'm thinking, "What the heck did I just get myself into?" We were pretty insulated. We really didn't go out into the city. They had the students really on campus. It's [crosstalk]

Justin: We talked off air a little bit of Poncho Nevárez. You went to law school together. Poncho and I worked a case and we ended up in South Bend a lot and the campus is beautiful but the surrounding town is not what you expect, which, for me, was the same as when I went to Yale for some depositions, beautiful campus, not a really nice town so I was surprised about it.

Ina: No, it's not. It's been a while since I've been back. It was interesting to see Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He was the mayor. I'm curious. I would love to go back to see what he did with South Bend since I [crosstalk]

Justin: Yes, I would too. You have dogs. What kind of dogs and what are their names?

Ina: Those are my life. I've got three. My golden retriever, I named her Fino after my favorite wine. [chuckles] I got Pepe who's a GSP, and then I got Lily who is my rescue. She's a mix of Schnauzer and I think she's part coyote.

[laughter]

Justin: Growing up we had a cat we were sure it was part bobcat so I get it.

Ina: [laughs]

Justin: Favorite hidden gems in San Antonio. The last guest was King Anchovy and he was certain there could not be anything he didn't know about. I brought up somebody's favorite Filipino restaurant so we've had some good additions. Any favorite hidden gems, things that you think even as locals don't know about?

Ina: My favorite restaurant in the world Sichuan House by Ingram Park Mall. That is a gem in itself, my favorite place to eat.

Justin: I haven't seen their books but I'm partly sure that my house is partly responsible for them surviving COVID by the way. They delivered up to 20 miles and I was just right in the delivery zone.

Ina: [unintelligible 00:04:14] I just ordered from them on Friday. Christina was the owner. She's incredible. It's just a great restaurant. They take care of their workers and employees.

Justin: What's your favorite dish there?

Ina: The dry pot and the green beans.

Justin: The cold noodles were shocking to me. I've never had cold noodles. They were fantastic. Our delivery guy we can only call him by his name spicy noodle. We weren't allowed to use his real name because who knows what was going on with unemployment at the time. Which show best depicts politics as you have learned them to be? My guest, I would think, Veep has to be it but that's only a dream.

Ina: Veep. You know what? It's so funny. I'm trying to think of--

Believe it or not, I don't watch political shows. I am so wrapped up in Yellowstone and because it has its own politics of being ranchers and owning this incredible land in Montana so, yes, I guess you could say there's politics involved in that. You got the good guys, you got the bad guys, you got the ones that are about greed, you got the ones that want to do the right thing, and it's a family-owned ranch. That's what I'm all in queue right now is Yellowstone.

Justin: Is Yellowstone a Western feel or is it not.

Ina: I think a little bit. Kevin Costner, he's the main character and you've got that aspect of a family of ranchers, how they got the land, and you're going to figure out, we still don't know, what the secret is in terms of how he got the land. He didn't get it the right way. Then you've got native Americans that are in the show too, and one, in particular, that believes he stole that land from their tribe. I guess it's a modern-day Western feel.

Justin: You're the second person to tell me I have to watch it and I click it on Netflix and it just looks like it's going to be a slow start.

Ina: It's so good though. I think every female character in that show is like a strong woman too and they got a leadership role. [chuckles]

Justin: I'll have to check it out because you're the second person this week that's told me this. Are you a reader, and if so, what are you reading?

Ina: Am I reader? Besides legislation and boring policy papers, I am a reader. There's different things that I read. I read a lot of motivational books. I'm trying to think one in particular. The author escapes my mind and I'm always-- Give me a moment to look up my Twitter because I have them all on my alerts. He's faith-based and he just gives a different perspective on life, but at the same time he's not telling people how to live. He's not judgmental on people because sometimes you think coming from a faith-based perspective that people tend to be judgmental and that you need to live your life according to a certain way. His name is Bob Goff and I'm reading his newest book called Dream Big and it easy to follow.

Justin: I've never heard of him.

Justin: He's wonderful and I follow his books and he's just plain, like I said, faith-based to the point but non-judgmental

Justin: Max Lucado seems to walk that line too in a really special way that so many people don't.

Ina: I agree. I used to go to his church and just loved him. He wasn't judgmental and just would preach on a level that was present day. I appreciated that about Max. I still like to read his stuff. I got a lot of his books here at the house.

Justin: I read that you're really into Bravo.

Ina: I love Bravo.

Justin: One of our previous guests Tim Maloney was one of the producers of Southern Charm New Orleans. Did you know that?

Ina: I knew that and I watched it. I watched some of that. [laughs]

Justin: It's pretty terrible though.

Ina: I will admit. I am not afraid to admit. That's my escape. I watch all of those bad reality shows just to have my escape from real life.

Justin: Which was your favorite?

Ina: I like the Real Housewives franchises. I love Southern Charm but I like the one that [inaudible 00:08:29] other. What is it?

Justin: Charleston.

Ina: Charleston.

Justin: Whitney and Tim did Southern Charm New Orleans together and Whitney comes out of here a lot. I used to love VH1 reality shows, I'll admit it, but I wasn't into any of Tim's stuff. Whitney and I were at Soluna having margaritas and I made fun of him. Nobody watches that show. I can tell you probably 10 different people came up, this was season one of Southern Charm, 10 different people come up and said, "Are you Whitney?"

Ina: If you talk to Whitney, you tell him I think his mom is fabulous, and I think she makes the show.

[laughter]

Justin: Oh, no, people will ask Tim if they can pay him so that their wives can go meet her. I didn't realize she was such a breakout hit.

Ina: His mom, I think she is a diamond and I think she really makes the show. I love her home. I love her style. I love her wit. [laughs]

Justin: What does she call her breakfast? Martini? She's got like a name for-- [laughs]

Ina: She has a name for-- Hey, I respect a woman that has a breakfast Martini.

[chuckles]

Justin: We just found out Fiesta is getting canceled but I've asked everybody what's your favorite Fiesta event.

Ina: The hit Fiesta event. Look I love to eat. I would say going to Oyster Bay, that we go on the off day where it's not like one of the first days that it's on early to avoid a lot of the crowds but I love all of it. I love to eat. I love to drink. It's just a fun time.

Justin: I agree. I'm pretty bummed about it but it'll be back. Any surprising friends at the Capitol for you? I always found the Scalia and RBG friendship to be a strange pairing, as tickling your best friend. Do you have a friendship like that at the Capitol?

Ina: He's a friend. It's funny you mentioned him. Yes, believe it or not Frick and Frack. What's so funny, and he's probably going to not appreciate me saying this, but I know Jonathan on a private level so different than what he puts out there, the persona he puts out on Twitter. We don't always agree, but believe it or not, we're friends. I could talk to him about a lot of things and vice versa. Underneath it, there is a person there that has feelings. Yes, he's a friend. I think another one that I developed a friendship with former Speaker Craddick. I got to know him because I went on his committee, this session, and really just have so much respect and adore the man. I would bring them bags of Snickers because he loves chocolate [chuckles] and we got to know each other, and another good friend there.

Justin: He's just going to be a fount of knowledge about the Capitol and the legislature and the process and the players.

Ina: He is. He's got a lot of knowledge. His wife is beautiful, Nadine. I got to go to Odessa to go tour some oil wells down there a couple months before the pandemic happened and got to attend an oil and gas state of the state there in Odessa and got to sit with him and his wife. They love where they're from. They're very oil and gas, right? She would tell stories about what it was like to be the speaker's wife at the time at the Capitol and what went on there. They got a lot of stories, but very dear people.

Justin: A very tumultuous run as speaker if I recall it, and now, he's got the best place to office in the Capitol, and you rarely hear his name.

Ina: It's funny because I tell people, they're like, "You don't know what he was like when he was speaker." I know what I hear in terms of how he was very heavy-handed but, I guess, I know a different Craddick now. [chuckles]

Justin: Well, good. It's good to be able to look from a fresh perspective, too, not carry resentment or any of that with you.

Ina: Right.

Justin: Okay. What brought you into politics?

Ina: I must have been crazy. At the time that I decided I was going through a midlife crisis. I will mention his name because he's my dear friend, I worked for Javier Espinosa, who was one of your guests.

Justin: That's right.

Ina: I worked for his firm for a little bit. I think I'd already litigated like maybe 15 years and I was feeling just unfulfilled, not in terms of working for him, but I just felt like I wanted to do something different and decided to take some time off. I thought, "Maybe I'll go back to school, get another degree." I just felt like I was having this midlife crisis professionally. At the time, my state rep went on to win a special election. That was a Jose Menendez, who went on to become a Senator and that opened up his seat.

I can't explain it. I'm trying not to sound hokey, but something kept pulling at me, pulling at my heart. I started looking into what the heck a state representative does. Look, I had to go on Google. I remind myself and figure out what exactly do they do. It was all policy-related, creating law, and reading policy. I figured, man, if I've litigated all these years in the courtrooms for businesses, for people, for kids, why can't I do that at the Capitol and actually change things and make a difference. I took a leap of faith and decided to run for the seat and luckily I won.

Justin: Then your 15 years of litigating, what did you do other than work for Javier?

Ina: I was a prosecutor for Baird County. I did, I prosecuted domestic violence cases. Unfortunately, I prosecuted cases where children were victims of sexual assault so that was really tough. I did a lot of felony offenses, drug offenses, murders, and then left to do the defense side. Then while I was in private practice, I started representing kiddos in child protective services and in the system as an ad litem, and then, also, represented parents who were facing termination of their parental rights. Then during that time, that's when I met Javier and then went to go work for him for a little bit doing labor law.

Justin: You've done prosecution, criminal defense, and then plaintiffs civil work as well.

Ina: Exactly.

Justin: When you decided to run for Senator Menendez's seat, were you tied in any of the political groups or are you tied into your neighborhood? What was your sort of grassroots involvement if there was any?

Ina: Really the only political exposure I had was I had also run for a County Court bench, County Court No. 5. I ran twice. At the time, I think the first time I ran was when Tim Johnson was on the seat and I nearly took him out. I lost by seven-tenths of a percent that time and then he retired. [chuckles] I was going to run again for that seat and then it was when Obama was president. It was midterm election time when that red wave came and just knocked out every single Democrat that was running for office or held office.

Justin: Except for David Rodriguez, somehow.

Ina: Right, he survived that. I thought I was done with politics because that was heartbreaking. It looked like it was going to happen and then just not having any control. You were just at the bottom of the ballot and that was the political atmosphere at the time. I knew who, in terms of who were the players with the local democrat electeds but I really decided to walk away from it because it left a bad taste to my mouth.

When I decided to run, I really had not lived in the district very long. I had lived for some time in the Southside, [unintelligible 00:16:34]. That's where I'd lived. I came down and lived here. I was very new, very green. I think what it was, winning this election, was really pounding pavement and knocking on doors. I really think I was running-- In the race was a former city councilwoman, a firefighter who was active in the union, and then, a gentleman who had run as a Republican all his life, but decided to run as a Democrat for the seat. I think it was because I was new and "untainted" that went in my favor. I think people like that about me, that I was very new and did not have a political background.

Justin: Is your district considered far Westside? Is that what you would call it?

Ina: Far Westside Northwest because we're part-- I have SeaWorld and the Food Bank. I've got part of Edgewood, part of Highway 90, a little bit of Port San Antonio, but I come over to Westover Hills, the newer part. We've got a lot of growth at here. I would say Northwest.

Justin: How much of that district is the old Westside neighborhoods? Correct me if I'm wrong, I've got to think there's really a hierarchy over there that if you're running and you haven't checked the boxes as you come up through the system, that there would be some blowback because you're a lot of these older communities in neighborhoods. There's a real political machine hierarchy for people that are going to run for office. Did you run into that out there?

Ina: I didn't run into that. it was unique. Maybe in the Edgewood, part of that Edgewood area, they didn't know me very well, but it was funny because the Edgewood area that has Port San Antonio called Thompson neighborhood, I won that precinct versus most of Venus. I didn't win that precinct. There was a split but I'm telling you when I came in, it was a special election. It just seemed to be a very unique time that I really feel that a lot of the constituents in the district really...

Jesse Mata, King Anchovy LV and Cornyation Staple

Justin Hill — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Jesse Mata is born and raised in San Antonio. He has been involved in Cornyation for over a decade and was recently crowned King Anchovy LV. His reign has been disturbed by COVID and Fiesta cancellation/rescheduling issues. However, he joins us to discuss his passion for Cornyation's focus and charities supported.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right, welcome to Episode 21 of The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Jesse Mata. We had some technical difficulties, so we're back on take two.

Jesse Mata: Welcome back.

Justin: Jesse works at USAA and more importantly for this episode, he's King Anchovy 55 for Cornyation. Previously, he's written scripts for Cornyation. He's been involved for years. The Current said you're one of the most influential people in 2015.

Jesse: Yes. I've been influential gay people, that's an important caveat. [crosstalk]

Justin: Is that the thing?

Jesse: A pink asterisk.

Justin: I didn't see that.

Jesse: Yes. Unless there's another article I don't know.

Justin: Well, I just saw most influential 2015 and saw you.

Jesse: Yes, that’s me.

Justin: You've had a lot of involvement in Cornyation, that's where I met you. Cornyation has raised over $2 million. We're going to spend some time talking about Cornyation. Jesse, so I do this with all the guests. We'll do a top 10 list. It’s short. I asked one guy how he moved to San Antonio, he went on for seven minutes, so don't do that. [laughs]

Jesse: No. That is not a very interesting story. It's a tragic story. You have a sorrowful version of this podcast, we can [unintelligible 00:01:33] [laughter].

Justin: Well, now I don't know if I want to ask. The first question I was going to ask is when did you move to San Antonio?

Jesse: I moved back to San Antonio. I grew up in San Antonio. I’m San Antonio native. My parents grew up in San Antonio as well. I have a long history here; my family does as well. I left in '93 after I graduated from Health Careers and went off to Baylor University. Then I came back in 1997, four years later, but that doesn't necessarily mean I had a degree, and started work and started my adult life back in San Antonio.

Justin: Okay, so you've lived here straight ever since?

Jesse: Yes, since September of 1997.

Justin: All right. What high school did you go to?

Jesse: Health Careers, phoenix, I’m phoenix rising from the ashes. That's all. This’s [unintelligible 00:02:24] alma mater.

Justin: Next question, in your picture in The Current you had a dog, what's the dog's name?

Jesse: Yes.

Justin: What's his name?

Jesse: I have a pug. Well, actually I have two dogs to be fair, not to give short [unintelligible 00:02:31]. The dog that was in the shoot was Gizmo, that's our pug. Gizmo [unintelligible 00:02:40] is his full name, but it tells you everything you need to know about my literary preferences. He's a great guy, curmudgeon, middle-aged.

Justin: Pug and what else?

Jesse: A pug and a Great Dane.

Justin: Oh, geez. They get along?

Jesse: I'm sorry.

Justin: Did they get along?

Jesse: They do get along. They're best friends. At first, whenever we got Gizmo, he was maybe about this big, maybe fit in the palm of your hand. The Great Dane wanted nothing to do with him. He was not even as big as your snout. I'm sure the part of that calculus was she figured she might destroy him, [unintelligible 00:03:13]or tail, or what have you. Ever since then they've become closest friends. They snuggled together, they play together, what have you.

Justin: All right. What are your favorite hidden gems in the city? The kind of things that only us locals know but when you have a tourist friend come, you say, "You got to go check this thing out."

Jesse: It's so tough because, are there really any hidden gems left anymore with social media influencers and all that kind of stuff. I would say that the last hidden gems that I really enjoy is probably food. Look at me, obviously, I'm a fan of food. Places like Maria’s Cafe or Garcia’s Mexican Food to Go, those would have been my old answers, but those are hardly secrets anymore. It's really those places; the mom and pop places, the small businesses. You build relationships with them over time. They recognize you, you're on a first-name basis. That's certainly part of the experience. Those are probably some of my favorite places, all food-related.

Justin: Well, we've had a lot of food answers, a Filipino restaurant on Culebra was two guests ago, Los Pinos.

Jesse: That is the secret. I want to know of that.

Justin: Have you ever been to Denman Estate Park? I think it's what Ron Nurnberg. I'd never heard of it.

Jesse: Yes, yes. A very good friend of mine lived right on around the corner from that park, I think it's called Mockingbird Estates or Mockingbird hHlls or something like that.

Justin: I've never heard of it.

Jesse: He and his husband lived there for a number of years in a couple of different houses there. It's right behind KENS. This great old kind of like ‘60s and ‘70s foot level garden homey type thing. Denman park is gorgeous.

Justin: What about Jack White Trail? That's another one that I've never heard of.

Jesse: I've never heard of that. Which one is that?

Justin: I don't know. It's over that Salado Creek. I haven't been there.

Jesse: What kind of host are you? Don’t you want to ask follow-up questions?

Justin: Well, I'm getting good information, and if you had listened to that episode that maybe you'd have learned.

Jesse: That's true., that’s true. My cousin [unintelligible 00:05:13] Cave. I've never been there but--

Justin: Is that in San Antonio?

Jesse: Yes, in the Alamo Heights Northwood areas.

Justin: They just opened it up two years ago for the first time in a long time. I read about it.

Jesse: Officially. Yes.

Justin: Apparently, on Incarnate Word's campus, there's the origin of the San Antonio river you can look down in a hole and see it.

Jesse: Right. The Blue Hole.

Justin: Well, you've got it all figured out.

Jesse: There's another one of those on the strip, but that's a difference thing.

Justin: All right. Well, that's good for the next question. Favorite Cornyation moment?

Jesse: Favorite Cornyation moment? I got food poisoning once during Cornyation. For a personal Cornyation moment, I had a bad subway. There used to be a subway in the theater. I ended up getting sick immediately before we went on the first show on a Thursday night. It continued to be ill throughout the evening. In fact, immediately before the last performance and then immediately after I came offstage. I was in the Ferrari Crown club. I was in the bathroom committing atrocities. I will say Angela Rubin was an angel. She brought me little ice chips and a cup, and sat me in a little recliner backstage and I was okay. The show must go on, right? [unintelligible 00:06:33] puke on stage.

Justin: That's a real trooper.

Jesse: Yes, that's the achievement.

Justin: I'm sure that leads to other things, but we'll get there later. Are you a reader, which you already covered so this is perfect question, and if so, what do you read now?

Did we freeze?

Jesse: Sorry, Justin. I'm sorry. Can you repeat that question?

Justin: Are you a reader? If so, what are you reading now?

Jesse: I am normally a reader. I think this pandemic has thrown me for a loop. Most of what I've been doing lately has been gardening. Anything that I've been reading has been about how to best compost your plant, good soil, and how to fertilize and when to harvest your vegetables, and fruits.

Justin: Any Howard Garrett books?

Jesse: Many--

Justin: Any Howard Garrett books like The Dirt Doctor.

Jesse: No, that's another source for me to look at.

Justin: I'm a big fan of Howard Garrett. He's our organic guy. He's all about the soil.

Jesse: Oh, nice, nice. I've done a lot of Texas gardener type reading for things that do well locally. I've also found the local shops like Evergreen Garden or Rainbow Garden are awesome. It speaks to the power of a relationship with local business. They've been excellent tutors or guides, in terms of how to set up gardens and the right products to buy and the right things to take into consideration so just a plug for them. Normally, I am a reader. Some of my favorite authors like Gore Vidal, a lot of his nonfiction stuff, and his fiction stuff. Lincoln is probably one of my favorite books of all time.

Justin: Just some light reading.

Jesse: It's not big. It sounds bad. It sounds dense and thick and all that kind of stuff. Especially those narrative fictional biographies, it's not child reads like a soap opera. It's really intriguing and it provides a little fictionalized color to the events of the day. I also like Frank Herbert, sci-fi, The Dune series, and that sort of stuff I really get into. It's a varied palette but honestly, I've just been wanting to get my hands in the dirt for the past couple of months.

Justin: My yard is a certified monarch habitat and Rainbow Garden helped me set that up.

Jesse: Beautiful.

Justin: Anything else that you're big involved in like Cornyation outside of your job in Cornyation?

Jesse: Over the years, I've been involved and interested in different organizations and chipped in behind the scenes or just in different ways. I volunteered some with the Southwest School of Art for a number of years. You could probably hear my pug whining back there in the background. That was a great experience. I'm hugely into art in terms of not only visual art, musical art, being a patron, being a supporter, being a collector, just in any way that I can get involved in a local art scene. My involvement with the Southwest school was fantastic. It was a real learning experience for me. I got to meet some fantastic people. I'm really thankful to have Michael Westheimer, a good friend of mine and Ellen Wolf for bringing me into that Southwest School family. It was a fantastic experience. Other organizations, I've worked with Thrive a little bit behind the scenes, kind of in their salad days or their early stages when they were kind of thinking about how to become a nonprofit entity and really bring a board on, and all that kind of stuff. That was a really rewarding experience, to be able to get to know Sandra Whitley and Chelsea Berkowitz and a lot of the different folks who were invested in Thrive and really helped build the foundation for the success that it is today. Those have probably been my principal involvements.

I mean, Cornyation frankly, takes so much out of you for five or six months out of the year that it's like I'm going to coast for the next couple of months before I have to start planning exercise for next year.

Justin: How many years have you been involved with Cornyation?

Jesse: With Cornyation, 18 years. Pretty soon after I moved back to San Antonio-- oh, I'm sorry, I misspoke earlier. It was ‘99, not ‘97, I apologize for that. Oh, no, I was right, it's ‘97. ‘99 is when I started working at USA but in those first couple of years, after I moved back, I found that even in just the four years I've been gone, the city has changed pretty significantly. I mean, it seemed like there- it was on kind of the beginning of the upswing that saw us through the 2000s and the twenty-teens up until now in parallel with Austin's rapid growth at the same time.

When I moved back to town, and especially after I got started to work, it was kind of like that Maslow's hierarchy of needs thing. I found a house, I found a job and then I wanted to figure out [unintelligible 00:11:43] is it I can get [unintelligible 00:11:48] or what are ways that I can get to know people. I had always loved Fiesta as a kid. I think it was April of 2000 was the first time I got back into Fiesta in a big way. Joined the commission to get my revere pin and all that crap. Then, I was introduced to Cornyation and some friends had been and recommended that I go.

For a couple of years, I went and was just blown away, it was riotous. I'd never seen something like that in person before. I mean, the closest had been, I forget what the hell it's called the [unintelligible 00:12:20], I think it's called Sing. It's like this big tradition where all the organization [unintelligible 00:12:25] put on little skits, kind of like Cornyation except not funny.

Justin: Very G rated.

Jesse: Yes, very G rated. Cornyation was a completely different experience for me, not only was it the kind of humor that I would have- that I appreciate but it was also smart. It had political opinions, it had insider references that you sort of had to be in the know or had to at least follow news or what have you to understand. That really, really struck a nerve with me and got me back into Fiesta in a big way.

Justin: Have you been working with Cornyation ever since?

Jesse: Yes. I went for a couple of years and then I was standing outside in line with my then-partner. One of my acquaintances from work, whom I've met very recently named Rob Gonzalez, he saw us in line as we were waiting to go in. He was the scriptwriter for Cornyation and his partner at the time also did some skits. We were talking with him and he was just making conversation. We indicated that, “Hey, we'd both love to help out in Cornyation some way.” He said, okay, “I'm going to hold you to that.” Then, the very next year, we got roped into a skit with Elaine Wolfe's brother, Matt Wolf and Steven Warner, and some other folks.

We helped design the choreography, we helped build the costumes. 2003, it was the Duchess of Your Ever-Widening Ass. It was when Krispy Kreme came to town and the duchess was this beautifully adorned, kind of Star Wars, The Phantom Menace looking donut queen with these giant-like inner tube things that have been painted to look like donuts for her hair. That was my first year. All I was doing was handing off props and street clothes and I was just nervous as shit.

Justin: Who was Anchovy that year?

Jesse: Huh?

Justin: Who was the Anchovy that year?

Jesse: Lif Shitz, I don't remember, it's been so long ago. I was so new to it. I didn't know who Anchovy was from anybody else, from the [unintelligible 00:14:40] sister.

Justin: Do you like corn?

Jesse: I love corn, sure.

Jesse: I don't eat it all that much because it's kind of empty calories. Sorry, corn producers.

Justin: What's your favorite fiesta event outside of Cornyation?

Jesse: This is tough because it's been so many years since I've been able to do any Fiesta events, but I like the Mercado. My family used to go there. My friends Mindy Hill and I will go on occasion alone. Actually, almost every year around Cornyation, that Wednesday of Cornyation, we'll usually make time to get under the Mercado, but King William Fair. Of course, I love King William Fair and that one I can actually do because I've recovered enough after the shows. I haven't done NIOSA in 18 years, 19 years.

Justin: What about Arts Fair?

Jesse: Sure, yes. The Fiesta Arts Fair is fantastic.

Justin: I think that's my favorite event.

Jesse: Well, that is normally the weekend before Cornyation. There's essentially no way I can go because it's usually I'm working on the script or hot gluing something with glitter and Styrofoam or whatever.

Justin: As Anchovy, you'll have to go hold court and go to all those things, won't you?

Jesse: I will. That's actually the benefit to me of being Anchovy, so I can finally do some Fiesta stuff.

Justin: Who would you like to see of all the San Antonio people get on stage at Cornyation one year?

Jesse: I mean, so most notable people, most politicians or what have you want to be on stage so it's not like you have to-- it's not like you have to work real hard to invite them, right? They'll find a way backstage. I don't know.

Justin: Hagi.

Jesse: Oh, Jesus no. It will be like me going into his temple, either way, it's going to smell like pork skins, that skin's going to boil. Who else would I like to see on stage? Popovich, I'd love to see Popovich on stage.

Justin: That's a good one.

Jesse: Did you freeze?

Justin: No. Can you hear me now?

Jesse: There you go.

Justin: No, Popovich is a good one. Popovich is on my wish list for my show, which I'm sure I'll never get him but I'm going to keep trying.

Jesse: We'll never get him either, it's all right. It's a pipe dream.

Justin: Okay,...

Ryan Pape, CEO and Chairman of XPEL Inc. and San Antonio Business Leader

Justin Hill — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Ryan Pape has spent most of his life in San Antonio. He returned to San Antonio after college and worked in the IT area of a software company which would become XPEL Inc. As XPEL changed course, it also ran into bad financial problems. Ryan came back and led an unprecedented turnaround in part by putting his own money on the table to take care of the company. He also has been involved with the Witte and other charities in town.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you’ll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We’re glad that you’re here. All right. Welcome to Episode 20 of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Ryan Pape. Ryan serves as XPEL Inc's Chairman, President & CEO. He previously served in multiple different capacities within the organization before taking it over, which was at the time a sinking ship, fair?

Ryan Pape: Yes. I would say so.

Justin: We'll get into that a little bit more. You're also involved in the woody. You've got two kids. You and your wife live in San Antonio within the Loop. One of my oldest San Antonio friends actually.

Ryan: We go way back now.

Justin: '08, I think.

Ryan: '08?

Justin: Yes.

Ryan: That's by my math over 10 years. That's a long time.

Justin: It is and you were my neighbor's friend who I met through them. I actually went back the other day to see if one of my other neighbors who lived across from them was still alive and he was and his wife.

Ryan: That's good, still there.

Justin: They're very old, very poor health and very happy to see me. Ryan, you've listened to a few of these. We're going to go through a top 10 but I've decided it has to be a top 10 in 10, because I had a previous guest who went really, really long on one single question and changed-

Ryan: Maybe that was the best part of the whole show.

Justin: It just wasn't.

[laughter]

Justin: It objectively was not. When and why did you move to San Antonio?

Ryan: In 1993 at the time SBC, which became AT&T relocated to San Antonio, my dad worked for them, so we moved from St. Louis.

Justin: He was a pilot, right?

Ryan: He was, yes. He was a pilot since retired but that brought us here.

Justin: Have you lived here straight since? You went to UT?

Ryan: Went to UT. Move back after that. With the exception of UT, I've been here the whole time.

Justin: What parts of town have you lived in? You've lived in the 09 areas since I've known you?

Ryan: Yes. Still live there now. I was up in Stone Oak from that '93 on to going to UT [crosstalk] there was nothing.

Justin: I was about to say more country back then.

Ryan: Yes. I remember the last stoplight was maybe like 281 in Brook Hollow and maybe there was a stop sign 281 and 1604 and then on. It's a lot different.

Justin: Were you outside 1604 then?

Ryan: Outside 1604. Stone Oak and Huebner. I remember there's a gas station there. I remember when that was built.

Justin: Was it a gated community?

Ryan: It was a gated community.

Justin: Because it's only gated community [crosstalk]

Ryan: I think that's your only choice, right?

Justin: I don't understand it though. You're already in Stone Oak.

Ryan: You need safety. I don't know. I don't live in a gated community now and I feel perfectly safe.

Justin: I have a gate on my driveway, does that make me a gated community?

Ryan: You're more gated than most people.

Justin: All right. This is a morphus question now or changed question because of what's going on and you also have-- you're a faster?

Ryan: Yes.

Justin: Is there any restaurant y'all have been frequenting or getting to go since all of this has started?

Ryan: Well so maybe you talk about before it started. My last favorite restaurant before this started was the Magpie Highbury market.

Justin: I still haven't been.

Ryan: My wife and I ate there I think the week right or within days of the shutdown because we had the hand sanitizer out but it wasn't going to stop us.

Justin: It's Asian food right?

Ryan: Yes. It's Korean influence and it was exceptional. I believe [crosstalk]

Justin: They're still doing to-go.

Ryan: They were doing to-go. I don't know. I haven't done to-go with them. We've done lots of to-go and carry-out.

Justin: Have you done [crosstalk]

Ryan: No.

Justin: Dude, do it. It's the best Chinese food.

Ryan: We talked about it. We were going to go there and then it's like-

Justin: Deliver.

Ryan: - too far.

Justin: Deliver?

Ryan: Yes. We like to pick up, we're going out.

Justin: Well, pick up it's behind Ingram Park Mall. They'll deliver to my house so maybe yours.

Ryan: Yes. Want to try it. Did a lot of takeout though. Did a lot of Barbaro. Got a lot of wine from Little Death.

Justin: We did Sabor yesterday.

Ryan: Try to do our best.

Justin: Lots of people at the bar, no masks. It's a little disconcerting.

Ryan: You got asked the question these days.

Justin: I think you're the only time I've ever been to Big Lou's by the way.

Ryan: I think that was the only time I've ever been to Big Lou's.

Justin: I didn't feel great after that.

Ryan: You remember the place by Bandera town, not the street. What was that place called?

Justin: Mac and Ernie's.

Ryan: A couple weeks ago, ended up driving by.

Justin: Really?

Ryan: It's still there. Although I couldn't tell if it moved across the highway.

Justin: The last time I drove by it was a much bigger concern.

Ryan: It was a bigger building. It wasn't the tiny little place but that was probably close to that 10-year mark-

Justin: We thought we were real hip doing little road trips to restaurants [crosstalk]

Ryan: We were really hip. We thought it was cool.

Justin: Little death also did an event where they served a Italian style of tripe with the chef from Feast.

Ryan: I saw that.

Justin: I went.

Ryan: I wasn't.

Justin: It was pretty funky. The food was funky and everybody-

Ryan: Tripe is funky, right?

Justin: Yes. Everybody had been having a very good time by the time I show up and that was very behind.

Ryan: The wine is not very expensive there, so it's easy to have a good time. Or so I'm told.

Justin: It was like a pot of food and you just served yourself.

Ryan: Well, I've been impressed with what they're doing during the shutdown. Congrats to them.

Justin: Are you wanting to go there?

Ryan: Yes.

Justin: Okay. I haven't done that yet.

Ryan: I have and I've meticulously catalogued it with the idea, I'm going to go buy it again.

Justin: Well, maybe you'll invite me over to have a glass of wine because you tell me every time I see you that that's going to happen and never ever ever.

Ryan: Some people might be really insulted by that.

Justin: I'm not.

Ryan: You just take it in stride.

Justin: No, I'm not. There's lots of people that see me and they're like, "We should hang out." Then clearly they look at their wife or significant others like, "We're not calling that guy."

Ryan: I actually mean it. I may not show it, but I do mean it.

Justin: All right. Favorite hidden gems in San Antonio where you tell people when they come to San Antonio, "Okay. You've seen the Alamo blah, blah, but go check it out this stuff."

Ryan: Well, it's hard to call it a hidden gem but I really go for the mission reach on San Antonio River.

Justin: I think it's fair.

Ryan: Probably more people from out of town see it than people who live here. I think I ended up talking about that hidden gem a lot.

Justin: They extended it four miles, I think.

Ryan: Cycle along that a lot I forget which road it goes down to and then the golf course across the street you can actually keep going after that around the Medina River. I think it's amazing. You've got nature. You've got history. You're outside. You can wander off obviously up to all the missions. The fact that more people here haven't ever done it, [crosstalk] do it regularly like I do is surprising.

Justin: How often you do it?

Ryan: Probably once a week at minimum.

Justin: No joke.

Ryan: I've really cycling a lot there and then the Greenway trails [crosstalk] creek myself.

Justin: What kind of bike?

Ryan: I have a couple of track bikes.

Justin: Are you clipping in and road biking the trail?

Ryan: I didn't start that way, but I do now.

Justin: It's very aggressive for that trail, I think. People are just horrified as you head towards them?

Ryan: No. I have a bell. I call out. I try to be a good-

Justin: I'd like to go ride it with you.

Ryan: I'll do it with you.

Justin: I can't keep up with you probably.

Ryan: Well, we'll do it a few times and you will be able to.

Justin: You're very aerodynamic these days.

Ryan: I can get you in fighting shape.

Justin: I ride on a trainer every morning. I clip in.

Ryan: Then you're good. I'll do it.

Justin: It's so hard for me to unclip even from the trainer. I did hear The Pearl one time as a hidden gem. I wanted to gong him on that but I let it go.

Ryan: It's not that I wouldn't call that a hidden gem.

Justin: Okay. Are you still involved The Witty?

Ryan: No. I rolled off the board at The Witty. Still very much a fan of The Witty actually helping now with the game dinner. You've been to the game dinner. It's probably one of the best events in San Antonio. 50th anniversary this year October 19th, I think, tough year but it's going to be a really big event, some changes for the COVID situation.

Justin: Is it planning on moving forward?

Ryan: Yes, absolutely.

Justin: At The Witty?

Ryan: At the Witty, fewer people. It got to be a really big event I think 1,500 people maybe. It's going to be a little bit smaller.

Justin: Which means ticket prices up.

Ryan: Ticket prices up as it should be.

Justin: Is XPEL sponsoring?

Ryan: Yes, we will for sure. We're actively looking for [unintelligible 00:08:17] tables and sponsorship-

Justin: How much are tables?

Ryan: They range I think-

Justin: From to-

Ryan: Normally 5,000, 10,000. I think may have gone up a little bit this year but it's absolutely one of the best events in town.

Justin: It's great.

Ryan: If anyone who hasn't done it, make it this year to do it. It's unique. It's not your typical seated dinner event in the ballroom somewhere. It's far from it.

Justin: That's absolutely right.

Ryan: It's really, really, really nice.

Justin: Are you on the board of any other non-profit-

Ryan: No. Not currently.

Justin: Taking a break?

Ryan: Well, I've really been focused on two things. One, the company is been really focused on that. Some of the things we've done the past two years and then trying to find the right fit for non-profit. You realize that the non-profit's need different things. How does that really fit with what I'm good at and what I want to do?

Justin: What you're passionate about?

Ryan: Well, yes. I think some of the smaller ones, they need people that are more operationally focused. They don't have big staff. They just literally need help with the day-to-day. Then some need more help, raising money or networking. I look at what I think our company should be able to do and over time, we should be able to support non-profits and other groups in a really meaningful way. I look at that, so that really plays to my strengths. Really focused on that but I'm going to get more involved if I find the right fit, I think is the plan.

Justin: There's one in town called Restore Education that Lindsay worked for, and they are a GED program, all free. It's the only one that has Spanish language GED, they have job training and get CNA. It's a lot of things like how Eric Cooper talked about how they spread out. I told them, I said, "If you get donors to your graduation, people are giving you money." It's such a touching-- I mean you've got 40, 50-year-old people walking the stage with their family there. The same as if they were 18. It's just so touching. I think that's the hard thing for a non-profit to do is to make that connection with people like that.

Ryan: Yes, I think that's where good board members and others can help do that. Can help spread the message, and there's so many good non-profits and so much need always. Like we talked about with the food bank that you do get lost in the noise a little bit. Trying to get people to help bring him out of that. I think it's important.

Justin: Do you have any in the hopper right now you're thinking about? You don't have to tell me, but are there some you're vetting and are vetting you?

Ryan: We were thinking about it. I want to be able to contribute. I want a place that wants the kind of contribution that I can do.

Justin: Sure, everybody wants money, but it's better to feel like you're more than that to a board.

Ryan: Right, and I think my contribution to the board is more than that. Then I need to work hard to make sure our company can support all the communities that we're in. Both are important and may be best suited for how I can contribute.

Justin: Right. You recently got to ring the bell on the NASDAQ. Was there any Wizard of Oz kind of behind the curtain to that, that you are like "Oh, this isn't what I expected?"

Ryan: Well, it was an amazing experience. I think for me it makes you think about all of the assumptions that you make when you look at people doing things. You'd look at somebody who rings a bell on at NASDAQ and what do you think? You must think they're smart, they're rich or they're special or they are this or they are that. Then you're there the guy doing it. I'm kind of looking around like just the guy.

Justin: Yes, heady.

Ryan: They did a great job. You know you are in a very small room. It's super well-produced, super well-organized. We brought a big group from our team. What we did really, that I think a lot of companies didn't do was really went by tenure with the company. We brought the really I would say, almost exclusively or two to a point, people that had been with us the longest time. That was a really cool experience. I love doing it.

Justin: You're in a room and then do they love to shuffle you under the balcony or what the-

Ryan: Well, you're in the NASDAQ like the market sites. It's a studio in time square. You're thinking maybe NYSC they got the outdoor that

[crosstalk]

Justin: It's like a balcony kind of look isn't it?

Ryan: No, no. There's a table with a big screen because NASDAQ's all digital. There's no trading floor. It's very impressive. They did an amazing job and an impressive studio.

Justin: I saw it, I just in my mind put you on a balcony. Maybe with long flowing hair too. [crosstalk] I made this all up in my brain.

Ryan: I hope a lot of people looked at it and thought it was better than they thought too.

Justin: You were also recently on the San Antonio Business Journal's podcast even though I asked first. Why?

Ryan: Was that the order of events?

Justin: [laughs] I listened to it today, very different format.

Ryan: Very different format, yes different audience-

Justin: You sounded like Harvard Business Journal in a podcast guest.

Ryan: I'll take that as a compliment.

Justin: It was dense.

Ryan: You know maybe now people will see that if they thought I was smart, I'm not that smart. It was just good editing.

Justin: I was listening thinking, "Oh, shit, he's a lot smarter than I thought he was or...

Dr. Carey Latimore, Trinity Professor of African American Studies and Community Leader

Justin Hill — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Dr. Carey Latimore moved to San Antonio in 2004 to take a job at the prestigious Trinity University. He teaches classes in the area of African American studies. He is leading the way to create an African American institute in San Antonio to document the past and provide a location for discourse on racial justice issues.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonionian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

[applause]

All right. Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Dr. Carey Latimore. Dr. Latimore is a professor of African American Studies and other classes at Trinity University. He got his PhD from Emory. He's written extensively. He's won many awards. He was recently tapped by the city to share some of his thoughts and some of his research regarding the Alamo Plaza project and some decisions on what to do with some of the surrounding buildings. We've asked Dr. Latimore to be on here. We asked previously to all of the protests in the city and some of the issues that have arisen since then, but the timing couldn't be better. Thank you, Dr. Latimore, for being here today.

Dr. Carey Latimore: Thank you, Justin. It's my honor to be here.

Justin: We had a fantastic conversation before we got to start recording which we should have recorded, but we'll probably recover some of that but--

Dr. Latimore: And long time ago, too, we talked about a month or so ago [crosstalk].

Justin: Yes, for about an hour. It was a great conversation.

Dr. Latimore: And all this other stuff.

Justin: We were introduced through Dr. Lesh, who is your best man in your wedding, and as a friend of the show. I'm not going to kid, he's probably the biggest supporter of what I'm doing here and I can't thank him enough.

Dr. Latimore: Dave is a good man.

Justin: Yes, he is.

Dr. Latimore: I'm sure he's listening to that too.

Justin: He will be listening. It's funny, Dr. Lesh will give me opinions on what to ask and he'll-- I think with you, he was like, "Well, ask him how we met," or-- I can't remember what it was, but he has to be part of everything. You've listened to some of the shows, every show we start with a top 10. I've read some interviews you've done with a newspaper, I've read some interviews you've done with Trinity's Getting to Know a Professor. Basically, anything I could find, I've read, I've watched some videos, so I found a few things I want to talk about.

Dr. Latimore: That sounds scary though.

Justin: Well, the internet has a lot of things out there. Compared to some people, you're fine, you don't have anything that-- There's really not a ton out there.

Dr. Latimore: That's good.

Justin: You academics, y'all's researches and books that cost $10 to $50 a piece so I don't--

Dr. Latimore: You're right. This is true.

Justin: I tried to buy a Lesh book and I don't get the Lesh special even though I know him, so I had to pay- I only bought the one that was $9, I'm not going to lie, I wouldn't buy any of his other books. Were you at his books--?

Dr. Latimore: I was not. I had a class that night.

Justin: It was interesting. It was like a book release party for two books at once or something.

Dr. Latimore: That's how Lesh rolls.

Justin: He did a reading of his book. It was hard to take it seriously, honestly, because I know Lesh socially, I don't know him as an academic. I didn't realize how austere and dry those events were.

Dr. Latimore: Lesh has a very powerful presence too.

Justin: He does?

Dr. Latimore: In the classroom, he is extraordinarily, and I'm not saying anything that he wouldn't agree with, he has an extraordinary presence.

Justin: Yes, I believe that.

Dr. Latimore: There are some students who are afraid of him.

Justin: I believe that.

Dr. Latimore: Of course, then he's very tall and he's got that baseball background. People are not used to having their college professor being a former baseball player and drafted, I think in the first round or something like that. He's a different--

Justin: He's a real deal. I think that's one thing that is always fun with hanging out with him because me and our mutual friend Tim, we just see him as our friends so we don't give him any extra deference. That's hard for him to take for the first 20 minutes. All right, so top 10, we're going to get through some stuff, then we're going to spend some time talking about your areas of research. I want to talk to you about your teaching philosophy. I think that's interesting. I went to law school at Baylor which still employs the Paper Chase style Socratic method. You're up on your feet, it's in your face, and if you don't know you get kicked out of class. It was a very intense environment. Let's start with when and why did you move to San Antonio?

Dr. Latimore: Trinity University was the when and why. I did not know a lot about Trinity before I came here, but when I was at Emory University finishing up my PhD, one of the things that happens in academia is you have these hiring cycles. It's really a year-long process that begins, really at the end of the summer. All of these universities really post their jobs is for history, probably around August or September. There are a couple of different places where we find out who's interested in hiring somebody. I looked at these places and Trinity University was looking for a historian in my area. It was one of the six or seven universities that I applied to.

That happened, and then around October, I think the search theoretically, the application period ended, and in December, they contacted me saying that they were interested in having a future conversation with me at the American Historical Association meeting, which is these all academic fields have these huge meetings and there are thousands of people that will go. For the AHA, it's usually in a very cold environment. When I say cold, I mean, they're going to meet in Chicago, they're going to meet in New York, they're going to meet in DC, and it's going to be the first week of January so you know it's going to be cold.

You're bringing all these people to DC or somewhere, some cold environment, and all of these people looking for jobs, in addition to all the things that they do at the regular meeting. I was just a young kid, I had never done a job interview before. I knew that there were probably about 10 other people that were interviewing for that same position, or 12. They bring you up for a half-hour long meeting. There was a table of about seven faculty members at Trinity there and I was this one guy, surrounded by these faculty members.

Talk about a power dynamic there. I'm sitting there, trying to ask questions right. I was so young, I probably didn't even think about it at that time. They interviewed me. I got called back to a second interview the next day, they said, "We'd like to talk again." I'm like, "Gosh, I guess I'm doing a good job." I came back, they talked to me for about another 45 minutes to an hour, and then they said, "Well, you'll hear from us at some point in time."

In January, a couple of weeks later, I received a call saying, we'd like you to come to San Antonio and talk to us a little bit more. I got on the bus, no, not got on the bus, got a plane, came to San Antonio. Over a two day period, they took me around the university, they talked to me, I had to present my research and other kinds of things. Then I went home, they said, "Well, we'll talk to you later." I get a call, probably three weeks later, offered me the job.

Justin: What a process.

Dr. Latimore: It's a long huge process, not just go and you find out the next day. Everything in academia is long-drawn-out. Getting a PhD is six or seven years, it's long-drawn-out. Getting tenure long and drawn out. We make things seem much longer than they actually need to be, but that's how I ended up in Texas.

Justin: What year was that?

Dr. Latimore: That was in 2004 when I started. Trinity is very similar to my undergrad, the University of Richmond. Small liberal arts, really pays attention to teaching, they care about research, a great university in a great city. Richmond is obviously different from San Antonio, but in many ways, Texas and Virginia, share some commonalities. Both states think that they are the state. We in Virginia [crosstalk]

Justin: I didn't know Virginia had that chip on its shoulder.

Dr. Latimore: The Commonwealth of Virginia. When you are in Virginia, “We have the most presidents from our state,” the history of the state. When you take Virginia history in fourth grade, it is hammered into you, the prominence of Virginia.

Justin: They don't have the Alamo though.

Dr. Latimore: They don't have the Alamo, but we do have aspects of history, confederacy. Into the Revolutionary War was in-- You got Cornwallis' Cave and Colonial Williamsburg and all these aspects of Virginia. I think there's a bit of arrogance to Virginians about who they are and the same thing about Texas. In Virginia, the biggest thing that people want to be is a FFV, which is the First Family of Virginia.

Justin: Oh, geez.

Dr. Latimore: It's almost like, I guess the doors of the Alamo or the-- People trace their history back to--

Justin: People that were at the Alamo.

Dr. Latimore: Exactly, people who were at the Alamo or these other families and major land grant families. These two states share some things in common. Trinity was in a place that was a really good place at that time and still is, very similar to where I felt my university was when I started as an undergrad at the University of Richmond. It was like going home in a sense. San Antonio is a really cool city--

Justin: I love it.

Dr. Latimore: - if you think about it. Trinity was my first choice of universities and I got my first choice. I guess the rest is the rest.

Justin: I don't want you to get it because I don't think I want to know, but what is the title of your dissertation? I always think those are fun to hear.

Dr. Latimore: Always a Minority: Antebellum and Free Blacks in the Civil War Era. I think that was the title of the dissertation [crosstalk].

Justin: That's pretty normal. You hear some that are just off-the-wall.

Dr. Latimore: Always a Minority, then you have the colon and then the rest of them. Every dissertation topic is going to have the little cool thing, and then the explanation after the colon.

Justin: But you know what I'm talking about, some are just absurd.

Dr. Latimore: Mine was only 200 pages. Some of them are much, much, much.

Justin: How many footnotes?

Dr. Latimore: Hundreds, because you have to.

Justin: Yes, of course. What are your main sources of news?

Dr. Latimore: Lots of different things.

Justin: I started asking this because news has become such a hot topic.

Dr. Latimore: For me, it's going to sound cliche, but CNN is a-- For me, I always go through CNN. Then I do, in an odd way, I do searches. I'm interested in different subjects and so I do subject searches and find what's there and look at maybe the historian in me looks at the provenance and where is that source coming from. Obviously, I'm looking at MSNBC. I'll even check out Fox. For me, as many sources as I can get, that's what interests me.

Justin: That's my take on it.

Dr. Latimore: Of course, the Express-News, and of course, through Rivard, all those different--

Justin: Rivard was very clear to tell me that he reads the Express, like sanantonioexpress.com or expressnews.com, but not myessay.com. I didn't realize those were so independent of one another.

Dr. Latimore: Yes, I never thought about that.

Justin: Yes, I didn't either.

Dr. Latimore: I'm just finding the news because and I guess because of what I do and doing social history, African American social history, you're finding whatever you can. It's not always a treasure trove of research for you. You're getting pieces and shards here in a bit there, and you bring it together, and then you evaluate it. I think that's prepared me for the society that we live in now, in which you don't always know the validity of a source unless if you test it.

That's something that I try to do with my students is trying to help them move through the process of how do you evaluate sources? One of the ways of doing this is you find out where things are coming from. You look at it and compare it to other things. Who's writing something? I think it's the same thing that we had to do when we look at the news today because there's a lot of news out there. [crosstalk]

Justin: There's so much that's not news that calls itself news.

Dr. Latimore: Exactly.

Justin: All right, hidden gems in San Antonio. We do this with everybody. For me things like the Tea Garden, the further out missions, those are some things when I first moved here, I didn't know they existed. I think, "Oh, if you're coming to San Antonio, you got to go away from that and go check out some of these things." Do you have any hidden gems in San Antonio you recommend?

Dr. Latimore: Susie's Lumpia House.

Justin: I've never even heard of this.

Dr. Latimore: It's a Filipino restaurant in Culebra. Is it still open? With COVID, I always have to ask because I haven't-- You never known.

Justin: You reached around and asked your wife just so people--

Dr. Latimore: Yes, ask my wife who's Filipino.

Justin: Just so you don't look crazy asking the wall or something. [laughs]

Dr. Latimore: I'm always asking. I'm seriously doing that.

Justin: Susie's Lumpia House.

Dr. Latimore: Yes, it's on Culebra road.

Justin: Is that L-U-M-P-I-A?

Dr. Latimore: Yes. An amazing Filipino restaurant. On Saturdays, they typically offer a buffet, which I don't know how that's working with COVID these days, but they have some great--

Justin: Go-to dish?

Dr. Latimore: Chicken adobo.

Justin: Adobo?

Dr. Latimore: Yes.

Justin: Okay.

Dr. Latimore: A-D-O-B-O.

Justin: Anything else?

Dr. Latimore: They have these great shrimp. There's a word that they call it but I can't think-- Just whatever, there’s shrimp. Go for their shrimp. It's really good.

Justin: All right. I've never eaten Filipino food in San Antonio.

Dr. Latimore: The pork adobo was good too if you like pork. I'm not a big pork eater.

Justin: Adobo is the sauce I assume?

Dr. Latimore: Yes. It's vinegary. At this place, it's more of a vinegary type salt base.

Justin: All right. Like the barbecue you're used to.

Dr. Latimore: Yes, exactly. In Virginia, we do-- Vinegar is very, which I guess is why Susie's Lumpia, it reminds me of a [crosstalk] certain things.

Justin: Sure.

Dr. Latimore: Now, some Filipino restaurants are a little more sweet-based than the vinegar-base depending on the island that they're from. These people actually from the island of Samar. Which is a more centrally located Island.

Justin: Is there 100 islands in the Philippines? There's tons of them, right?

Dr. Latimore: Thousands.

Justin: Inhabited hundred?

Dr. Latimore: Yes, and hundreds of languages as well.

Justin: Oh, wow.

Dr. Latimore: Each one of those islands often has their own language. I don't call it a language, because sometimes we classify something as a dialect and it's really a language. A dialect almost makes it sound like it's not real and legitimate versus a language when we say that that's something that's different and distinct. I may have a southern dialect, but it's a English language. These are real languages that are distinct.

Justin: Okay. What are you teaching currently?

Dr. Latimore: Currently, I'm on leave. [crosstalk]

Justin: When was the last classes you taught?

Dr. Latimore: The last of the semester that just ended, I taught the African American Experience since reconstruction. I also taught a course on the Old South, which looks at Southern politics, race, economics, really from the beginning-- When I say the beginning, looking at a little bit of the indigenous population in the south, in the early period on up through colonization, through the Civil War.

Justin: Does the South cover Texas in your class?

Dr. Latimore: It does.

Justin: Do you consider Texas to be part of the South?

Dr. Latimore: I do.

Justin: All of it or the dividing line?

Dr. Latimore: It's hard to cut up a state, but I do think that West Texas is not really southern.

Justin: It's more the Southwest.

Dr. Latimore: It's the Southwest.

Justin: East Texas is more the South.

Dr. Latimore: East Texas, you've got cotton. Although, you do have slavery in San Antonio. You have out in Wilson County and Seguin and all those that there-- These are pockets there....

Robert Rivard, Publisher and Editor of The Rivard Report

Justin Hill — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 06:30:00 -0600

Robert Rivard is a newsman, editor, publisher and fount of knowledge regarding San Antonio's path over the past few decades. Currently, The Rivard Report is covering multiple major issues including the racial justice protests and COVID-19. We were so honored to get him on the show.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello in Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right. Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Robert Rivard. Robert needs a little introduction in San Antonio. He's the editor and publisher of The Rivard Report which I think personally is the premier news outlet in San Antonio and one of these few news outlets that isn't focused on clickbait and things like that. I really appreciate the fact that they focus on news that matters to all of us. Robert is a published author. He was previously the editor of the San Antonio Express. He's worked at Newsweek. He's won numerous awards, including editor of the year in 2000. Robert, my law firm supports The Rivard Report, I think everybody should support The Rivard Report.

I personally want to thank you for what you all do and how-- Sunlight's the best disinfectant and you all are the best sunlight in the city. Thank you for being here and thank you for what you do.

Robert Rivard: Thanks for the kind words, Justin, and thanks for your support. Thanks for the invitation to everyone listening today or watching to join in that support.

Justin: Yes, and I'm going to encourage everybody, if you have not reached out to The Rivard Report and support it, every little bit helps. You all do what you all do, which is great for the city. I'm also messing with this video right now, because of course when you get here, one of my biggest guests, I'm going to have some technical difficulties. The audio is on though. Robert, we start every episode and we go through every episode with a little bit about caller commentary, where you're from, what do you do, what do you like, when, and why did you move to San Antonio?

Robert: I moved here with my wife, Monika Maeckle and our two very young sons in 1989. I left Newsweekmagazine in New York, my wife wanted to come back to Texas and raise the boys here. My whole career, before I joined Newsweek, was in Texas starting as a sports reporter at The Brownsville Herald and moving to the news side there and then up to the Corpus Christi Caller and then the Dallas Times Herald, which sent me to Latin America to cover civil wars in the 1980s and that's where Newsweek and I connected.

It became time to make some choices between the fast track of my career in New York and around the world. I was managing Newsweek's bureaus all over the world, which was a very exciting job for me, but for my wife with two young baby boys, it wasn't the ideal family situation. I was smart enough to listen to her and choose family over career and that's what brought us to San Antonio, back to Texas in 1989.

Justin: Where are you from originally?

Robert: Well, I was born at the top of the mitten, as we say in Michigan, in Petoskey on Lake Michigan. I'm French Canadian by heritage. Rivard, down here it could be Riveda or Rios. I spent my boyhood in Michigan. My father was a traveling salesman. I moved around, lived in a number of states; Pennsylvania, and New York, Kansas. I eventually found my way, as a young man, down to Brownsville and that's where I started my journalism career.

Justin: Top of the mitten to the bottom of the state.

Robert: Top of the mitten.

Justin: How far from Traverse City?

Robert: Very close, an hour.

Justin: I'd never heard the mitten thing. I lived under a rock, I guess, but I have a good friend and that's what she said. She did this and pointed to the top.

Robert: Top of the mitten.

Justin: Okay, now I know.

Robert: Here's a mitten on my key chain.

Justin: Okay, fair enough.

Robert: I keep close to my roots.

Justin: Well, she just kept sticking her hand up at me and saying, "Top of the mitten." I thought she was having a stroke or something, I had no idea what she was talking about. What are your personal main sources of news?

Robert: Well, I'm a little obsessive-compulsive about news. Before I came here, I was reading The Atlanticmagazine online. Everything I read is digital, I haven't seen print products for years. We still get the Sunday New York Times. My wife likes to have the physical copy and I find myself enjoying going through the pages there, although I've probably read most of what I'm looking at days earlier online. Every morning or every night, really, before I go to bed, I read The New York Times and Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, the three national publications. Most of what's in their morning publications is online the previous evening, and I want to read that. I obviously read everything that we publish and I still read the Express-News. I can't read mysanantonio.com, I couldn't read it when I worked as editor there.

Justin: Okay. What is the difference, because I can't figure out why one is like us weekly of news and one still seems to be news?

Robert: It's clickbait.

Justin: Okay.

Robert: You want to tell advertisers that millions of people are coming to your site, so you put Eva Longoria in a bikini on a slideshow and you've got a couple of man-bite dog stories and junk from all over the world.

Justin: You won't believe what he caught in the Gulf of Mexico dot, dot, dot. I see those.

Robert: Yes. At least advertisers of a certain age and demographic fall prey to that and think they're connecting with large audiences. The expressnews.com, they have some very serious, very accomplished journalists there still even after all the downsizing over the years, and they're doing some great work.

Justin: We're going to get into that more, but that's part of the influence that is not with The Rivard Report, is you do not have the pressures of advertisers and things like that, to where you feel the need to get this clickbait numbers up. You all are nonprofit, right?

Robert: That's correct.

Justin: And nonpartisan.

Robert: We're nonpartisan, we're non-profit, and it doesn't mean that we don't have pressures, because we have the pressure of raising several million dollars a year to support the 20 full-time people that are working there, and the number of freelancers and the overhead and so forth. It's a different kind of situation, but it does give us some editorial independence from the for-profit model. The primary independence it gives us, Justin, is that most newspapers, virtually all newspapers, are owned by corporate entities that are not located in the communities where they publish.

The financial and economic disruption in the media business has been such that most of those corporate owners no longer pay any pretense of caring about community, putting community first, being a public trust. It's all about making the bottom-line work and surviving in a very competitive world where the internet's disrupted everything. Many journalists across the country have done what I've done. I was early doing it. We're eight and a half years old. There's 230 nonprofit digital media sites now in American cities across the country, some more successful than others. We're certainly in the top 10% of those entities for both the size of our audience, our revenue streams, the quality of the journalism we're doing, but it's happening everywhere.

We can't pretend to fill the role that US newspapers once played in communities, where they were everything to everybody, but we do our part in helping fill in an increasingly large vacuum.

Justin: We're going to talk a little bit more about that. You also had a history with the San Antonio Light, which when I moved here didn't even exist. There's all that history there that is gone forever, but we're going to talk a little bit about that. A little bit more about your San Antonio love and connections and fields, what are some of your favorite places in San Antonio that are off the beaten path?

Robert: Well, the river defines the city for me. I'm a cyclist, I like to be on road bike. I was the founding captain of the Third Street Grackles cycling team back in the day. From 2005 to 2015, we raised about $500 million for multiple sclerosis research and rode the MS 150 every year-

Justin: Very cool.

Robert: -to the coast or later to New Braunfels when they changed the course. I'm not doing those kinds of long-distance rides, but I'm still on my bike all the time. I was at the protest. For the last several nights, I've been on my bike riding along the protest to observe as a journalist. I like the river, I particularly like the Mission Reach. Very few people are familiar with the four-mile extension of the Mission Reach below Mission Espada that's opened up and it is amazing. We have some of the amazing urban nature in San Antonio. My wife is a citizen scientist, Monika Maeckle. She founded the San Antonio Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival at the Pearl.

Justin: I went this year to one of the events at the Stables.

Robert: She was, I think, the real catalyst for us becoming the first Monarch Champion City in the United States when Ivy Taylor was mayor. She's written a lot about urban nature both for her blog, the Texas Butterfly Ranch, and just also for The Rivard Report and I get to tag along on all that.

Justin: I had no idea your wife was Texas Butterfly Ranch.

Robert: The other day, I spent time with her and a biologist or a botanist from the San Antonio River Authority removing Chinese snail eggs from the King William Reach that are invasive. Somebody took their pet snails out of an aquarium and threw them in the river and we now have an invasive species problem. My wife's out there, doing battle against Chinese snails. Of course, I'm in a kayak next to her tagging along.

Justin: Support.

Robert: That's my idea of a good time when I've got downtime. One of our two adult sons, Alexander, who's a schoolteacher and owns a coffee business in town, he's kind of a pro-level Scrabble player and I've become addicted to Scrabble later in life. I can't seem to beat him except when I get lucky, but Scrabble keeps my brain working, the wiring good keeps me young.

Justin: I've decided I'm really good at Scrabble if I picked my opponents wisely, so that's sort of metric, but it's great. I didn't know your wife was part of the Texas Butterfly Ranch. We got certified at-- my home is a certified Monarch waystation now. We planted all the things and did all the water. We've got local milkweed, not the tropical, so we're taking it all real seriously.

Robert: You're going to make her very happy.

Justin: Yes, now it's great.

Robert: She oversaw the 300 pollinator gardens initiative in our tricentennial year-

Justin: Oh, cool.

Robert: -and those signs that you have of her, those are her signs.

Justin: Well, tell her that. It's something I don't tell people because it's a weird thing I do at the home, but--

Robert: More people are doing it than ever before.

Justin: That's great to know. Okay. What is the single biggest challenge for an independent nonprofit news outlet like yours?

Robert: Well, the biggest challenge for me was at age 59, starting something from scratch. I say that because I came out of a 30 or 35-year career at the time having worked for five major global media companies. I didn't necessarily consider myself a corporate guy, but I was not part of what my friend Graham Weston called the startup culture of San Antonio. After I retired from the Express News or really what I call my divorce from the Express News, Graham invited me out to Rackspace and he said, "Leave your suit at home and we're going to come get your corporate skin off."

I said, "Graham, I don't have any corporate skin." He goes, "Just come out here." It was coming out into the land of tattoos and piercings and low office lighting, and that's really where I started to hang out with people that were mostly in their 20s and 30s that were completely focused on starting up their own enterprises, whether they were software enterprises, or whatever they were doing, they were trying to solve problems with technology. It really helped me pivot at an age when most people really are coming toward the end of their career and not reinventing themselves. Frankly, it was one of the most enriching experiences of my life.

Justin: When you took him up on that, did you know that the next goal was to start an independent web-based media or a news service?

Robert: He was urging me to do that, to keep my voice in the community. I had him backing me, and I had the greatest philanthropist the city or state's ever known, Charles Butt, the CEO and chairman of HEB. We shared many philosophical viewpoints toward the need to improve public education outcomes in the inner city. He was somebody I greatly admired for the company. It's philanthropy, his personal philanthropy. Those were two really strong mentors who helped me see my way through with Monica who helped me co-found The RivardReport really as a blog and it just took off.

It took off in terms of audience, it took off and people wanting to advertise to the point where a couple of years into its publication, people started approaching me about buying equity positions in it. I tried very hard because I had been up in that startup world. I'd been one of the first things at Geekdom when it was at the Western center and then at the Rand. I was going to use the money to scale up because I think we were four people at the time. Ultimately, we were never going to make the kind of money that venture capitalists want on their investments.

Some of the same people who were very philanthropic beyond Graham and Charles, but people like Lew Moorman, the president of Rackspace, John Newman, Chico Newman, the head of Newman Family Foundation. They convinced me to go nonprofit. That was 2015. That was not an easy step to take because my wife and I had built with sweat equity quite an enterprise and it was really something that was having an increasingly influential place in the media landscape. It meant surrendering it all, including our own financial investor to a nonprofit, but it was the right thing to do and there was something about the community's perception of The Rivard Report once it became nonprofit.

I thought it had been building fantastically but it really took off after that. We really quickly scaled up to the size we're at now, as people started to become donating members, more philanthropists joined us. Many of the leading foundations in San Antonio made significant multi-year commitments.

People wanted quality, credible journalism, and civic engagement that we were offering where we weren't doing the crime blotter, we weren't doing clickbait, we weren't doing celebrity gossip and news. We weren't intensely negative. We weren't sensational. The college-educated, engaged citizen, the person who votes, the people that are really making the city go, they wanted something that was of higher purpose, and our mission-driven journalism as a nonprofit really resonated with people and the result is what you see today.

Justin: The donors' list is a who's who of San Antonio, philanthropists and foundations. Now, I was going through it before you got here.

Robert: It's pretty impressive. I have a really strong business team. It's run by three of the four people are Trinity grads, Jenna Mallette, our chief operating officer, Katy Silva, our development director, Kassie Kelly, our membership director, and then Laura Lopez, who's a roadrunner me, UTSA, she's our event coordinator. When we look at what we accomplish, not only with our individual and business membership base, which is in the thousands now, but also just with our annual City Fest, our annual education forum, our annual medical forum, we're doing civic engagement events every month, and now we're doing them virtually. They're attracting really strong audiences of community leaders, people in the neighborhoods that just have a real appetite for that kind of what I would call really nutritious journalism.

Justin: It's media, it's dense, it's actual information about real issues instead of a glossing over. The funny thing is when I'll see or cover something, there's not alternatives to the coverage, it's stuff that nobody's covering that I think what makes you also more so invaluable to the city is there's no alternative means of getting some of that information in terms of which I'll cover.

We'll get back to it, but you personally also write. I always make sure to read yours because there are always a more macro feel it seems to me. Is there any specific type of coverage that you prefer? Do you like the politics? Do you like the culture? Do you like what's happening in the city? Is there a specific angle that you prefer to cover?

Robert: Well, I've always been a writing editor. Of course, I was a reporter and writer for a long time at different newspapers and then at Newsweek, but I've always believed that editors are the strongest editors lead by writing, and that the reporters and others who are in the organization can see that you're not asking people to do anything that you're not more than capable of doing yourself. I've also just had a front-row seat on the city now for decades, and so I'm something of an institutional...

Chet Garner, The Daytripper, Baylor Law Grad, and BBQ Aficionado

Justin Hill — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Chet Garner and Justin Hill attended Baylor Law School together. After law school, Chet went on to work for one of the biggest and most successful law firms in Texas. Feeling a little burned out, Chet took a swing at making a TV show highlighting all the wonderful things in Texas--including San Antonio. The rest is history.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello. Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to this episode of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Chet Garner AKA the Daytripper. Previously known as the Texas Daytripper, right?

Chet Garner: Austin Daytripper, actually.

Justin: Okay. That's what it was. All right.

Chet: Austin Daytripper. That's OG. That's season one.

Justin: Okay. All right. The six-episode season.

Chet: Yes, it was. When we went to Waco, our stomping ground, because we were in Waco before Waco was cool.

Justin: I know. It's so different now.

Chet: Yes. Oh, man. So different.

Justin: The silos used to get shanked, and now you got to stand in line to get a sandwich.

Chet: [laughs] That's exactly right, man. We started off. I thought, "Man, if I can convince Austinites to want to go to Waco, I can convince them to want to go anywhere in the world". I started with the most difficult task first, so I like to take a lot of the credit for making Waco cool.

Justin: I think that's fair.

Chet: [crosstalk] may disagree, but I'll take 100% of the credit on that.

Justin: One of my good friends just became general counsel for Magnolia there, and I was thinking, "What a great gig".

Chet: You're kidding me. Really?

Justin: Yes. Chet is a graduate of Baylor Law School, where we met. He went on to work for one of the biggest and best law firms in Texas. After a few years, he made a pivot, created The Austin Daytripper to become The Daytripper. The Daytripper has won eight Lone Star Emmy awards. It's one of her multiple different categories. It's on PBS. It's hosted by Chet. It highlights the culture, outdoors, food, tacos, swimming holes, barbecue, all the wonderful things about Texas.

As it relates to San Antonio and South Texas, he has won Emmys for episodes covering Seguin, San Antonio twice, and New Braunfels. He's won outstanding program host. You have a brick and mortar store in Georgetown, and you just have a huge following. My old law partner one time, the coolest thing that his kids knew about me was that I knew you. They thought it was so cool that I knew who you were.

Chet: Hey, man. I've been very vocal. I tell all my friends, and this applies to you, that if you can use knowing me to any benefit in your life, do it frequently because it's not going to last forever.

Justin: I am right now. I have got you on my podcast.

Chet: Good. There we go.

Justin: I got the mayor on before you, which was probably harder to-- You're a bigger get than the mayor of San Antonio, I think at this point.

Chet: Yes. You're good at brow nosing. That's a lie but okay.

Justin: Okay. Chet, on all these episodes, I start with a top 10 just to get a little bit of information about people. The sort of thing we're going to go through, yours is a little bit different because you're not a San Antonian, but you have spent plenty of time here highlighting our wonderful city. So I thought it'd be great to talk to you as an outsider who has also really actually done a lot to display our city. To start, this is a hard one I think. It looks like you won outstanding program host every year except for 2017. What happened?

[laughter]

Chet: I wish I could tell you. Those were my dark years, my dark years. I was just eating barbecue and crying. I was mailing it in, thinking I could walk home with the award. I think that's the year I didn't get nominated at all.

Justin: Really? Who won it that year?

Chet: Gosh. In all honesty, they took what I did, which is a program host, and they combined it with what a lot of other people do into this one massive category. The traditional program hosts like us were kept outside, so I couldn't even tell you who won it, but it was an old-- Is it Mickey Rooney? The guy who had the crazy eyebrows and would go like, "What's the deal with typewriters? I don't need a typewriter". You know that-[crosstalk]

Justin: Yes, and also Seinfeld basically.

Chet: Yes, basically. Right. Those guys cleaned up that category that year, but we came back strong in '18. We got it. We got it again. Man, the awards are always-- They're fun to get, but man, if you did it for the awards, you'd be a wreck because they're so subjective, and they bounce around. So you can never do something for the recognition or else you'll burn out too quick.

Justin: One of the newscaster, a friend of mine, she won one a few years ago, and she took pictures of it in her bed with her and next to her in the bathtub. It was a big deal. It was funny.

Chet: [laughs] Now, they're like door stoppers. I bring them to things, and I let people pass them around because what good are they with me just collecting dust on the shelf.

Justin: There's some behind you right now I can see.

Chet: Oh gosh. Yes. That was not planned, I promise. We've got one in the store in Georgetown, and I'll let anybody once-- It's a fancy paperweight, essentially.

Justin: How heavy are they? Do they have some heft to them?

Chet: They're heavy. You can kill a man with them. You could definitely kill a man.

Justin: Okay. That's a good standard by which we should gauge things.

Chet: [laughs] Yes-[crosstalk]

Justin: I watched your episodes. I'd seen them previously about San Antonio. What were some of the neat things in San Antonio that you did not know prior to coming to doing these episodes?

Chet: Man, I love San Antonio. I know maybe I'm pandering to the audience. I promise I'm not. I'm not. I love San Antonio. San Antonio's got a patina that other towns in Texas don't. There's only one other town in Texas that I think comes close to having the same patina that San Antonio does, and that's El Paso. You know what I'm talking about?

Justin: I agree.

Chet: It can stop the crust on a cast iron. It's just got this richness to it. I'll say the more time I spend in San Antonio and South Texas and West Texas and even Central Texas to a certain degree, I start to identify more with being Spanish than-- I realize how much of our culture as a Texan, more of it came from Mexico than it did the 13 original colonies.

Justin: Yes, I think that's fair.

Chet: July 4th, we kind of inherited when we joined the union, but that's not really our story. Our story comes from the South. Our story comes up, cross the Rio Grande and through San Antonio. You go to San Antonio, you start to realize that the history is so much deeper, so much richer, so much more complex than you think it is. That's what I love.

You go to the [inaudible 00:06:53] gosh, the church right behind at the Spanish--

Justin: Market Square.

Chet: Yes, the [unintelligible 00:07:01], the Market Square and the governor's mansion down there and see the old layouts of the town. Oh, man, I love it. I love San Antonio. That's what stuck out to me is like, "Holy crap. I'm not in some city where the oldest thing was built in 1890". I'm in a city where it was like, "We're going way back 1700s and before".

Justin: 1600s. Yes. I had no idea I was going to love it like I did. I came for a law job. You left for Waco and went to a law job. Mine ended up being San Antonio, and I just fell in love with the city. That brings me into my next question. Have you been to any Fiesta events? Have you been here for Fiesta ever?

Chet: Never. No. Never been to Fiesta-[crosstalk]

Justin: That would be a fantastic whole episode. Fiesta is probably my favorite thing about San Antonio. I have made lifelong friends, just out meeting over a margarita at some Fiesta event.

Chet: That's cool.

Justin: It's so great.

Chet: I met Rey Feo one year. He came up and he-- It was a big ceremony where he gave me a coin, and I was like, "I don't know what's going on, but this is cool".

Justin: Do you remember who it was that year?

Chet: Gosh, it's written on the coin. I'll have to go and look. I'm disappointing all your podcast guys. Can y'all name the legacy going back--

Justin: About how many years ago?

Chet: Three.

Justin: Okay. There's a colorful history of Rey Feo's, and there was one some number of years ago. I don't remember, but I'll tell you off-air. Some of his events were very much spectacles.

Chet: Oh, really?

Justin: Yes.

Chet: He came to a conference I had to go to down there or something and was walking around in the white suit, the crown, the whole deal, and loved the attention, so I bet you it's the same guy. Loved the attention.

Justin: That group will raise $200,0000 to $500,000 in scholarships. Just that group, just that one group's fundraising efforts. Every single event is a fundraiser for something.

Chet: Holy moly. Wow.

Justin: Yes. I know it's fantastic. The weirdest thing you have seen on your travels?

Chet: Like all over Texas or in San Antonio?

Justin: If you can break them down on the fly, let's do it.

Chet: [laughs] Let me think about this. The weirdest thing I saw in San Antonio. One time I went to Henry's Tacos, and I saw the giant walking taco walking around shaking hands. I got a picture with the walking taco. That was pretty awesome.

Justin: That's fair.

Chet: Let me think of what else. What's the weirdest thing I've seen in San Antonio? Oh, man. I've had some weird stuff happen to me all around in San Antonio. Gosh, man, you're putting me on the spot. I need to think about this. I'd say the coolest place I've stayed in San Antonio is this-- Somehow we got pushed out of our regular room in the Crockett Hotel, and so we got the room that has the big wraparound balcony to where I spent all night drinking beer on my balcony overlooking the grounds of The Alamo. That was pretty awesome. I don't know how you swing that room. I think it was a mixup, and somehow we got that. But that's not necessarily weird.

Justin: You'd be the Daytripper?

Chet: No. This was right as no one knew who I was. I don't know if you've seen The Daytripper or not, and they're like, "No, I haven't". It's like, "Okay, moving on. Moving on".

Justin: If it comes to you, if you become inspired along this, go ahead and pop in. How do you keep your stomach from not getting sick, all the tacos and barbecue and beer?

Chet: Dude.

Justin: It's just got to be overwhelming occasionally [laughs].

Chet: It's a tough job. Someone's got to do it. It's funny. I eat copious amounts of food on the show. I'll go and film stuff with other people who will have me in on things and-- In my book, I'm just getting started, and they're tapping out. They're like, "How are you eating this much?" I'm like, "Whoa, bro, we haven't even gotten started". I realize some weird way, my stomach is conditioned just to pound down the food. I have to work out a lot too, and I can't eat like garbage when I'm off the road. As far as the quantity of food, I scare myself sometimes.

Justin: I don't think I've seen all hundred and something episodes, but somebody actually asked me today, do you ever do any of the food challenges in any of these cities you go to?

Chet: I've done the spice challenges like the ones where the ghost peppers and all that. Actually, I take it back. I've done two food challenges. One is I tried to eat the 72-ounce steak in Amarillo, failed miserably.

Justin: You got to eat the gristle and stuff too, don't you?

Chet: Dude. No, it's a sirloin. There's not much fat in it.

Justin: Okay, 72-ouches.

Chet: Dude, 4 1/2 pounds of beef, you're not playing around. We- let's see -got that. I tried to eat the Mega Mel burger in Tomball one time which is-- It's about a foot and a half of meat. They slice two full tomatoes, and they don't even bother putting the slices out. You just have two tomatoes with just kebab sticks. I don't even know if I can eat two tomatoes, but people pound those things down. I suck at the food challenges because there's usually a time on it too. I think I'm more of a marathon food eater. I can just eat all day, but if you want me to sprint through a 4 1/2 pound steak, I'm going to--

Justin: That's how I am with beer. People are like, "Let's chug a beer". I'm like, "No, I'm fine drinking beers for a while, but I'm not going to chug one".

Chet: Exactly.

Justin: What is your best recommendation for a day trip there and back for San Antonians? Something close to here where people could go out, get a full day worth and make it back in time for dinner.

Chet: Dude, I'm a big fan-- The Hill Country is well-traveled. There's plenty of places to go in the Hill Country. I'm going to throw out Seguin if you hadn't been to Seguin. People are dogging Seguin right now, but just give it 10 years. Seguin is about the blow-up.

Justin: You think?

Chet: I think. I'm seeing something all over the state that's true in San Antonio as well, that if you live within 30 miles of a major metropolitan area and you've got a historic square or historic assets somehow, the sky's the limit right now because people who are living on the outskirts of all these big cities don't feel like tripping down into the middle of the city just because it takes-- It's just maybe the stress of parking or traveling or whatever. So they're looking for entertainment on the outskirts, and they don't want to live in the big city necessarily either. A town like Seguin is in the same position a town like New Braunfels is, just New Braunfels got discovered a long time ago and Seguin isn't discovered yet.

Justin: I love Mason. I think Mason has that feel.

Chet: Oh, I love Mason. I love Mason, Texas, man.

Justin: That happened about five years ago, where it kind of started blowing up?

Chet: Yes. It's still pretty much under the radar. It's nowhere near a Fredericksburg.

Justin: It reminds me of Sonoma. The town of Sonoma and the town of Mason, their squares, and everything look very similar. It's a special place.

Chet: Yes, I could see that. I could totally see that. I would say, I'm always looking good barbecue, somewhere to jump in and get wet in a river. The Guadalupe Bay River goes right through Seguin. Awesome spot.

Justin: I'm a beekeeper, and I go buy all my bee supplies and my hives from Gretchen Bee Ranch out in Seguin.

Chet: Oh, do you really?

Justin: Yes.

Chet: Oh, cool.

Justin: It's fun. Have you had any interesting run-ins with the Texas Country Reporter guy, and are y'all friends?

Chet: One time, we met him at a Lone Star Emmy event, and I was like, "Oh man, is he--" He's been doing this 40 years. He's the grand patriarch of what I do. I was like, "Oh, man. I wonder how he feels about me or if he finds me threatening", or whatever. I look up to him a lot, so I was like, "I'm going to go and introduce myself". I was like, "Hi, I'm Chet. I do the Daytripper". He goes, "Ah, okay. Uh".

[laughter]

He didn't have any clue who I was.

Justin: Is that right?

Chet: None. I don't think so. He was so kind. He's like, "Hey, if you're coming up in the TV business, here's my cell phone. Give me a call. Come see me in Dallas".

Justin: That's great.

Chet: Super friendly. I don't think he knew who I was, honestly.

Justin: Y'all have very different shows though.

Chet: Yes, very different.

Justin: His is like the PBS of PBS show. It's so calming and sweet.

Chet: Oh, totally. It is, man. Hopefully, I don't have a show that you nap to. The other people in this like, "Oh yes, I put on Country Reporter and then sleep on the couch". That's not a compliment to people who make TV that you fall asleep watching our show. You know what, I'd say this, Laura, my wife, who you know from the law school days, she was gutsy and went up to him. She's like, "Hey, I just need you to do one thing. Would you do one thing for me?" [laughs] She got him to go "blizzard" like he used to do on the DQ commercials. I was like, "Oh, that's awesome". I think that video-[crosstalk]

Justin: I don't know if I remember him from the DQ commercials or from Texas Country Reporter. He was just kind of one in the same for a long time.

Chet: Oh, yes. For sure. He just "Hunger Buster Jr". Oh, man.

Justin: Are you a reader?

Chet: Do I read? Man, I got too many kids to read much these days.

Justin: Fair enough.

Chet: I read magazines. What were you going to ask? What's the question?

Justin: I was going

Eric Cooper, President and CEO of the San Antonio Food Bank

Justin Hill — Mon, 25 May 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Eric Cooper moved to San Antonio in 2001 to take over the San Antonio Food Bank and get it on the right path. In his time at the SA Food Bank, the non-profit has raise a lot of money, added many programs, and has made it their mission to provide food for today, food for tomorrow and food for a lifetime. Eric Cooper is heartwarming, loving, and genuinely cares about his mission and the San Antonio Food Bank's success.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Eric Cooper. Eric is the executive director of the San Antonio Food Bank and currently serving in somewhat of a role as a little bit of a national spokesperson for food and security as a result of the crisis and as a result of some press that San Antonio got. He joined the San Antonio Food Bank in 2001 and has since taken it from really being on somewhat of a tenuous footing to really a robust, important, and surprisingly, oddly, well-funded nonprofit in the city.

I was doing some research on you. Before this crisis, 58,000 people a week got help. 77 million meals a year, to me, kind of a nerd about things. 2% overhead for y'alls budget. That's something that unless people really pay attention, you don't realize how important that is and how really a compliment to your management skills. Thank you for being here. I want to get into some of these things, but thank you for being here. I can't imagine your time commitment, so I'm glad we got a little bit of it.

Eric Cooper: Hey, super excited to be on the show. It's a great city and we're just so privileged to be a part of it.

Justin: I think that's a great city. That's why I started this whole thing. You and I were sort of joking how you got these San Antonio stories. I moved here and I've met a weird, fascinating array of characters and I was hoping to share that through this show. We haven't met before, but you're in such a big spotlight right now. I knew about the San Antonio Food Bank. I've learned so much more about it, so I want to talk to you about it. First, I'm going to put you through sort of our top 10 list we go through to get some color commentary on who you are as a person. I've read a bunch of your interviews before you got here today. I want to--

Eric: Sorry about that. [chuckles]

Justin: Well, a lot of it, I don't want to retrace steps. Some of it, I want to get some new information. When and why did you move to San Antonio?

Eric: Well, I've been in food banking for about eight years. I actually got my start in Salt Lake City at the Utah Food Bank and then made my way back home to North Texas. I grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. There was an opportunity to serve with the North Texas Food Bank which, at that time, they had their facility in South Oak Cliff. I was there a couple of years and had watched as the San Antonio Food Bank somewhat struggled. We went through about four CEOs in a two-year period. Two of them had gotten fired and the other two had quit. The board was struggling. The food bank was struggling.

I figured I couldn't screw it up any worse and they offered me the job at that point. I became their youngest executive director. I love an opportunity and I just saw such an opportunity to serve people in need. I knew I was going to dedicate my life towards putting food on the table for families. As I had traveled South Texas and seeing some of our border communities, it's some of the most extreme poverty in the United States. I knew I wanted to serve an area that had that need. When the opportunity arose, the board offered me the position and I had to take it.

Justin: The rest is history. You're still here.

Eric: It is. It seems crazy that now, 19 years ago, we were such a small organization. There's some parts of that that I miss. We had a $1 million cash budget and 18 employees. We were doing about 10 million pounds of food. Today, we got about 250 employees and a $26 million budget.

Justin: Wow.

Eric: We're pushing, hopefully, 75 to 80 million pounds this year. It's been a lot of growth, but it's been stable. San Antonio has just trusted us and built on us. We're feeding a lot of folks. Unfortunately, there's a need. San Antonio had struggled prior to COVID. There's just a super high rate of poverty. When you think about other cities in the United States, San Antonio has, actually, the largest percentage of our population living in poverty, and so COVID just pushed so many new people into that space. Most people don't probably fully understand the poverty line. Man, if you're in poverty, you're really hurting. Those are folks that for a single individual, you're making less than $10,000 a year. If you're making 12,000, 13,000, 14,000 a year, then you're out of poverty. You're not making it, right?

Justin: Right, yes. The working poor.

Eric: The working poor. That's the families. That's kind of our typical client. In this COVID-19 crisis, so many of those families just a paycheck away from being hungry now find themselves in our lines.

Justin: I read a book called Nickel and Dimed. It had to be 20 years ago and it was a fantastic study for-- I was a kid at the time and I read that and thought, "How did these--" It really changed my perspective about people who work because people are always looked down upon who needed assistance. When I read that book, I learned these people are working their butts off and even still, they can't get it together.

I was reading about some of the-- Look, there are good stories that are coming out of this. You're seeing the best in a lot of people. One of the stories I thought was really cute and funny was the girl who gave the lemonade stand money to the food bank. Any other kind of funny stories like that where people have just said, "I don't have much, but here, you can have it"?

Eric: Yes. Again, there's room at the table for everyone to fight hunger. I think the COVID-19 crisis, I've seen just our community at its best where you've got individual philanthropists like Harvey Najim giving three-quarters of a million dollars. USAA giving $1.5 million. Jeff Bezos gave $100 million across the United States to food banks. Just insane generous, kind gifts, but then on the other side, there's this thought that those that have the least sometimes give the most. It's just a fact when it comes to percentage of their earnings what they have the ability to do. I'm just humbled by it. Our food drives along the south side of San Antonio usually bring in a few more cans of food. Little Chloe and her lemonade stand or so many people gave their stimulus checks back.

Justin: Wow.

Eric: Probably, the most humbling was a woman gave $40 and left a note that she actually was in a car in the line on April 9th when we were at Traders Village and served 10,000 families. She said, "I sat in the car. I got the food. The food bank didn't fail me and I was able to nourish myself. The next week, my boss who had laid me off called and said they had a few hours. I could start working." She said, "Knowing that I was going to get a paycheck, I wanted to pay it forward."

Justin: Wow.

Eric: She sent in $40. I think that's really where we sit at the food bank. It's kind of the crossroad between those that have and those that don't have. Those that don't have need a little help, and then those that do have kind of are in this place of caring and sharing. I think they walk away feeling good about the transaction just like those that got the food. It's pretty cool to be in the middle of that.

Justin: Not a lot of unhappy customers.

Eric: No, no.

Justin: Chloe's lemonade stand, it's like a $1,000. I never had that whenever I was a kid. [chuckles]

Eric: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Lemonade, the price went up.

[laughter]

Justin: You're from North Texas. I'm from North Texas. We talked about that before the show. I have friends that come to San Antonio. I haven't lived here as long as you since I was seven for me, but I always say, "Okay. You go to the Alamo. Go do those things, but you need to go see--" Usually, I'll say the Japanese Tea Garden. I think that told me, "Go see the old missions, not just the Alamo." What are some of the hidden gems you tell friends or that you think are really just neat hidden gems of San Antonio?

Eric: I have to first just disclose. Being from North Texas, of course, I'm a Cowboys fan. It just comes with being a Texan, but I was never a Mavericks fan. All those years, I just--

Justin: I was.

Eric: There was the era of the Celtics and Lakers, so I probably was cheering for the Celtics a little bit. Coming to San Antonio, I became a huge Spurs fan. You can't help because they are the real deal. It is just a wonderful tradition of our city. To all those Spurs fans, we're San Antonio proud. I think our mission is very incredible. Most people don't realize that the food bank actually has a partnership with the Mission district, the National Park Service with Mission San Juan.

When the missionaries built the missions, they had the farmland that provided all the food to all of the missions. There was this 10-acre plots of land. They were called Suertes. In Spanish, I guess that's luck and you were in a drawing to get a little parcel. They built the original acequia, which is the oldest water rights in the state of Texas that drafts water off of the San Antonio River and uses that water through topography, irrigate the original farmlands of San Antonio. We had our little 25-acre farm out at the food bank.

It was San Antonio's largest urban farm. The National Park Service reached out and said, "We want to restore this land back to its original farming capacity. We'll give you a 20-year lease for a dollar a year if y'all come work the land. You can have all the water you want. You can use the land and then use those crops to help feed San Antonio's hungry." Just the triple win. Win for them and a win for us and a win for San Antonio families. Definitely, if you're on the Mission Trail, you definitely want to see the San Antonio urban farm at Mission San Juan.

Justin: Are you using the original irrigation structure?

Eric: We are. We are, yes.

Justin: Oh, that's great.

Eric: Yes. There's a portion of it that we totally do it Mission style and then we did install some pumps to expedite some efficiencies. There's some drip irrigation and some of the water conservation work that our farmers use, but--

Justin: Can anybody come out and tour it?

Eric: Man, anytime, any day. If you'd like to get in the dirt, there's always something to be planted or harvested. We've got a pretty good-sized citrus orchard that we're trying to get started out there.

Justin: Any bees?

Eric: There are some bees. It's just a great day. It's a great day to go out. You see the Mission. You see the beauty of the south-side San Antonio River, and then you can work in our farm.

Justin: I didn't know that. I'm learning something new all the time on that, but that's something that's really right up my alley. Are you a reader? If so, what are you reading right now?

Eric: Man, I am just trying to catch up with my emails. [chuckles] I'm a big fan of personal improvement, so Covey, Jim Collins. To be honest, I am so knee-deep in trade publications. I'm definitely a man of faith, so the Scriptures have a part of my literary diet. My wife is the bigger reader. Traveling a bunch, I spend so much time in the car serving 16 counties here in Southwest Texas that I appreciate shows like yours. Podcast, they've become the lazy reader's escape.

I digest a ton, but a big fan of TPR and NPR and just the importance of journalism in today's environment where truth sometimes gets debated. In this COVID-19 crisis, it's interesting because some of what was happening here because of our need and our efforts to try to meet that need, I mentioned on April 9th this experience. Now, we've done pop-ups for forever, 25 years that I've been working in this space.

It's basically a strategy because of refrigeration that you're trying to move a lot of product to families that the bottleneck is some of our supply chain. The ability to inform the families ahead of time that, "We're going to be at this location. Come and get food," then we just load them up in the trunks of their cars. Well, with the COVID-19 protocols, with physical distancing and all that, these pop-ups became the perfect way to get food to families. What typically we'd serve pre-COVID would be about 200 to 400 families. Right at the onset of COVID, it went to about 2,000 families.

Justin: Wow.

Eric: Now, families would go through our website and pre-register. We started to see as we were getting deeper into the crisis. That was probably about the third or fourth week, families' paychecks were gone and we knew that there was a bigger need. We planned on serving 6,000 families, which would be just historic for us at one time. 10,000 families actually ended up showing up. If you can imagine 10,000 families, that's about 50,000 people. We distributed in a day about a million pounds of food.

We had 25 semi-trucks of food that we just blew through trying to make sure families were fed. If it wasn't for hundreds and hundreds of volunteers and a great facility out there at Traders Village, we wouldn't have been able to do it. It was the Express-News that came out just covering the story that captured the images of that day, which we just kind of knew that it was unprecedented the number, but we didn't really realize, I think, what had happened until we all read the paper that night and saw the images like, "Wow. Yes, that's--"

Justin: That's the day those iconic images that went nationwide were taken?

Eric: Yes. It went viral in the sense of, I think, you can't debate a picture, right? That picture just captured, I think, the essence of what was happening across the United States. All food banks, all cities are having these unprecedented lines, but the fact that the photographer captured an image of so many cars parked in a way waiting for food that I think made everybody realize that there's a huge need across America and more needed to be done to feed it.

Justin: We're going to get into more in-depth, but how is the need being filled right now? Are you able to fill the need right now? Has there reached a breaking point or so far so good?

Eric: Yes. We went from feeding the 60,000 people a week pre-COVID to now 120,000 and we just haven't seen any relief. I think we definitely are doing more distributions because we learned it takes all day to serve families if you're doing 10,000, so we try to keep them to about 2,000. We just had one this morning out at Toyota Field. We get done in about an hour and a half if there's 2,000 families. Many more than that, the wait time's great.

Where it's going, we don't know. I think there's estimates I'm hearing from the chamber. It could be 20% to 24% unemployment. Until our hospitality, hard-working, blue-collar community gets back to work, I think the food bank's going to see a lot more clients than we ever have. We're going to do all we can to meet that need. You asked about food supply. Pretty much for eight weeks, it's been private donations.

It's been residents that have funded and supported our response. I've pushed and pushed on city, state, federal support to come our way and they heard it. They responded, but it's less nimble and so we still are in the process of landing the state support. They funded, through the Texas Department of Emergency Management, $9.1 million to purchase food, which for us will mean several hundred semi-truck loads of product. To put it in perspective, that's about 50% of our food for a 30-day period.

We blow through it pretty quickly when we're feeding the number of families we're feeding, which, I think, hid it in the beginning is, I don't think people realize the food bank on a normal take will go through about $125 million in food in 12 months. That's what it took to feed 60,000 people a week. Our budget today if you're thinking on a 12-month period, we'd need about $250 million in food. That's just tough to get out of our community, that much support. For eight weeks here in our city of San Antonio, this city stepped up in a major way and people were fed.

Justin: Oh, I had Ron Nirenberg on, I guess, two guests ago in his little birthday fundraiser. I think he tried to reach a thousand and it ended up being 64,000. [chuckles]

Eric: Yes. No. Shea Serrano raised $100,000. I don't know if you know GP Singh, but he raised, I don't know, like quarter of a million. Jose Menendez raised, I think, $400,000. Harvey Najim and the community, through the help of WAI and Fox KABB, raised $5.4 million. It's been humbling. It's been mind-blowing, but you're like, "Man, where will the future be in fundraising?" because we're consuming so much of it and spending so much of it that so many nonprofits are hurting. I feel it. We do a lot of special-event fundraising at the food bank.

We've got a golf tournament, a gala, a 5K, all that kind of stuff and all that's gone.You don't have events in the current environment. We had to cancel some of our fundraisers, but our cities stood up and supported us. We figured out the volunteer components. Still, hundreds of volunteers come in every day to help us. We have strong COVID protocols. If listeners are interested in coming out and volunteering, either at a distribution or at the warehouse, in our kitchens or even on the farm, just give us a call or visit us online at safoodbank.org and we'll put you to work.

Justin: That was going to be one of my questions. Is the bigger challenge right now getting manpower or money?

Eric: All is always a challenge. I think food is actually, probably one of our biggest challenges just because of the supply chain being altered. Most people, unless you're a food bank nerd, food is on two sides. There's the retail side which is groceries and then the foodservice side which is restaurants. The foodservice side, because at closures, basically bottlenecked everything.

Nobody could go out and eat and so everybody was grocery shopping and we all saw the empty shelves at H-E-B and...

Drew Galloway, Executive Director of MOVE Texas, Bagpipe Player and Sommelier

Justin Hill — Mon, 18 May 2020 05:30:00 -0600

After attending the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, Drew Galloway moved to San Antonio furthering his career in the wine industry working with large wine retailers. While in San Antonio, he was bit by the public policy bug and went back to school. Since then, he has immersed himself in voter registration and voter engagement issues through MOVE Texas. He shares successes and discusses his passion for bagpipes.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right, welcome to this episode of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Drew Galloway. Drew is the executive director of MOVE Texas, and also a bagpipe player. We'll talk to him about that in a little bit. MOVE Texas was started in 2013 by some students at UTSA right here in San Antonio. The goal was to increase participation in local elections. Really I think it's largely been doing that by way of voter registration and we're going to talk to Drew about that. Drew, thanks for being here.

Drew Galloway: Thanks, Justin. Awesome to be here with you today.

Justin: I got to know about y'all through a mutual friend Stephen Lopez when he was doing some fundraiser.

Drew: Stephen's been with us for a couple years now and he's now serving as the board chair.

Justin: I didn't know that. Well, I won't hold that against you. Stephen will listen to this and he'll give me his critiques on how I did. He always does. I started all these with a top 10 give a little color to who I'm talking to. I'm just going to walk you through some. They change every time.

Drew: Let's go.

Justin: All right. When and why did you move to San Antonio?

Drew: I got a job with Spec's Family Partners. I was working in the wine business. They reached out. They wanted me to do a new market development for them and I came to San Antonio.

Justin: What year was that?

Drew: That was 2011.

Justin: New market. Did that mean they were just starting to move in here?

Drew: They had the store that was in the north part of the city. I helped work at that store and then open the days of all a store and a couple of others.

Justin: The one close to me is the one about the airport and it's pretty sad.

Drew: It's tucked away under that bridge.

Justin: You go to the Spec's in Houston and they've got all the bells and whistles and cheeses and meats and you go to that one by the airport and it's sad.

Drew: If you go to the flagship store in Houston, you get spoiled.

Justin: All right. Well, we'll take that up with specs. We're all doing our best to support right now. Things are strange. You were talking to me off the record about how you're doing some cooking but are you doing any of the to-gos or the takeouts, the places that are trying to survive and we're all trying to help. Are there any that you've found, "Hey, they've got a great deal like supporting them?" We did Play Lane yesterday and it was fantastic. Any other the places you've been frequenting?

Drew: No. There's a little wine shop called Little Death. That is right on the St. Mary's strip. I've been frequenting them just walk in pick up a bottle of wine just because-

Justin: You live over there?

Drew: No. I live on the south west side. That's one my favorite wine bar in the city. If you've never been at the Little Death you should go.

Justin: Were you there when Stephen was cooking his Italian tripe?

Drew: No.

Justin: Did you see it?

Drew: No. I did not.

Justin: I was there.

Drew: What?

Justin: Not only do I support. I went to their, and it was very earthy flavor. It was tripe cooked in a ton of white wine, and they just turned into a party. This was right before everything shut down. It was great.

Drew: I know. I've done a couple happy hours like personal and professional there. I love that place. It's my favorite little bar in town.

Justin: Also, you can grab a Burger boy and then get some wine. That's my favorite thing with wine is a burger actually. Not the steaks and all that -- burger.

Drew: I try to be good and just drink wine. Then usually I have a couple glasses of wine and then go out with a burger.

Justin: I'm not going to tell you what I do. Favorite hidden gems in San Antonio. We're going to try to stick with this with everybody. Ron brought up Denman Estate Park, which I had never heard of. Somebody else brought up Jack White Trail, which I've never heard of. To me I think the Japanese Tea Garden is definitely up there. What are some of your favorite hidden gems that if you have guests that come in and you say, "Okay. It's probably not in your little manual, but go check out this."

Drew: Yes. That's a great question. I will tell you that my family loves Pearsall Park. If you haven't been there it's amazing. I live literally five minutes away from that if not closer.

Justin: Is it Pearsall?

Drew: Yes. It's right on Pearsall Road, and the trails are phenomenal. You can do a wooded trail or there's some hills if you want to get [unintelligible 00:04:48]

Justin: Like south of 1604?

Drew: Yes. We're where overseas lackland. You can see the Boeing plane.

Justin: Okay. I didn't know about that.

Drew: I love the place. It's great. It's got a great Kitty Park too post quarantine.

Justin: Is it open right now?

Drew: No.

Justin: Is it a city park?

Drew: It is a city park. The trails are open. I don't think the playgrounds are.

Justin: All right. Are you a reader and if so, anything right now?

Drew: Yes. I am a reader. I read a lot. I'm reading How to Be an Antiracist right now. It's a great book.

Justin: [laughs] Is it like one page long which is don't be a racist?

Drew: No. I'm reading that. Let's see. I recently, like a year or so ago, brought a book to move called Radical Candor. I'm rereading that because we've got some new staff members on and stuff. That's another great business organizational book.

Justin: Okay. Do you watch South Park?

Drew: Yes.

Justin: All right. I feel like Radical Candor might have micro aggressions discussed on there somewhere, but I don't know. Who's your favorite bagpipe player?

Drew: Oh man, that's such a hard question.

Justin: Is there more than six of them?

Drew: Yes. I'm going to totally nerd out now. I've started playing bagpipes when I was 14, in Georgia, and I loved Simon Fraser University, and which is in British Columbia, Canada. They alternate with a couple other bagpipe bands as the world champions every year. The pipe Sergeant of that band is Jack Lee. I get to see Jack Lee a couple times a year, and I'm always like giddy.

Justin: Okay. This is the bait, that one of the major reasons behind this podcast is there are so many people with these strange passions that are just, they're interesting to hear. I wanted to do that. We're going to talk about bagpipes in a little bit. Are you a social media person and if so, which is your favorite platform?

Drew: That's a great question. I'm a forced social media person. I do quite a bit because of my work. I would say my favorite platform right now and for the last year has been TikTok. If you are on TikTok, it's the win.

Justin: Do you TikTok?

Drew: I do not okay. I am a voyeurisc TikTok observer.

Justin: I have it. I've gotten on it a few times. Have you ever heard of Gary Vaynerchuk?

Drew: Yes.

Justin: Okay. I was at some conference. He spoke and he starts talking about TikTok. I had never even heard of it. I opened it and now I've realized, I don't know. You swipe one way and you favorite them. You swipe another way you get a new video. I don't really understand the process so I think I've favorited a lot.

Drew: There's like a 4UChannel and then a following channel or something like that. MOVE has to TikTok channel and so we're building content for that.

Justin: Okay. Well, Gary Vaynerchuk said, even lawyers should have one and I don't know how that would work.

Drew: If you want to talk to under 21-year olds, that's where you do it at.

Justin: I don't know if the wife would be real jazzed about me marketing under 21-year olds, or the law, for that matter. Outside of the pandemic, take that veil away right now. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges facing San Antonio?

Drew: I think that the two biggest challenges facing San Antonio right now are equity and poverty and that's only been elevated from the market.

Justin: What do you mean by equity?

Drew: The fact that there's such like we're the most economically segregated city in the United States. If you grow up in the neighborhood that I live in right now, versus if you grow up, say 15 miles to the north of here there's essentially a 15 to 20-year life [unintelligible 00:09:03]

Justin: Or one mile to the east of here.

Drew: Yes.

Justin: Or one mile to the west of here.

Drew: I think that we can do more as a city to address that and poverty is linked in with that. I think that we can do a lot to address that and that has been exasperated by this moment.

Justin: Mayor Nirenberg made a good point when he was on. We were talking about the opportunities of the pandemic. One of the things he brought up was that it is going to give the city an opportunity to rewrite our rulebook because it has highlighted those problems, but it has also put so many people in the pot that they thought they were not in. Hopefully it'll allow attitudes to change and therefore policy to change.

Drew: Yes, absolutely. If it happens to you or somebody that you know and love, it changes that perspective.

Justin: Favorite Fiesta event.

Drew: I'm going to be super basic and say Battle The Flowers because typically-

Justin: It's the first so far.

Drew: Yes. For me, I typically work most of Fiesta, or I do fundraising events or that kind of stuff. Battle of the Flowers is the first morning off that I have and I take my kids to the parade and that kind of stuff.

Justin: Have you ever done pooch parade?

Drew: No, but I have friends who actually have had dogs that have won or have placed in it.

Justin: Anyone can have their dog in it, by the way. If you've got a friend who's like, "My dog was in it," that just means they walked in the parade.

Drew: They just walked down. Okay, great.

Justin: It's a cool event. A morning event, cool event, kid-friendly.

Drew: My dog is not capable of that. She's a very good dog, but not to the quality of the pooch parade yet.

Justin: Mine probably wouldn't do well because he's just going to bark at all the dogs. He's a good-looking dog so he could probably win it. A lot of what I'll do is voter registration. You do not have a voter registration background as a human being. I mean, you went to Culinary Institute, you did wine, and then you had this circuitous path to get there. Once you got into voter registration and voter engagement, what has been one of the more surprising demographic groupings or behaviors that you have seen that you thought, "Wow, I would have never expected this?"

Drew: That's a good question. I think that the biggest misconception that I hear all the time is that young people don't care about this. They will tell me that I'm talking to a very thin group of people and that's not necessarily the case at all. We see that, if we engage them, tell them why their vote matters, that kind of stuff, we can move them from unregistered voter to registered voter to active.

Justin: What's the harder thing there? Moving them to a registered voter or moving them from registered voter to someone who actually votes? I would think the latter.

Drew: Yes, it is. For the most part, it takes only a couple of minutes to get registered. In this moment, with COVID-19, it takes much, much longer, because we can't actually see people. If it was normal times, I could register you in a couple minutes. It really does take some significant work to get a registered voter to the polls. The average at least remove and most youth organizations is somewhere between six and eight touches and that includes text message, phone call, door notch, potential like maildrop, that kind of stuff.

Justin: It's just such a strange dichotomy because the passion level among those age groups is so high up there, going to the polls is so low, and then you take the maybe elderly, who's going to the poll is very high, but their passion levels way less. It's just a strange dichotomy in that world.

Drew: It's really like a habit is what it is. Voting itself is a habit. It's like going to the gym. That's the way I see established elderly voters as they've been going to the gym for weeks and weeks and weeks and then they just go do it. It might not be like, "Oh, my God, I've got to go to the gym." It's like, "I'm just going to the gym because this is what I do." Then the new voter is the folks that are like, "We're trying to get to go the gym twice this week." What we really do is focus on vote three times, and then studies show that that person is almost a lifelong voter. We've got to get them to vote in a city election, a state election, and a federal election, like back to back to back.

Justin: All right. That's what we're going to talk about for a little bit and then, as we get close to running out of time, I'm going to talk to you about bagpipes because it's my show and I think it's interesting. What is MOVE and how is MOVE different than thrive and some of these other voter registration groups?

Drew: That's a great question. MOVE is an acronym and most people don't realize that. It stands for mobilize, organize, vote, and empower. Even though we're one of the largest youth organizing groups and youth voter registration groups in the nation now, it was started by these seven students at the University of Texas at San Antonio. We're homegrown.

Justin: Are they still involved?

Drew: Yes, our advocacy manager, Alex Bernal is one of the founders. It's one of those things of like these students came together in 2013, and said, "How can we get more involved, especially in city politics, but how can we get more involved, to get more of our peers voting, that kind of stuff?" They decided, "We're going to form the student organization at UTSA called mobilize, organize, vote, empower. They formed it and they were like, "We're going to register people to vote or young people. We're going to teach them why voting matters and link issues that they care about to voting.

Then we're going to do the most crazy visible things we can possibly do to make voting fun, engaging, cool. They registered 1000 people in 60 days at UTSA. Over the course of that 2013 City Election is when they really worked out a lot of the early model on dressing in banana suits and putting our robot-like cardboard costumes on and throwing parties at the polls and things like that. We were like, "We are going to make voting fun and engaging for young people and not just this top-down narrative of something you got to do.

The one thing that we have learned is that it's your civic duty narrative is actually detrimental to voter turnout for young people.

Justin: Young people being 35 and younger.

Drew: Yes, I would say 35 or younger. We deal with that entire spectrum of young people.

Justin: It's nonpartisan?

Drew: Nonpartisan, yes.

Justin: Okay. I'd ask but I'm going to go back to it. How do you all separate yourself? How are you different than some of the other young person voter registration groups that are in Texas?

Drew: We're youth-lead. We're hyper grassroots. We believe that young people are powerful, and we believe that they can make a massive difference in essentially, all levels of government. We're really working with new, first, second, third-time voters and the best way to show that that power is by getting them involved at the city level or regional level and showing them that they can have a voice. If they show up to County Commissioners Court of Bexar County, most likely, they will be like, if we can mobilize 15 people on an issue there, that is a giant like turnout for Bexar County Commissioners court because your average large groups are not paying attention to that hyper level local.

Justin: If you're nonpartisan, how do you all decide what specific issues you can and cannot get involved in?

Drew: That's a great question. Nonpartisan, to us, means independent so we don't endorse parties. We don't endorse candidates, that kind of thing. We do work on issues. We identify those city by city that we work in. When I joined MOVE, it was just in San Antonio. I joined in 2016. We were moved to San Antonio at that point, we're in about 10 campuses. In early 2018, we began growing. We went to Laredo, and then to Seguin and San Marcos, and Austin. Then, in 2019, we went to Dallas and Houston. We're now in seven cities, 55 campuses. We've got six field organizers that are doing this work day in and day out with advocacy folks as...

Mayor Ron Nirenberg, San Antonio's Elected Leader

Justin Hill — Thu, 14 May 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Ron Nirenberg is serving his second term as San Antonio's mayor. During his second term, he is leading the city through the COVID-19 pandemic and related damage. Ron joins us to discuss the state of the city, moving forward, and some of the things he loves about San Antonio. He also discusses how he had a short affair with electronica music.

Transcript:

All right. Welcome to this episode of The Alamo Hour. Today's guest needs little introduction Mayor Nirenberg joins us. He was District 8 city councilman. He's been elected to two terms in office as our mayor. He's currently guiding our city through what has to be unprecedented strain economically and just generally for all the citizenry. I met Ron in 2015 when he was a city councilman, his mutual friend introduced us, I asked him to come on to the show whenever we started then the pandemic happened. I've pestered him for a while to come on so, Ron, thank you so much for coming on and doing this.

Ron Nirenberg: Thanks for having me, Justin, I'm excited to be here.

Justin: The goal of our show is to give a little bit of color to the people that are making decisions and doing fun things and have passions about our city. I don't think you can be much more passionate about the city than being serving as the mayor. Everybody has to go through a top 10 I'm going to go through that with you just some general questions about who you are, bounce around when and why did you end up moving to San Antonio?

Ron: Yes, sure. Well, so thank you for having me, it's been a while since I saw you so-

Justin: I know,

Ron: -this will have to suffice for now. Now I grew up just north of here in Austin, Texas. I was actually born on the East Coast in Boston. We moved to Austin, Texas in 1980, my dad's job moved us down there. I loved Austin in the '80s growing up there a residential neighborhood-friendly type of community. I was about to go back to the East Coast for school and my dad convinced me to come down to San Antonio to check out some schools and I went down to Trinity and I fell in love with it. I decided to enroll at Trinity and after four years at Trinity, I fell in love with San Antonio. It was in the mid-90s.

San Antonio was coming into its own at that point. I remember that Mayor Peak was in office towards the end, and he had a great vision for the city, embracing green spaces, building an urban environment, and embracing all the cultural assets of the city. That's the San Antonio that I grew up with, for lack of a better phrase and I went away for graduate school and met my wife and we decided we're going to plant our roots in San Antonio we've been here ever since.

Justin: We're happy to have you. I'm happy to have you.

Ron: Thanks.

Justin: You're very prominent on social media so I follow everything you're doing and this is a tough time to have a light-hearted conversation, but I want to ask about some things you're not covering. In our house, we are trying to support a bunch of our local restaurants and do things that probably is not the most economical thing to do at this time, but we know our friends need it. Any places you're frequenting eating out are you trying to spread the love or ya'll cooking at home? What are y'all doing?

Ron: All of the above. Erika, my wife bears the brunt of the burden. When it comes to my son during the days at school, he's at home in school, he's in sixth grade. We try to eat together. It's amazing this pandemic has brought us closer together in many ways, the community. Certainly, we have regular meal times now which is strange but we try to pick up food from as many different local restaurants as we can. Every Friday, Erika goes and gets a ton of dishes from Clementine which is really close to Northwest military.

For Mother's Day, I picked up a meal kit that Southerleigh was doing so we're really trying to support local as much as we can. Of course, all the other meals were home cooking.

Justin: Yes, I was just looking at Clementine's thing yesterday but I-

Ron: Great place.

Justin: -prefer burgers so I'll do Clementine later. You always hear the phrase that sometimes people are thrust into leadership roles or these things are thrust upon you. You're in a leadership role in our city and you're in a guiding tire guiding our city through a very tough time. Are there any sort of leadership styles or figures you've looked upon and you thought that's the type of leader I want to be, that's who I want to emulate when I lead people in a tough time?

Ron: It's not anyone single person, I think everyone I've ever come in contact with and had the pleasure of being mentored by. I try to take something from them but I think the person I've gotten to know the most as a leader and emulate styles and someone who I admire very much is Mayor Hardberger. It's strange because he and I have become very good friends. He's been a mentor of mine since my political life began. It is strange because Mayor Hardberger of course, had a full legal career before he came into public office but he became known as our mayor through a time of fairly significant crisis, particularly with Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath, and how we rebuilt or helped our neighbors rebuild.

You're right and I agree with that 100% that you don't pick moments, moments pick you and if I could have the choice of things that would happen externally during my time as mayor, I certainly wouldn't have picked a pandemic but yes, you deal with that. Certainly, the lessons I've learned from Phil have helped in this time for sure.

Justin: I like you calling out Phil because Phil did the type of law that I do so he's a legend in our world as well. I ask everybody what are some of your hidden gems in our city? I've heard everything from generally the pearl to I mean very specific little restaurants or churches so what are some of your favorite little off the beaten path spots in San Antonio?

Ron: There's a lot. I had the pleasure of being a council member in District 8 for two terms. There's a place I don't think many people know very well but is an extraordinary estate and park and that's Denman Estate Park, there's a beautiful pond there. It doesn't have a natural water source it just stays full and every once in a while we have to go in as a city and fill it but it's got a Korean pavilion that was a gift to the city. Actually, when Mayor Hardberger was mayor, he established a sister city relationship with Gwangju, South Korea and part of that relationship was the gift of this Korean pavilion.

It's amazing, it's beautiful, ornate, doesn't have a single screw, It's all wood. We had the pleasure of reciprocating that gift just this past fall. It took 10 years for us to really find the perfect thing and have a local artist create a monument for them and we took it over there. That's one place--

Justin: What was it? What was the monument?

Ron: It was a monument to friendship and it was a local artist that had to be assembled it was lighted sculpture. I'll send you a photo, it's pretty amazing.

Justin: Yes, please.

Ron: Unfortunately, I had to come back early, so Councilman Kearns had to stand in the actual ceremony for me, but we finally made a trip out to South Korea and so that's one. There are so many amazing places in San Antonio because we have such a massive footprint and I find myself increasingly spending a lot of time on the south side particularly some of the ecological systems that have been restored by the river south projects, and that's amazing. Of course, we love Norteños to go and have lunch there the drive-in awesome. Yes, there's too many to list.

Justin: Sure. You've been highlight some I've never heard of, is it, Denman Park?

Ron: Denman Estate Park.

Justin: Yes, I've never heard of that so we're going to put-

Ron: You need to go, it's beautiful.

Justin: -some stuff up about that. Yes, I will of course. Other than weightlifting, what other hobbies do you have?

Ron: I love music.

Justin: Do you play it?

Ron: I used to be in a couple of bands.

Justin: What instrument?

Ron: I was not great. Out front.

Justin: [laughs] You were the singer or-

Ron: Yes, I just sang a little bit.

Justin: -did you play rhythm guitar as well or just sing?

Ron: What's that?

Justin: Did you play rhythm guitar too or did you just sing?

Ron: Yes, just vocals.

Justin: What kind of bands? Metal?

Ron: No, it was mostly classic rock and cover.

Ron: Okay.

Ron: Not great but we had fun.

Justin: All right.

Ron: I did have a band that played originals and we did our own stuff in Philly when I was there for grad school, so that's fine. I love all kinds of music and one of the things that I do every day, just to unwind is when everybody goes to sleep, I get to go out on the back porch and just put on some earphones and even if it's just 5, 10 minutes, I just kind of zone out, listen to some good music, all kinds of genres. I have a beer on occasion and just let the day escape me before we get back into it.

Justin: Anything you're listening to on repeat right now?

Ron: On the drive-in, we just noticed that, I guess because of furloughs that Siri or something, the truck we drive-in has a subscription. Because of the furloughs, they couldn't put a lot of automated DJs on. There's a Led Zeppelin station. I've strangely enough been listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin in the last couple of days.

Justin: Not strange at all. They're incredible.

Ron: You get into a phase. It's been a while since I really listened to Led Zeppelin.

Justin: I'm in a Pink Floyd phase right now.

Ron: Are you?

Justin: Yes. It's just for whatever reason.

Ron: My favorite band of all time is The Doors. I always go back to that. I've been reading that there is a strange nostalgia for old time rock and roll right now, the '50s, late '50s rock and roll, do up.

Justin: Like Elvis.

Ron: Elvis, you remember that song, Sleep Walk by Santo & Johnny?

Justin: Yes.

Ron: It was featured in La Bamba. Anyway, I found that song and I just-- You know you listen to a song you hadn't heard in a long time, but it's so familiar to you so you just end up listening to that one song for about an hour on repeat. That was one of those things. My favorite song of all time is Crimson & Clover, Tommy James, and the Shondells. That was my wedding song too, believe it or not.

Justin: All right. Well, my mom made me listen to all of that growing up, so I probably am more well versed than I should. You should listen to Orville Peck if you have not.

Ron: Orville Beck?

Justin: Orville Peck. He sounds like a mix between Elvis and old swing Western almost. It's this weird super cool sound. He's been on repeat for me lately. It's got a familiar sound even though it's new music.

Ron: You should be able to do work and read on a plane because it's a good, quiet time. Usually, I can do some reading but I'm always listening to music. It's a good relaxation time on a plane. I always discover new old things or old new things when I'm on a plane. In the fall, actually, the trip to Asia, I was starting to listen to a lot of electronica

from Canada and from Europe. There's a band called Grimes that I got into for a little while. I never thought I'd like electronica.

Justin: Yes, I know.

Ron: That had ended up getting on repeat for a while. All kinds.

Justin: You check out Orville Peck, I'll check out Grimes.

Ron: Yes, do it and let me know.

Justin: All right, no favorite Fiesta Event?

Ron: There's a few. We love PACfest at Palo Alto College.

Justin: Never been.

Ron: You got to go. Good bands, good food, good people. Also, love Taste of New Orleans, obviously. NIOSA, classic. They're all good, man.

Justin: King William Fair seems to be the runaway favorite of the show so far.

Ron: Yes. The parades are fantastic.

Justin: Fiesta Arts Fair is my favorite.

Ron: King William Fair is in a different league.

Justin: No, it's its own thing. I put up on our social that you were coming on the show and I asked people to give me questions. One of them, it was a great question is, in this very stressful time you're seeing the best come out of people, are there any stories that maybe people haven't been told of some of the best of humanity coming out the silver linings to what our city is doing right now that you can share with us? Like the guys at Folklore Coffee are doing some incredible stuff, feeding elderly people. You never even hear about that. Somebody put me on to that and I looked it up. That's a fantastic story that nobody's telling. Anything else like that?

Ron: Every day, all day every day. Something that doesn't really get told so much, when you see the iconic photos of the food bank lines. That has become one of the pictures of this pandemic is the lines of cars. What was extraordinary to me, the last couple of times I went out there, is the lines of cars are exceeded by the number of volunteers that are there. It never fails San Antonio that whenever there's a crisis, that people just come out in droves to help, whether it's our own community or it's someone else. That's pretty remarkable.

I keep seeing photos of friends children on social media, where people who work in the health care field and they have used sidewalk chalk to welcome their parents home and they're calling their parents heroes and redefining what that term means for kids growing up. My hat's off to all the teachers that are dealing with the extreme pivot that we've had to do and in school. There's just a constant source of compassion and examples of solidarity that we draw from to get us through. I think San Antonio continues to exemplify the very best of people when it comes to getting through this pandemic.

Justin: I couldn't agree more with you. The last question, then we're going to get into what's going on with the city. How many tattoos do you have?

[laughter]

Justin: Hey, the public wants to know these things.

Ron: Though it's two. One on either forearm.

Justin: The ones that have been highlighted.

Ron: It's the only ones, I promise you.

Justin: Okay. Ron, you're the mayor of the seventh-largest city in the United States. You recently were named a new deal leader. You've done great things. I love the stuff you've done with the AlamoPROMISE and transportation and addressing housing issues. How much money did you raise for the food bank on your birthday give? It kept going up and up and up and up.

Ron: I was amazed by that because I started with $1,000. I thought, "Okay, I got to get this. I can put my own end just to make sure we get there." $65,000.

Justin: I think it was 58 the last time I looked and you kept moving the goal.

Ron: I got egged on by friends who helped do that. It was pretty awesome. Another great display of support and compassion in our community.

Justin: I think it's important that people ask. There's this funny thing where you see when people ask for help, they get it in this town, but when they don't, maybe they don't, but you asked for people to support and people came out in droves, small amounts, big amounts.

Ron: That's a huge amount of food for people.

Justin: Yes, because it's what? $1 or seven meals or something like that.

Ron: That's right.

Justin: San Antonio so far, I was looking at the numbers two days ago, I don't think they've changed much. San Antonio, in terms of sickness per thousand, we have been doing better than Harris, Dallas, Terran, Travis, El Paso. Really, we've been doing a great job as a city. What are the big metrics that you're looking at as a leader of the city because you hear all kinds of stuff? They're saying, "Well, doesn't look at sickness, because that doesn't account for testing. Don't look at death, because that doesn't account for these types of injuries that are happening." What are the main metrics you guys are looking at when you're making decisions?

Ron: Well, that's a really important point to make that it's not just one [unintelligible 00:17:49] of data because I think it's a mistake to just zero in on one data point. It's all part of the picture that you have to put together. It's a bit of a puzzle. We look at obviously, the infection rate, but not just the raw number. In fact, the raw number is almost meaningless. You have to look at how fast that raw number is doubling, the doubling rate. When we started, we're at doubling the number of infections every three days. We're now at 28 days. It slowed down the doubling rate of infection.

You also look at the level of testing that you're doing per capita. I don't know what our number is, but generally, based on our peers in Texas, we are doing very, very well in terms of testing. Also, you look at your- what we've been looking at is your positivity rate. When your infection starts to slow down in terms of the doubling, you want to make sure that you're not missing things. As you increase testing, you see your doubling rate slow down. You also want to see your positivity rate go down. We started roughly around 10%, 11%. Last time we talked about it, last week, we were at about...

Javier Espinoza, Worker's Rights Advocate, Attorney, and Community Leader

Justin Hill — Mon, 11 May 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Javier Espinoza moved to San Antonio in 2007 and quickly established himself as one of the best trial lawyers in the city. In addition to that, he has taken up the admirable role of giving a voice to many of our city's forgotten workers. He joins us to discuss his passion and his plan to start a program to mentor youth that need advice and mentorship to better their lives.

Transcript: [music]

Justin Hill: Hello and bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right. Welcome to this episode of The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Javier Espinoza. Javier is a trial lawyer. He's an advocate for workers. He's a singer. I've seen him do a backflip, I think, or a front flip, I can't remember, maybe a handspring. Was it a herky? It was one of those things.

Javier Espinoza: Backflip.

[laughter]

Justin: Javier has handled all types of cases all over the state of Texas, but he's really settled into a focus on workers rights, not only in the courtroom, but he's an advocate for workers outside of the courtroom as well. He's handled some really high-profile cases here. If you Google him, you'll see that there's been a bunch of stuff that's going on in the last year or so that we're going to talk about involving him advocating for the rights of workers, not just laborers, but also people that work in government. Javier, thank you for being here.

Javier: Thank you for having me.

Justin: Yes. We did a small, little episode for my law firm earlier, so we're ready. We're warmed up. I'm going to start with some color commentary, a Top 10 list I do with other people.

Javier: We're good. How are you doing, Justin?

Justin: I'm doing great. Other than you just told me I look old before we started. What are you going to do? I need to drink more water, I think.

Javier: You look refined.

[laughter]

Justin: Yes. Is that because there's a distiller on next, I look fermented? All right. Top 10 list with Javier Espinoza. Javier, when and why did you move to San Antonio, Texas?

Javier: We moved to San Antonio, Texas in July 2007. I had been practicing in El Paso for five years prior to that. The main, main reason is because my wife wanted to go to law school and that's the deal we had made was I went to law school then she went to law school. When I moved to El Paso with the family, there was no law school in El Paso, so we had to pick a landing place. There was few options and San Antonio was definitely at the top of my list because I knew the next move was probably going to be permanent.

Justin: It wasn't where you went to law school which is in a terrible town. I'm not saying terrible law school but Lubbock is- it's not much punkin'. I was out there recently. We're all doing our part right now. Eat local, help local, support local. Are you doing any restaurants? Are you doing take out from or trying to help out or just any of that you've generally realized, "Oh, I'm frequenting this one a lot"?

Javier: We've actually been cooking at home a lot. Well, I say we, and my wife would kill me if she heard me say we. She has been cooking a lot at the house, and [crosstalk]-

Justin: You've been eating.

Javier: - cooking. Yes. I've been eating a lot. It's been tough on me.

Justin: We did Soluna to-go last night. I know that's one of her favorite restaurants.

Javier: Oh my God. We've done that. We did actually Fruteria where we did the to-go Pepino margaritas. Oh my God, that's delicious.

Justin: I've seen you there. I've seen you there having those and you've never invited me to have one with you. It's such a strange thing.

Javier: I will, but have you ever had them?

Justin: Of course, I have.

[laughter]

Justin: Of course. One of my favorite-

Javier: That is my favorite drink anywhere in the world. It's that the Pepino margaritas from Fruteria.

Justin: I've got a good story. I'll tell you afterwards about those margaritas. One funny story about the Fruteria is one of our good friends who is a lawyer in town. Her and I were going to meet and talk about some cases. She helps me on some car wreck stuff from time-to-time. I said, "Let's meet at Fruteria for lunch." She said, "Okay." She shows up, and she's frazzled, and she's sweating, and she's real stressed out.

I was like, "What is wrong?" She said, "Well, you told me to meet you at Fruteria. I Googled it and there's like 60 Fruterias in San Antonio." Then she said she found one that was close to the office then went to each of their websites, if they had websites, and found one with a menu, instead of just calling me and asking me. I thought that was pretty funny. Okay. Hidden gems in San Antonio. Anything that you really find particularly intriguing or nice in our city that you share with people that isn't the normal tourist trap?

Javier: I like Costa Pacifica a lot. That's a pretty cool restaurant. A lot of mixed Mexican style seafood.

Justin: Is it up Blanco?

Javier: It's on 1604 and by Blanco. 1604 between Stone Oak and Blanco. It's pretty good. Then on Thursday nights and Friday nights, they have live music so you sit on the patio and have a margarita, have seafood, and listen to music.

Justin: Have you ever sang?

Javier: Not there. [laughs]

Justin: Okay. Well, another time. Since you're a lawyer, I asked Mikal Watts recently, who's the best lawyer you ever saw in trial?

Javier: I ever saw in trial--

Justin: What made him good?

Javier: My old partner and mentor, Sam Legate. I tried a few cases with him. Sam has a way of connecting with juries where he doesn't shout, he doesn't get angry, he just talks to them. He would stand up there, and he would talk to them. I just really, really, really loved his style in that sense. Actually, somebody I've seen in action, Sam Legate from El Paso.

Justin: There's something to be said with just being the reasonable one.

Javier: Yes.

Justin: Yes. People forget that and think that what we do is-- I always liked Matlock. I thought Matlock had a very good affect.

Javier: Well, he's very observant, and he's very introspective. He actually taught me a lot in the sense that he says, "Don't look at the way you're looking at things. Look at the way that you believe the jury would be looking at things. Don't look at the way that an attorney living in your house looks at things. Look at the way that if your jury's a mechanic that has to go work 60, 70 hours in a garage, in the heat, whatever, think about the way they would look at this case and how do you connect to that."

Justin: That's hard to do.

Javier: It is but he was very, very good at that. That was very impressive.

Justin: There's a lawyer I like to listen to and here he says, "On my tough cases, I just have to think why am I right and why are they wrong?" He says he spends a ton of time trying to figure out that question because that's what a jury is going to try to figure out. Why are they right or why are they wrong? Part of your background is when you were in college, you worked at a rental car counter is my understanding. I know some of the things that I have done with rental cars, and they've probably been very tame. What are some of the craziest things you've seen people do to rental cars?

Javier: Well, instead of what they do to or in rental cars, let me tell you a tip on how to get a better rental car.

Justin: Okay. All right.

Javier: What I do, having been in the industry, is I always book an economy car or a compact car because that's the cheapest one. What I do is I get up to the counter and you befriend the person there. "How are you doing with things?" Or whatever. "Hey, buddy, you got a full size for another five bucks." With the way we worked is you would get a commission based on any upsells.

If you came to my counter and you were booked on a economy for 22 bucks, and I could put you into a full size for 30 bucks a day. I'm making you spend $8 more per day. If I can sell you the insurance, I get a commission off that. If I can sell you the gas, "Just bring it back empty. We'll fill it for you." All of that goes into the commission for the salesman if they're on a commission-based system which most of them are. They would rather have the extra upsell of five bucks a day than nothing. They would rather have anything you can throw at them.

Justin: Do they have free rein on what to do with the cars in the lot?

Javier: Most of them do.

Justin: Okay. All right.

Javier: That's why a lot of times, I go up and they say, "You're reserving that compact. Would like something bigger?" I'd say, "Well, do you have anything available?" They say, "What do you have in the compact?" A lot of times they don't because they've sold out all the cheapest vehicles first. "No, I'm good with what I've got." They've got to give you the free upgrade anyway. You end up in a full size for a compact price because they sold out all the compacts. We used to do that all the time.

Justin: I like how much detailed instruction we just got on how to upgrade our rental car. Hey, you said you want to make sure people leave with a useful piece of information. That's one.

Javier: Yes, for sure.

Justin: How many are you going to get? Three today?

Javier: At least three morsels of golden nuggets.

Justin: Okay. All right. That's definitely one because I'm going to use that. If you were not a lawyer, what would you be doing?

Javier: I'd be an architect probably.

Justin: Okay. All right. You have a real artistic brain.

Javier: I started as an art major, on art scholarship when I first went to community college. I thought I was going to be an artist. I've got a love of music. My brothers and I all play guitar, instruments, and stuff. We sing. We're not any good, but we do it. Well, some of my brothers are very good. I'm not very good, but we do it.

Justin: How many brothers do you have?

Javier: I have three brothers. I have an older brother and two younger brothers. All of us are musicians. When we get together, I've got a whole music room with my bass and drums and guitar. Well, not drums but a percussion.

Justin: A drum machine?

Javier: Well, it's a percussion system. You know what a cajón is? No?

[laughter]

Javier: The look in your eyes is funny.

Justin: It's a family-friendly affair here.

Javier: A cajón is just a box that you sit on and you tap it and you've got the bass and the little-- It's used a lot in Latin music. I've got that, the cajón, and I've got the little congas. I've got the bass, the guitar, everything. We think we're a band. My goal in life, from a musical aspect, is to be the guy with the band at Coasta Pacifica [laughs] when you go on Thursday then you listen.

Justin: I rarely go up that far to eat, but if you're going to be playing a cajón, I'm going to go.

Javier: Well, that's my goal as far as my music aspirations.

Justin: Well, you have a hat people can put money in?

Javier: Maybe. Depends how good we are.

Justin: All right. This is a perfect segue. Who would you compare your singing voice to?

Javier: God bless. I don't know that I can find somebody bad enough.

[laughter]

Justin: I only say this because we had a short discussion a couple weeks ago about microphones and you said, "No, I want it to record music," and so I thought, "Okay."

Javier: With computers nowadays, there's a little thing called Auto-Tune.

Justin: Yes, apparently, Post Malone is really into that.

Javier: Yes. If I sing horribly, the computer can make me sound great, but if you hear me in my living room, then I'm not going to sound very good unless we've been drinking.

Justin: In my car, I sound fantastic when the music is really loud, no one can hear me.

Javier: I find it the more I drink, the better I sound.

Justin: Yes, I think that is true. As an aside, did you watch Post Malone's Nirvana concert?

Javier: No, I did not.

Justin: He was fantastic.

Javier: Oh, yes?

Justin: Are you a Nirvana fan?

Javier: I am a Nirvana fan. I know who Post Malone is, but I'm not a huge Post Malone fan.

Justin: Yes, I'm not a Post Malone fan at all. I know who he is just because he's got a bunch of popular songs. It's fantastic. He clearly is a humongous Nirvana fan, and he tries to do justice to Nirvana's albums, and it really is good. He raised $6 million, $10 million for COVID relief or something. It was super successful. The Blink-182 drummer was the drummer on it and they played it in Zoom. It's worth the hour.

Javier: I got to go check it out.

Justin: Yes, it's worth the time.

Javier: It's probably not the type of music I normally listen to, but I got to go check it out.

Justin: I even saw some judges posting on Houston, Harris County judges posting on Facebook about how much they liked it.

Javier: Oh, wow.

Justin: Yes. What do you think the biggest challenge facing our city is?

Javier: Getting out of this, reopening the economy safely.

Justin: Outside of our current shutdown predicament.

Javier: What is our biggest? I think the digital gap which has been really, really highlighted by this COVID deal.

Justin: Exacerbated.

Javier: I'll tell you, we live on the northeast side. When my kids in second grade were turning in their homework through Google Docs, through PowerPoint presentations, how can somebody way in the south or somebody in a low-income side of town that doesn't have internet at home, doesn't have a laptop, how can they compete?

When they get through high school and they just have a really minimal understanding of the digital world, I think that is going to be the biggest game changer from a education standpoint. It's not really just going to be education, it's going to be, "Do you know digital?" Think about this. We're doing a podcast. We're just talking about your digital thing here. If you don't have a minimal understanding of the digital world, how can you even do this podcast? That's what I think the biggest challenge is in our city.

Justin: San Antonio has got the strange element of you've got the rural Southeast East Side rural, and then you've got low socio-economic that covers a large swath of the city other than maybe the pizza slice going straight north of downtown. You've got digital divide from access to internet, digital divide from access to equipment, you've got this strange thing.

Javier: I think if there's anything that we could do to make a difference, it would be to give free internet to everybody, at least, a certain amount.

Justin: Yes, and devices.

Javier: Yes.

Justin: Check out devices. Our law firms help and work with the GED program here right now. They are providing laptops to take home because they can't come into the classes. They're doing Zoom classes. They have access to refurbished laptops for 150 bucks. It's not a hurdle that makes it insurmountable for schools or non-profits to provide. It's just got to be a focus.

Javier: Yes, for sure.

Justin: Do you do any fiesta stuff, and if so, what is your favorite?

Javier: We really only do the King William Fair.

Justin: Okay. King William's winning this one by 50%.

Javier: Oh, yes? Well, I think because it's family-friendly, and probably the majority of the guests you've had have families. I'll share. When we first got here in 2007, I heard a lot about Oyster Bake. I took my, at the time I guess, she would have been seven- seven, nine, and ten-year-old to Oyster Bake thinking, "Oh, I've heard a lot about it," so we go. My wife's at St. Mary's Law School, so maybe we'll see her study there for her finals. It got crazy real quick. Like, "This is not a place for a seven, nine, and a ten-year-old." We left real quick, and that's probably wise. Ever since then, it's like, "What's family-friendly?" King William Fair has been pretty family-friendly.

Justin: Early.

Javier: Yes. We go eleven o'clock.

Justin: The Pooch Parade is family-friendly. It's people dress their dogs up in costumes and walk down the street.

Javier: Well, I'd be afraid my family would dress me up in that.

Justin: Some of the owners also dress up. Also the Arts Fair is a fantastic family-friendly. I think it's my favorite, the Arts Fair.

Javier: The Arts Fair?

Justin: Yes.

Javier: I haven't been to that one.

Justin: It's the first weekend. It's early in the day, so everybody's still excited. People aren't hung over yet. It's just a neat event. There's a big kids area where kids can go do art all day.

Javier: Well, and I'll share it with you. I have a lot of people that call me in and ask me about San Antonio. I regularly remind people. Understand, be patient with me, I've only been here 12 years. People think I've been here all my life and I...

Boyan Kalusevic, Award Winning Distiller and Early SoFlo Mover

Justin Hill — Mon, 04 May 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Boyan Kalusevic grew up spending summers in Serbia and Croatia where he learned the family tradition and process for making apricot brandy or "rakia." When he was able, he opened Dorćol Distilling + Brewing Co. with the goal to make the best fruit distillate in the United States and great beer as well. The brewery has become an anchor for the revitalization of an entire part of San Antonio. Join us to hear his stories and learn more about his products. Their current awards include: 2018 Top 100 - Best Distillery - San Antonio Express-News

2017 Best of San Antonio - SA Current

2016 Gold Medal, Best of Category - LA International Spirits Competition - 92 pts - World's highest rated brandy

2015, 2017 Best of the City - San Antonio Magazine

2014 Critics' Choice Award - Best Local Spirit or Beer - San Antonio Express-News

2014 Gold Medal - Chicago's World Spirits Championships - 90 pts; Exceptional. Highest rated American brandy of 2014.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Hello, and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

[applause]

All right, welcome to this episode of The Alamo Hour. As promised, it's going to be a good one. Boyan Kalusevic is with us. He is-- I was going to say head distiller and brewer but I don't think that's true. You're one of the distillers at Dorćol Distilling & Brewing.

Boyan Kalusevic: Correct. I'm one of the co-founders and one of the distillers.

Justin: Thank you for being here.

Boyan: Thank you for having me.

Justin: I wanted to get you on. I've met you a while back from one of your-- I feel like it would be overstretching to say a business partner, but a business partner and a friend of ours introduced us a while back. What you all do, I think is a work of passion, and I'm a sucker for that. Also, what you all have done for the part of town that you all are involved in, has really been transformational. I wanted to get you on here to talk about a whole part of town that a lot of people probably don't even know what's going on. A whole project and a passion that you're involved in that probably a lot of people don't know about as well. To start, I do a top 10 list, so I'm going to walk you through this. I did not warn you or tell you what I'm going to ask you, but it's all fun.

Boyan: Let's do it.

Justin: As we're doing this, we're enjoying some of your fruit of your loins.

Boyan: How about that?

Justin: Your Kinsman Rakia gold medal-winning--

Boyan: Multiple gold medal winners. Just let me talk about it. [laughs]

Justin: You need to update the website because I only saw one gold medal on the website.

Boyan: That was the world's highest-rated. We left America's highest-rated from a year before.

Justin: Okay, all right. You all have even been in Playboy, I think, right?

Boyan: Can you believe that?

Justin: Yes, [chuckles] well--

Boyan: It's impressive.

Justin: [chuckles] I've seen some of the things in Playboy, but you all is the best of the things I've seen in Playboy. [crosstalk] Okay, Boyan, when and why did you move to San Antonio? We're on our top 10 list now. This is a little color commentary, and then we'll get into some stuff you all are doing.

Boyan: Let's do it. Mom and dad moved me down. I was in high school and dad's job got him relocated to San Antonio.

Justin: Where'd you move from?

Boyan: Seattle.

Justin: What year did you move down?

Boyan: '98.

Justin: You've been here a while.

Boyan: A little bit.

Justin: We are currently in the time of COVID, the time when branching out is harder for us to do. We're making a conscious effort to try to do a lot of takeout and try to support some of our friends. Are there any restaurants you're currently trying to order to-go from or try to support?

Boyan: Absolutely. We'll start with the immediate neighborhood. Il Forno does an incredible pizza.

Justin: Let's limit this to 10. I feel like you're going-- [laughs]

Boyan: Hold on, that's not possible. I plead the fifth then. We got to plug everybody in that's a supportive--

Justin: Il Forno's fantastic.

Boyan: Il Forno's fantastic.

Justin: [unintelligible 00:03:08] restaurants are all incredible.

Boyan: Clementine up in Castle Hills is incredible. The guys at Outlaw Kitchen, Chef Paul does an incredible job and Peggy's awesome. You've got Cherrity Bar, you've got folks over at-- Who else am I--? Dakota East Side, that's another remodeled project on, was at Hackberry, I think-- [crosstalk]

Justin: One of your really good friends, Jody Newman, was talking about how Dakota East Side is one of her favorite places going right now.

Boyan: How about that?

Justin: Yes.

Boyan: We have something in common.

Justin: Yes. You actually just listed a bunch of places that I have not heard listed on the show. I've never been to Clementine's.

Boyan: You need to change that immediately. You're not going to get there today but you can do to-go order. They do a Feed Me, that's absolutely incredible.

Justin: I haven't been to Outlaw either.

Boyan: Oh, my God.

Justin: I know. I consider myself like a-- [crosstalk]

Boyan: It's literally down the street from here. The chef used to teach at The Culinary Institute. He does a great job.

Justin: Is it over off the strip?

Boyan: No, it's on the--

Justin: It's by the theater.

Boyan: North forest. Yes, right up from the theater.

Justin: They had something going the other day and I wanted to go but I didn't.

Boyan: Get there real quick, man.

Justin: Okay.

Boyan: Great food.

Justin: We did Soluna yesterday, we're doing SoHill tonight.

Boyan: Excellent.

Justin: We keep trying to help out.

Boyan: Don't forget to order the HighWheel that comes along with it.

Justin: Will they deliver that?

Boyan: Of course, they will.

Justin: Did you deliver any tonight with your interview?

Boyan: I didn't. I heard that it was already here. [crosstalk]

Justin: We have Kinsman here, which I purchased retail to support local.

Boyan: Excellent. Thank you. [crosstalk]

Justin: We support our local friends. Hidden gems in San Antonio. This is the off-the-wall places you tell people that are visiting San Antonio, "You got to go do this. This is not going to be in your guidebook."

Boyan: I agree.

Justin: What are some of your hidden gems?

Boyan: Wow.

Justin: Second Saturday, for sure.

Boyan: It has to be.

Justin: Even people that live here I think-- [crosstalk]

Boyan: I don't know how they don't know about it.

Justin: A lot of people don't know about it.

Boyan: It happens every Second Saturday of every month.

Justin: [laughs]

Boyan: It's an awesome little art walk. It involves a couple of square blocks on South Flores and Lone Star. There's a set of double tracks. There are probably a dozen and a half, maybe more studios, some live in spaces. There are great galleries, all artist-owned and operated, so-- [crosstalk]

Justin: I'm not going to say hit or miss but it's kind of a different mix of people every single time. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

Boyan: Indeed, yes. It depends on the opening. I think it depends on the month in the year kind of thing. Christmas is always a little bit slower, but Contemporary Art Month is every March and that's always a time to schedule a Second Saturday in the neighborhood. You got your Ruby City right up the street, out Camp Street and Flores. There's a ton of really nice stuff that's happening.

Justin: We haven't covered this. You all are on South Flores at the tracks, probably down from South Alamo, about half a mile?

Boyan: Maybe even less, yes.

Justin: That whole area has this big Second Saturday celebration. It's a party. Dorćol is the anchor to this party every single time. There's a bunch of artists that open up their shops and open up their galleries for people.

Boyan: It's a lot of fun.

Justin: That's your hidden gem.

Boyan: That's our hidden gem. We'll take it.

Justin: All right. You were very kind to open up your distillery to my law firm, one Fiesta. We shut down our office one afternoon, every Fiesta and we try to just go enjoy. We Fiesta, we eat and drink, and get to know each other.

Boyan: That's right.

Justin: You opened it up and you really showed us how it all works, and the passion about it, and how you got into it, and how it works. I consider myself kind of well read and I didn't know a lot of these things. What is the hardest part of distilling? Because I know brewing, people talk about getting in and getting all the old spent grains out and how big of a pain that is. What about distilling?

Boyan: That's a tough question.

Justin: Don't blow up.

Boyan: 10% of your job is the distilling, the 90% is attempting to run the business and clean. I think ultimately, peddling a very nichey product. We've got an ODV of a brandy of fruit distillate on the Southside of San Antonio. We obviously didn't look at demographics or attempt to figure out, does San Antonio need a $60 bottle of a fruit distillate? It turns out, like you said, in 2016, we won a double gold in LA. It was the world's highest-rated brandy. Playboy wrote about it. These are things that, how do you spread the word and get the support from the home crowd? That's probably the hardest part.

Justin: I love how I feel like we're talking on different worlds. I meant literally what's the hardest part of distilling and you talked about owning a distillery?

Boyan: Physically?

Justin: No, it's a fine answer. I asked a bad question. I should be a better lawyer.

Boyan: [laughs]

Justin: What is the moment that you knew that you all were really onto something with this Kinsman? I'm not a liquor drinker.

Boyan: I'm still trying to discover that, man. I'm still trying to discover that.

Justin: I mean, there had to be-- Was it the gold medal? Was it the Playboy? What was the moment where you're like, "Shit, man, we're onto something here."?

Boyan: It's funny. We opened Friday the 13th, December of 2013.

Justin: Okay, ominous.

Boyan: That was entirely coincidental.

Justin: Did you say December 13th?

Boyan: Yes. Friday, December 13th.

Justin: My sister's birthday.

Boyan: Aww. Make sure you bring her down for her next birthday. Hopefully, we'll be back and open.

Justin: I'll tell Natalie the party is for her.

Boyan: Entirely. It won't be our 7th anniversary. It'll be her birthday party.

Justin: 42, I don't know. I don't know how old my sister is-- [crosstalk]

Boyan: You don't ask a lady how old she is. [laughs]

Justin: I'd say. The moment you knew you all were on to something.

Boyan: The moment we knew. We opened on that Friday and a couple of days behind the bar were actually Don Marsh who's the barman and the proprietor at 1919 and Nick Kenna, who was formerly of 1919 currently over at the Blue Box group. He ended up being our first employee. We opened on that day to a great reception and a ton of folks. We looked at it and said, "Oh, my God, people are here."

When folks asked, "Is this a soft opening?" Or "When was your soft opening?" We'll say, "Well, this is it." We're 250 deep and we've got two professionals behind the bar. The next day was Second Saturday. The idea that folks actually showed up to this thing we put together was a testament, I think, to their willingness to try something new and different and us going, "Wow, people responded."

Justin: The whole time I've lived in San Antonio, which is only 12 years, at this point, I have consistently heard, "Yes, but not in San Antonio," and then it succeeds. That, "Nobody will buy that," and then it succeeds. "No one will live there," and then it succeeds. It's been this weird-- It's a city that has a hard time moving forward but when it's in, it's in.

Boyan: We're an underrated community. It doesn't help-- I've got a cellphone that's a 512 number from my college days. People always ask, "You're in San Antonio, why? It's like, "Because it's hometown," right? "Why not?" I think there's a ton of transformation, citywide that's led to this San Antonio today.

Justin: Yes, and you all are a part of it, revitalizing a part of town. We're going to talk about that some more. The next question, number six question. One thing you all do, which I think is fantastic, and I'm sure so many people appreciate it that you all don't even know, but you all have like a rotating gallery of artists that you highlight within your tasting room and your brewery every 30-- You corrected me, in a very terse way earlier, about how it rotates every 30 days. Who picks the art and what's the idea behind that?

Boyan: A ton of focus on local. I think we've had one, maybe one or two artists over the last seven years that are out of the San Antonio city limits. Curated by Nina Hassel. She's the director at the Contemporary Art Month. CAM is a big part of what we do, not just around the month of March, but which is the contemporary art month, but instead, she does an awesome job of highlighting local talent in all kinds of mediums, and we get to just kind of give up our walls and let them showcase their art.

Justin: That's great. Some of the art in our office comes from an artist that I got in contact with who was at your place.

Boyan: Awesome. [crosstalk]

Justin: I was looking at the art and found him on Facebook. I didn't go through the right channels, I'm sure and then it dawns the walls now.

Boyan: That's exciting, man. We've never made a dime off of an exhibit. We've processed everything for the artist and in the name of the artist that we're--

Justin: Very cool.

Boyan: We appreciate their participation.

Justin: Again, it just makes you so much better than our mutual friend, that's also one of the business partners of you. What--

Boyan: [laughs] We was friend loosely apparently.

Justin: [laughs] Well, he knows we love him.

Boyan: He knows. [laughs]

Justin: You're a small business owner which comes with its own set of complications. You opened a distillery at a time when that was difficult to do, it was not as accepted as it is now, and you opened in a underserved part of town. You have a unique perspective, so what do you think is maybe one of the biggest challenges facing San Antonio as we grow and we are pulled forward?

Boyan: Maybe focus is one of those things. We got to make sure we retain, if it's in a certain area of town, or a certain neighborhood, or certain projects, there's a ton of competing interests. Attention span for folks is sometimes short. Obviously, the earning potential, the employment component right now is an interesting time just because of the pandemic, but long term, if we were to focus on the infill projects that getting that downtown redeveloped, getting a little bit of that footprint, widening it out both sides of the river. You've got the projects on the--

Justin: Salado Creek helps a lot.

Boyan: The creek, right, the expansions. I think they broke down on Phase 2. Phase 2 is-- [crosstalk]

Justin: I think that's right, yes.

Boyan: I think it's going to require a lot of people coming together, the bond being successful, the projects moving forward, and some of the developments actually come into fruition.

Justin: It was funny, I had somebody on the show and I said, "What's one of the things that makes San Antonio different?" They said, "San Antonio still votes on bond projects." A lot of cities have turned against them but San Antonio still wants to spend money out of pocket to make our city better, which I think that's unique and it's great. Do you do any Fiesta stuff and how long before Dorćol has their own event?

Boyan: It takes a minute. It's a few years ago and probably would have been maybe '16, we did our damn best to participate as one of the official beers in the German [unintelligible 00:13:57], because the Kölsch is a very classic German beer from Cologne. It turns out that large distributors, one in particular that has that contract,-

Justin: They did not

Mikal Watts, Trial Lawyer, Criminal Justice Reformer and Safety Advocate

Justin Hill — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0600

On the 10th Anniversary of the BP Blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, Mikal Watts joins us to discuss a disaster that changed his life. He discusses his path working on some of the biggest cases in American history to becoming the target of a massive federal indictment. Against all advice, Mikal defended himself and beat the charges. Listen to his incredible stories.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: [unintelligible 00:00:02] Welcome to the Alamo Hour. This is Episode 11 and I've got Mikal Watts on the podcast today. Mikal is a trial lawyer over the past 25 or so years, I'm guessing now, Mikal.

Mikal: More like 30.

Justin Hill: 30. Well, you got out early. Mikal's been at the forefront in many areas of litigation on a national stage for Firestone. All the stuff you see on TV. Have you been hurt by this drug? He's been involved in a lot of those. He's really been one of the few players on a national level for a long time regarding a lot of national torts. For our city, that means a lot of things. We've got one of the biggest lawyers in America here, officing here with us protecting our rights and I wanted to get him on here to talk about a few things.

It's really important timing and I bugged him about the important timing. Atlantic monthly just did an article on Mikal. It's a 10-year anniversary of the BP blow out, which we're going to get into this, but that had so many implications on you as a human, you as a lawyer and everything else. We're going to talk about that but I wanted to get you on here to talk about being a lawyer on some of the biggest stages, to talk about being indicted by the feds, talk about what you learned in those scenarios and then what you're doing now. I always start these, a little color commentary. I didn't prompt you on this, but it's a little top 10 list I like to go through and get some of your feelings and views on San Antonio. Okay?

Mikal: All right.

Justin Hill: Thank you for being here.

Mikal: Sure.

Justin Hill: I also want to throw in, the reason I live in San Antonio is Mikal Watts. I cold called him coming out of law school and said I want a job and he gave me a job and said which city? He had six offices and I said, "You pick." He picks San Antonio so you're the reason I live here.

Mikal: Well, with a haircut like mine where you're completely bald, I needed some lawyers without here and you had a pretty good resume but man, what a great lawyer.

Justin Hill: You have matching hair now though.

Mikal: Exactly.

Justin Hill: You used to have a little.

Mikal: All I can do is just grew up the beard now and be Justin.

Justin Hill: All right. How long have you lived in San Antonio?

Mikal: Moved here in 2006 so I'm going on 15 years, 14 years.

Justin Hill: All right. I moved here in '07 and you had just moved here, you and your wife and kids and set up shop. Right now, we're in sort of COVID-19 shutdown, so it's a funny question but at our house right now, we're doing our best to support local and help some of our small businesses and help some of our small restaurants. What restaurants are you reaching out to try to help?

Mikal: It's really not restaurants. It's an epic joke in my law firm that we go to Papa Nacho's in Leon Springs four times a week because I like the margaritas and so I'm just terrified that they're going to shut down. I have lunch there every day.

Justin Hill: Are they open?

Mikal: They are open for takeout and we go in there and I ordered the same Chicken Diablo and [unintelligible 00:03:03] and soda and Frank orders some Papa Nacho's salad and a [unintelligible 00:03:09].

Justin Hill: They have margaritas to go.

Mikal: They do.

Justin Hill: Well, thanks for not bringing a jug of them down here.

Mikal: I've got many political differences with Greg Abbott, but the most brilliant thing he's ever done is when he said, "We're going to shut down, but we're going to let restaurants do their deal and by the way, you can take alcohol home from them." I was like, "We're in."

Justin Hill: That's just a mess. There's so many laws they got to jump through and they're just everybody's ignoring it, which I appreciate. I ask everybody this question. I think it's a fun question. You've got people that come to town and they say, "I'm new to San Antonio, [unintelligible 00:03:41] the river walk in the Alamo." Then I always say there's the PhD tourist places. The, hey, you've done all that, you really got to go see these hidden gems in San Antonio. For me, it's the Japanese tea garden, the rest of the missions, the Botanical garden. Those are some of those things, "Okay. You've done all the other stuff. You go check these things out." What are your hidden gems that you tell people, “Go check these things out?"

Mikal: When we moved to San Antonio, there's nothing more fun than going to have a lunch coma at some of the famous touristy spots.

Justin Hill: Sure. Mi Tierra.

Mikal: Mi Tierra. Literally we would come down here and my wife we'd get a hotel room downtown and stay on the river walk. I think we were vacationing and literally, we'd go in and have lunch and a couple of too many margaritas and sleep the afternoon away. We nicknamed it the lunch coma. I love that. I like hanging out at the Pearl. I think it's pretty cool. Then I think some of the restaurants. Some of the museums that we've got I think The Witte is a cool place to hang around.

Justin Hill: Underrated.

Mikal: Yes. I like take kids there. That's fun. Then I spent a lot of time outside the dominion where I live and so a lot of stuff at 1604 [inaudible 00:04:53] stuff in the room and then when you out there, frankly as you go West, Hill Country gets really cool in a hurry.

Justin Hill: I heard the Hill Country was Kerrville and then somebody finally took me to Rock Springs and I thought, "Wow, this is just so different."

Mikal: It's pretty funny. A couple of years ago, I'm working on these California fire cases, and an entire town burned down in 2018 and so we set up an office there to go help these people out. There was no housing and there was nowhere for my staff to stay so I bought a travel trailer. We moved it out there and of course like a dumb ass, I paid $85,000 for this travel trailer thinking everybody would live there, but there was nowhere to hook it into. There was no sewage, no electricity so it was a waste but my son has taken it over and he's in college right now, but he's living in this travel trailer.

I said, "Brandon, where are you going to stay?" He goes to, "All the travel trailers are picked out." Nothing in San Antonio and not even in Boerne so he finds this place way on the other side of Boerne and I go visit him. Real nice place, a bunch of winter Texans up there but it happens to be in Welfare up on the hill, to which my joke to Brandon, this is great, I've got a son living on welfare. It's a cool spot out there.

Justin Hill: Welfare right next to comfort, which has been fun for me.

Mikal: You've Popos one of the most fattening excellent restaurants. That's one of the special spots in San Antonio as well.

Justin Hill: I've never been to Papa Nachos either. I don't know if I'll get there in [crosstalk].

Mikal: [unintelligible 00:06:19] in Papa Nachos, the chicken fried steak at Popos, you're living large.

Justin Hill: I asked you this when I was a baby lawyer and I remember your answer, I want to ask you now. Who's the best lawyer you ever saw in trial that made you think just, wow, you're good?

Mikal: Man. I got to tell you, lots of fabulous trial lawyers hit big verdicts like that, but I think the best lawyer I've ever seen is Rusty Hardin.

Justin Hill: That's a new answer.

Mikal: Yes. My daughter, when I was going through the criminal indictment that we're going to talk about, she had a friend named Eugenio Duran, who's a kid that has clerked for me here and great friend of the family and he was tight with the Clemens boys who both played baseball at the University of Texas. One of the Clemens boys, Casey reached out to Eugenio and said, "Hey I heard what's happening to your dad. I'm the only person in America that knows what you're about to go through." They became our dear friends and they watched out for my daughter and [unintelligible 00:07:16]. The Clemens boys, I would charge through a wall for them. I think they're wonderful.

In that sense, I got to know Rusty Hardin. I think the whole world thought that Roger Clemens was crazy testifying the way that he did and that maybe he was in trouble and then one great trial lawyer and one great cross-examination completely shredded that prosecution for the farce that it was.

Justin Hill: Sure.

Mikal: I think Rusty Hardin is as good as it gets.

Justin Hill: A good friend of mine, Derek Hollingsworth, did a lot of the work on that case too. I got some of the inside track, but yes, Rusty, you have not taken up his fancy suits though.

Mikal: No. I'm not really a fancy suits kind of guy, but I'm suing Princess Cruises line over this COVID-19 thing and I've got a bunch of cases and Rusty just signed up one of the death cases and he calls me out of the blue. Of course, I just remember the exhilaration of knowing that I'm going to get to work up a case with Rusty Hardin. That's the fun thing about what I do is working up cases with great lawyers. I don't consider that a measuring stick of who's better, who's this or that but getting to work with great warriors is a thrill, and Rusty is certainly one.

Justin Hill: I will say that about you, I'm not going to say, no ego, you've got an incredible success, but you are always very happy to work with other lawyers and learn from them and I've tried to implement that in my life.

Mikal: That's why they call it practicing law. All we do is plagiarize and rip off other people's techniques.

Justin Hill: Hopefully, we can let them do it for us if we got something on us.

Mikal: I'm 30 years in and I'm still learning.

Justin Hill: Even now when I reach out to your friend Mikal, everybody helps me with whatever I need.

Mikal: Of course, they better.

Justin Hill: I know too much about you as opposed to some of my guests but things I want to ask you, this is mine, I'm going to be selfish. How does faith guide your work as an attorney and a trial lawyer? You're very faithful man and we are an industry that is too often put in a pigeonhole of being greedy or just crappy people generally is how people try to portray us. How does faith guide you? How does it affect your motivations and what do you think are the most important things that help you get through day to day as a trial lawyer with your faith?

Mikal: When I got married, I really lacked faith, but I married a woman who is incredibly faithful and my wife runs a prayer ministry for folks that have been put through trauma, I'm going to put it politely, and she steered me that way. In 1995 at Promise Keepers Rally at the Texas Stadium in Dallas where the Cowboys play accepted Jesus Christ, my Lord, and savior. It's an important part of my life. I don't judge people and I don't impose my faith on other people, but I do believe in a certain ethos. You don't cheat on your wife, you don't cheat on your partners, you don't steal, you don't lie, try to be honest. Then the other thing I would say is to who much is given, much is expected. Both back in 2008, and again this quarter. We got a lot of people here in San Antonio that are hurting through no fault of their own. I will never forget after Lehman brothers fell off in 2008, just looking at the guys that were begging on the street corners. They looked like me and you Justin. They were guys with families and kids who lost their jobs through- in that case, a bunch of criminal activity from bankers, in this case, because of a virus. I think we all as citizens of San Antonio, our first and highest obligation is to our fellow citizens. I don't know whether you saw it, but a few weeks ago Express-News had that picture of thousands of cars [crosstalk] San Antonio food bank and I've never been more motivated by a picture in my life, and so I've tried to cause all the trial lawyers to step up and to help. There were people right here in our community through no fault of their own that are going to go hungry, they're going to run out of money, they're going to run out of food, and we got to help them. That's not necessarily faith led although it's certainly indicative of what the gospel teaches us. It's damn sure something we ought to be doing.

Justin Hill: Sure. The moral compass. Whether it's faith or inherent. It's all part of [unintelligible 00:11:41].

Mikal: There's a bunch of people particularly on the south side of this town, on the east side of this town that are going to get harder, get hit harder by this thing than I am. I think you're an absolute jackass if you can't look 10 miles away and see that people are hungry, and try to do something about it.

Justin Hill: I think everybody appreciated that you made a very large donation at the food bank. We've tried to help as we can, and we're helping with giving refurbished laptops to a GED program. It transcends all things not just food. People need to be educated, and people need to be able to have something when this ends which I'm very optimistic it's going to end. [unintelligible 00:12:20] people said it's not going to end. [crosstalk]

Mikal: Of course, it's going to end at some day, but I'm really worried that A, that we're reopening to soon and we're going to have a second phase. I'm a big history buff, and I believe that we study history to avoid the mistakes of the past. If you look at what happened in 1918 with what they call the Spanish flu, which by the way didn't originate from Spain.

Justin Hill: It started in Kansas. [chuckles]

Mikal: Yes, it did start in Kansas with the United States military. The bottom line is all the military powers of World War 1 had censorship rules, so you couldn't write about anything that would reflect poorly on the military. Spain was neutral in World War 1, so its doctors were the only ones writing about the flu that was ravaging everybody, so it was nicknamed the Spanish flu. The point that I was making is, is that in the spring of 1918, of course it was a bad flu. It didn't kill everybody, but it's highly infectious, and then it mutated. Everybody took it easy, it mutated, and then by the fall when flu season started. It killed 150,000 Americans in one month. I'm very concerned that in the name of reopening the economy for either presidential aspirations, or for just economic good intentions that we're going to create a second round of this in the fall that's going to be far more damaging.

Justin Hill: I think everybody's in agreement that there is going to be multiple rounds of this. It's just how well can we manage it.

Mikal: It doesn't have to be. We got to do the right thing. I'm a huge fan of the mayor, but I personally-- I don't lobby the mayor very often. I remember about six weeks before fiesta, he still hadn't called it, and he didn't want to call it. I called him up and I said, "Mayor, you cannot take this chance." I said, "If you create this huge pandemic of people dying of coronavirus because we wanted to watch a bunch of people in a parade?" All you got to do is look what happened New Orleans. I was in New Orleans. I was supposed to try a case in early March, and I was in New Orleans the week before Mardi Gras and it had one case in the entire state. Then some dumb ass made the decision to hold Mardi Gras, and now they're the third or fourth largest state, and it's all because of that event. These people that say God will protect us and everything's great. God gives us free will, and we can make smart decisions or stupid decisions. I encourage everybody here in San Antonio and elsewhere, let's be smart about this. Let's wear the masks, let's stay isolated to the extent we can, and learn about Zoom so that you're not psychological isolated. Talk to people over the computer, but do not put yourself in a position where you're spreading this virus because you're not only affecting yourself, you're affecting all your neighbors, and your friends, and your loved ones. My biggest problem is I have a 22-year-old son that thinks he's bulletproof same way you and I did. If he goes and gets infected and brings it back around my mother who's 73. That's not good.

Justin Hill: Knock on wood, San Antonio's kept a lid on it a little bit so far, and I hope that keeps up. I had an epidemiologist on air, and she talked about the warm and cold, and does that affect. She...

Tom Kayser, Former Texas League President, Baseball Historian, and Author

Justin Hill — Wed, 22 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0600

Tom Kayser was the president of the Texas League for 25 years. The San Antonio Missions were members of the Texas League during that time. He has authored books on the Texas League and baseball's Texas history. He is revered for his success as the president and his love of the game. Listen to him share his stories and thoughts on the game that defined his life.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right, welcome to episode 10 of The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Tom Kayser. Tom is a baseball man. He was the president of the Texas League for 25 years. It's one of three double-A minor leagues. That's a yes, I got a head nod.

Tom Kayser: Sorry.

[laughter]

Justin: He wrote Baseball in The Lone Star State, the Texas Leagues greatest hits. He wrote The Texas League Almanac. In 2016, he was inducted into the Texas League Hall of Fame. We've asked him on here today to talk about Texas, Texas baseball, the Missions. The Missions were part of the Texas League and I think, Tom's got a lot to add on. Anybody who's interested in baseball, anybody who's followed the city's quest to get a baseball team and sort of the considerations there. Tom, thank you for being here.

Tom: I'm happy to do it.

Justin: I always start these with kind of a top 10 list. Get to know a little bit more about you, get to know sort of your connection to our city. You do live in San Antonio, right?

Tom: Absolutely.

Justin: How long have you lived here and sort of what part of town have you lived in?

Tom: Bought a house inside of 1604, in the East of 281 back in October of '93 and I still live in that house.

Justin: Is that right?

Tom: Yes.

Justin: A lot's changed there.

Tom: Yes. There wasn't anything on the other side of 1604. As a matter of fact, Gold Canyon wasn't even there back then. You could go across 281 on a bridge, on the Henderson Pass, it used to cross over there and can't do that anymore, but too many people.

Justin: You've been here a long time.

Tom: I have.

Justin: Straight the whole time, '93 on.

Tom: Absolutely.

Justin: We're in COVID shutdown. This is kind of a strange question, but I think it works. Any favorite place to eat right now? We're doing a bunch of takeout. We're trying to support our old favorites, but is there any spot you're going to or are you shut down?

Tom: I'm a pretty good cook, HEB basically. I buy my supplies, but we're coming out of the soup season. I'm just finishing a barley mushroom soup which is fabulous. Having had my office in my house, it's really what I tended to do is eat at home a lot. I wish I could come up with a top.

Justin: I need to learn.

Tom: Pericos on Saturday morning on 1604 because we've had a group, go on a breakfast on Saturday for tacos forever.

Justin: That's great.

Tom: It's down to a very slimmed-down group of four.

Justin: Right now?

Tom: No. We really miss it too, boy.

Justin: We'll be there again soon. I had Commissioner [unintelligible 00:03:13] here and I said, we'll get back to normal soon and he was not very encouraging to my optimism. I'm hoping he's wrong because I think we all need to. You've lived here long enough and you have been involved in baseball on the side of town that I really haven't spent much time where the Missions play in that part of town. Are there any things in San Antonio that you think are hidden gems, is what I call them? You've got somebody coming into town and you go, ''Yes, but this isn't in the guidebook, you really need to go see this or do this thing.''

Tom: I tend to take people to the Pearl for sure, but there are so many things that are on the top 10 that it's like, if you don't do those things, you really haven't seen San Antonio.

Justin: That's right.

Tom: Walking around downtown to going to the cathedral. I don't think enough people go to the cathedral downtown.

Justin: The Missions to me like the other missions. Those are beautiful.

Tom: Absolutely. I have done that where I put people on a car and we'll just do mission, drive from mission to mission. Things that are Hill country kind of stuff that you take people up and I drive up to 81.

Justin: Day trips.

Tom: I go see place like comfort or certainly, Blanco and see the courthouse there.

Justin: Blanco has gotten a lot better. It's now become kind of shi-shi. It's not spread Hertzberg but it's a lot more attractive to go visit.

Tom: As far as San Antonio, again, when you've got people coming in for a short period of time, it's tough for little jam.

Justin: That's right.

Tom: Now you go to the [unintelligible 00:04:50], you walk around the riverwalk. I think that when you take them to The Alamo and their first response is, ''I didn't realize it was so small.''

Justin: That's right.

[laughter]

Tom: Back then it was lots more stuff here. It's sort of been whittled down over here.

Justin: It's not the grand size of it. It's the import of what happened. What are you doing with your time? You're retired?

Tom: I am.

Justin: What do you do? You cook, obviously. What else do you do to stay busy?

Tom: Right now, it's a challenge. Lots of more reading, my garden is in good a shape as it's ever been. It's almost daily go out and prune and pluck, and get the dead stuff out of there.

Justin: What are you reading?

Tom: Oh boy, I'm an eclectic reader. I love history. I just got done with a Walter Mosley book. He's one of the great writers, one of the great wordsmiths. People don't know Walter Mosley.

Justin: I don't know him.

Tom: He's just magical.

Justin: Nonfiction, fiction?

Tom: It's fiction. Easy Rawlins was his detective, Devil in a Blue Dress. He did a whole series of that. He writes from the black perspective and his protagonists and genres are almost entirely African American, but he's use of the language is spectacular.

Justin: It's a lost art.

Tom: My guilty pleasure is a British Naval Swashbucklers and I just heard a guy read one of a series by an author named Michael Aye, A-Y-E. Smart and Stable Genius. I just read that and I think my hair is starting going to curl.

[laughter]

Justin: We'll leave that there because this could go in many directions.

Tom: Now I'm reading Longitude.

Justin: What's that one?

Tom: That's the discovery of- see where the chronometer is that would help mariners establish exactly where they're located. The story of how, who it was and how it happened. I'm just starting that.

Justin: It seems very dense.

Tom: No, it's very thin, but it's recommended. I've read-- Somebody recommended it and said, it's a great read.

Justin: We got more questions for your episode than anybody so far, which I didn't realize. People that are baseball fans. I have a fair-weather group, the people that are into it.

One of the questions I've incorporated into this is, who are the highest-profile players that came through the Texas League while you were there? They specifically said, not the ones coming through injury or out of retirement.

Tom: Very first year, Mike Piazza was here in San Antonio.

Justin: I didn't know that.

Tom: He was only in the Texas League for something like 30 some days because he just tore it up. I never saw him play in the Texas League. Back in 1992, my offices were still in Illinois. I ran the Texas League from Rockford, Illinois for two seasons until I sold my condo and eventually buy my house here. Mike Trout, I can remember, what a nice young kid.

Justin: Mike Trout came through the Texas League?

Tom: He was at Arkansas for an entire season. I can remember Adrian Bell Trey was 18-year-old [unintelligible 00:08:34] coming up through the Dodgers System. Dodgers have a tendency or did then to over-promote, not over-promote in terms of what league they were going to go to, but build somebody up as a trade value kind of thing. It's like I've heard this before.

He stepped into the box for his first double-A at [unintelligible 00:09:02]. He didn't even see a pitch and my eyes are bulging because of the way he approached the plate and got ready for that first at [unintelligible 00:09:11]. He looked like a 10-year veteran. He was like 18. Oh, golly, there's so many. Bobby Abreu came through this league, Berkman, Korea.

Justin: Full seasons for a lot of these guys.

Tom: There were so many Houston guys or St. Louis. J.D Drew came through here and the list is almost endless. Those are guys that come to mind immediately.

Justin: Was Mike Trout just knocking the skin [crosstalk]?

Tom: He was like a Mickey Mantle.

Justin: He's a freak.

Tom: You couldn't hit a ball over his head. He just looked so good. I don't think he was 20. He was 19, 20 years old when he came through the Texas League.

Justin: I watch videos of him playing in high school.

Tom: Yes. You see these guys, it's like how did he last until late first round? Which I think he was 24, 28 somewhere--

Justin: I didn't know that.

Tom: Yes. It's because he was from New Jersey and who comes out of New Jersey and they have a short season in terms of the period of when high schools can play where you're not dodging snowstorms in April and just good scouting. Every year it seemed like there was somebody. Felix Hernandez, King Felix who came through here later traded or he was with Seattle. He was a great starting pitcher for so long.

Justin: Trout signed the biggest contract in history and he came through so it's hard to talk that.

Tom: Yes. He was here almost the entire season, if not the entire season.

Justin: Did he come through and play in San Antonio at any point?

Tom: Absolutely. He did it only twice because of the way the Texas League schedule you'd have seen maybe five games and each half, but he was here.

Justin: Wow. Being able to see him at a double-A would be a cool thing to say you've seen and he did.

Tom: It was, It was cool.

Justin: You're a historian. You're obviously a fan of sport. Do you have a team that you follow? Like your go-to Cowboys fan or whatever it is?

Tom: Yes, Pirates.

Justin: All right.

Tom: I wasn't a Pirate fan. I was a Dodger fan growing up, then a Cub fan later because my first game I ever saw was in the Coliseum in LA and then we moved back to Chicago and that was the Ernie Banks, Ron Santo bunch, and that was fun to be able to just hop on a train and go to Wrigley Field. When I went to school, I was in a small school in downtown Pittsburgh and, boy, did I take a ribbing because the pirates own the Cubs. The Willie Stargell bunch. Then it was ironic then I went from owning a minor league baseball team to going to Pittsburgh as the assistant minor league director. I still bleed black and gold. It's a long-suffering.

[laughter]

Justin: It's great to say you got to work for him too. Who gets to do that?

Tom: Yes, exactly.

Justin: Are the balls juiced?

Tom: I think they must have had something going on because I just read an article-- You had all these home runs last season and then in the playoffs, it seemed like the long balls took a drop. Just recently, it was discovered that they used some baseballs from 2018 in the playoffs.

Justin: Is that right?

Tom: Yes.

Justin: I didn't know that.

Tom: That explains the difference in productivity, apparently. People were saying, "There it is. The homeboy--" Nobody said, ''[unintelligible 00:13:30] during the season. What's going on?" It's like, "Where did you find?" It's not like the Texas League where they call Tom up and say, ''Tom, do you have any spare baseballs?'' I always had about 10 or 20 dozen in my garage because the companies-- Rawlings would send each league 10 dozen balls at the start of the season for special events. I just kept them there for emergencies. There were times when it's like a shipment didn't arrive and we need balls and it's like, "I'll get them." I will tend to suffice often, it'd be beautiful.

Justin: All of you have been using the same balls in the Texas League this past season as major leagues?

Tom: It's a different quality. I can't tell you what the difference is, whether it's the yarn, whether the way it's sewn or, whatever it is. The major league ball had a different quality now. Beginning I think in 19, triple-A and double-A were using the same ball as Major League Baseball, but it wasn't happening when I was president.

Justin: Did you ever look or do you know whether their home-run numbers went up like major leagues?

Tom: I don't. Once I retired, I wasn't following it quite so strictly. I would see things. Having said that, Tulsa during the playoffs, set an all-time Texas League record by hitting nine home-runs in a playoff game. One might surmise that- [laughs]

Justin: That something was going on.

Tom: Yes, exactly.

Justin: What's the biggest changes you've seen to the city since you moved here in '93?

Tom: Well, certainly population density when I moved here was below 800,000. Now we're almost two million if not over to two million. Where I live is 23.4 miles from Wolff Stadium and it used to take me maybe 20 minutes. [laughs]

Justin: [unintelligible 00:15:32]

Tom: Yes. Toward the end, it was like there were days when it could be 45. 281 was all hung up or whatever.

Justin: When you were the president was Wolff Stadium where your office was or was it at your house?

Tom: No, no, I had my office in my house. Which was good practice we're going through now.

Justin: Did you convince the league to let you move-- What brought you to San Antonio?

Tom: They gave me the option to choose any city in the territory justified. I could have moved to Dallas if I could have justified it. I wanted to be in a city where there was a team. Why wouldn't you want to be somewhere where you could easily go to a ballgame when they're home? I looked at Little Rock, I looked at Tulsa, I looked to San Antonio and then I was like, "There really isn't a choice." If I were married, I might have gone to Tulsa and had kids but I didn't.

Arkansas, Little Rock was a surprising possibility. My very best friend lived there. He was the operator of the Arkansas Travelers, the legendary Bill Valentine. I told somebody if I moved a Little Rock, I will weigh 300 pounds within two years because we'll go out eating and drinking after every doggone ballgame, and he's an epicure and a wine guy. I wouldn't be sitting here. I'd be dead.

Justin: We've got to know our limitations.

Tom: San Antonio was it, and it was a great choice.

Justin: You loved it?

Tom: Yes.

Justin: Let's just get started. I had no real understanding as to what the Texas League was, the history of it. If somebody said, "What's the Texas League?" What do you tell them?

Tom: One of the longest, most-- Maybe the second most storied minor league in the entire system behind the international league, which I think came into being in the late 1870s. The Texas League was first formed in 1888. While it wasn't continuous until the early part of the 20th century. It was a big deal in Texas from the very beginning. It had its ups and downs and seasons when it started and didn't complete. Great players have been playing in the Texas League since the very beginning. I was looking at a year to remind myself, Tris Speaker, one of the greatest ballplayers in the early part of the 20th century, won a batting title at Houston in 1907, hall of famer, right up to guys like Ron Santo, Willie McCovey, Joe Morgan, all played in the Texas League.

Justin: Roberto Alomar.

Tom: Yes. Brooks Robinson. It is in both legend and fact. It's a well-known league for developing players and the legend comes in with, of course, everybody knows the term Texas leaguer.

Justin: That was one of the questions I had been told to ask you. What is the origin and what is a Texas leaguer?

Tom: I'll give you what I think it is and I'll give you what is probably the neatest answer. What I think it is, is back in those days in the early part of baseball, it was not uncommon for players to go from any level to the big leagues. Back then, the Texas League was in A-Level, it might even have been a B classification. Because there were no farm systems, you had scouts for every major league team or networks of people that they would talk to and they would-- It's like see this hill guy down in Fort Worth, if you need somebody, he deserves a shot.

What I think happened is you'd get somebody going up to the big leagues and he shoot a flare just over second base out of the reach of the infielder and that was derisively called a Texas League hit. The dying quail, the flare, and that probably has the best provenance too. It makes sense. Now the one that I liked the best was the story of a couple of Cowboys were at a Fort Worth ballgame and one says to the other, "I bet you can't shoot that ball out of the air." And the other old boys said, "I'll bet you I can," and here comes a fly ball and Cowboy shoots the ball right out of the air. Ball drops dead as a doorknob behind second base and that was a Texas League. I think that that's rather unlikely but who knows, it might've happened.

Justin: The person who asked me said that they had heard that it was because the lines used to be so long in Texas League games and the fence was so far back that the outfielders played further back, but he said," I don't even know where I heard that. I just heard that once."

Tom: Probably that is true but I think it's much more to do with, we kit just out of the reach of the infielders.

Justin: Okay. The Texas League, when I looked it up and I was trying to do some research, there's zero chance I'll be able to get through even a small amount, but it looks like almost every team of any population in Texas at some point had a team. Now it's all double-A teams and it seems to be much more, I'm not going to say corporate, but it looks like back in the olden days or the older days, it was a local Texas League and everybody had teams, is that true?

Tom: Yes. It even amazed me when I was writing those teams down because it's like, "I'll never remember them all." It's hard to imagine today that a place like Temple or Greenville or Cleburne or Corsicana or Paris, Texacano, Sherman, all of these teams were regularly appearing from 1888 until about 1910.

Again, it really isn't a whole lot different than today. It's like follow the money. These were big cotton towns or oil towns or railheads, where people were passing through or there was money banking, whatever. That's what happened back then. A banker's son would be enamored with baseball and he'd convince his father to buy the team in [unintelligible 00:22:42] and take it to Greenville or wherever.

Those kinds of things happened, or they were failing, the team wasn't doing well. They were not drawing any people and they up stakes and move to the next town over and get some fresh cash. Those things were not uncommon even into the early '60s when baseball was in a trough where you had Rio Grande Valley or Victoria moving and going to somewhere in Oklahoma and then Rio Grande Valley two weeks later going into...

Dr. Curtis Crane, Transgender Surgery Expert and Advocate for his Patients

Justin Hill — Fri, 17 Apr 2020 09:30:00 -0600

Dr. Curtis Crane is a fellowship trained reconstructive urologist, Board-certified plastic surgeon and one of the most sought after surgeons and experts in the area of gender confirmation surgeries. With offices in Austin and San Francisco, his wait-list is a testament to his skill. He joins The Alamo Hour to talk about his time in San Antonio and the misconceptions and misinformation surrounding his practice area.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to this episode of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Dr. Curtis Crane of Crane Center in Austin and San Francisco, right?

Dr. Curtis Crane: Correct.

Justin: Dr. Crane is a board certified plastic surgeon, he's fellowship-trained in reconstructive urology, as well as transgender surgery. Did I get that correct?

Dr. Curtis: That seems absolutely, correct.

Justin: All right. He's one of the most sought after experts in the United States, and likely the world on issues regarding transgender surgery and transgender issues. He has a really robust practice in Austin. He's got a long wait list for people to get his services. How many doctors do you have working under you, Dr. Crane?

Dr. Curtis: Let's see, at this point, five and then October it'll be six.

Justin: Where are you all located in Austin?

Dr. Curtis: We're at 5656 Bee Cave Rd, right next to Bee Cave in 360.

Justin: Pretty far out there off Bee Cave?

Dr. Curtis: Yes, it's probably. I live downtown, it takes me a little less than 15 minutes to go from downtown to here. It's always reverse traffic from downtown out, so it's not too bad.

Justin: Not a lot of people have that, live downtown, drive out and then come back when you come back. It's good.

Dr. Curtis: Everyone should, it's a lot of fun.

Justin: It's good life. We got Dr. Crane on here today to talk about a few things, mostly it's fascinating what you do in the realms of transgender surgery. You and I met probably, I can think back by a few-- Probably seven years ago, eight years ago probably?

Dr. Curtis: I think it was like 2010, 2011.

Justin: Yes, it had to be. We met and became good friends. It's always been fascinating hanging out with you because you're real passionate about what you do, but you also do something that is very out of the norm for everybody.

Dr. Curtis: Well, thank you. Yes, it definitely keeps life interesting.

Justin: I'm sure. You have a San Antonio connection, our show is San Antonio based. You were here for three years?

Dr. Curtis: I was from '09 to '12.

Justin: All right. With all my guests, I do a top 10 list. I'm going to walk through, it's just a little color commentary on who you are and your relationship to our city. You've answered the first one, how long you lived here? Three years. From here you went off to San Francisco though, right?

Dr. Curtis: Let's see. Actually, I went to Europe for a fellowship and lived in Belgium, Amsterdam and Belgrade, Serbia. Then I moved to Alaska for three months, and then I moved to San Francisco.

Justin: That's right, you were in Alaska, I remember, that [chuckles] is a strange part of life. Okay. You were here for three years, the city has changed so much in the time that you've been here, but when you were here, what were your favorite spots in town? Bars, restaurants, whatever.

Dr. Curtis: Well, I'll tell you, I lived downtown at the Vistana and I lived in that tower at the top with two other guys, and my favorite place was our place and our parties. [chuckles] Were you at the party, when we had a bouncy house on the bottom floor and people were jumping off the balcony on the second floor inside to the bouncy house on the first floor?

Justin: I was a very early participant, and nobody was trying to paralyze themselves whenever I left, but funny story, I had a deposition of a surgeon here in town and somehow or another your name got brought up. He told me some story about how you walked him through a circumcision over the phone in Ecuador or something, it was some crazy story, but your life is surrounded by these stories since I've known you.

Then anyway, he goes on to tell me, he goes, "One time he invited me to his birthday party and he said, 'bring your kids, we're going to have a bouncy house'." He said, "I got over there," and long story short, he said it was very much not a kid friendly party and so he left. [laughs]

Dr. Curtis: Well, when the kids show up because I figure then they can be designated drivers, maybe depending on their age.

Justin: Okay. Well, I don't know how old his were, but it was funny. I don't think I've met a surgeon in town yet who has not at least known of you. So far all good stories, all stories also have a, and this one time, so you left an impression. Okay, Vistana was your favorite spot, I'm sure when you were here there were a few random spots you ran into once or twice and you thought, "Holy crap, this is really neat, I didn't know--" For me, the Japanese Tea Garden, the first time I went I thought, "How did I not know this existed?" Do you have any spots here in town you thought, "This is a really unique spot?" You've been all over the world.

Dr. Curtis: I love San Antonio. It's got so much charm and history and living right near the Alamo or what do you call it? The walk-

Justin: River Walk

Dr. Curtis: River walk, thank you, living right next to the Alamo and the River Walk. Me, you, I think George a few times, we used to go to this bar right down the street from the Vistana that was an old bank. You had to walk through this big bank-- no, there was a big bank vault door behind the bartenders

Justin: That was George's spot, Soho, right?

Dr. Curtis: Yes, it was Soho. I used to love that place. You go there and get a few Manhattans.

Justin: Martini bar is kind of their thing.

Dr. Curtis: Exactly.

Justin: Vistana now they've done this whole sort of River Walk 2.0, this lido creek build out, they spent a $1 billion. You probably saw this dirty crappy creek that had trash in it, well, now that's a whole River Walk expansion through the, I guess that would be the West side of downtown, it's beautiful. Where you were, is even nicer now than it was then.

Dr. Curtis: Well, I used to love it. I really miss it. It's a lot of fun and I'm really impressed with what San Antonio has done since then.

Justin: I'm wearing my Fiesta garb, for people that are wondering why the hell I look like this, because we would be in Fiesta right now, but COVID-19.

Dr. Curtis: I thought this attire was totally normal for you, I wasn't surprised at all. [chuckles]

Justin: Let's not pull the curtain back, I don't normally wear medals around, but maybe. What would be the correct term for your practice? How would you describe it?

Dr. Curtis: We are a surgical practice, dedicated to serving the transgender community. We perform, I think almost every surgery that a trans man or a woman, could want.

Justin: I heard in one of your videos I watched, you all don't really do elective plastic surgery, even though you're a board certified plastic surgeon. Is that fair to say?

Dr. Curtis: Yes, that's fair to say. In fact, I think the last time I did an elective general plastic surgery case was probably seven years ago.

Justin: That would have been in San Francisco then, right?

Dr. Curtis: Yes, that's right.

Justin: Next thing I wanted to ask you, what are the correct terms as we speak here, you and I talked about this a little bit on preproduction, I feel like this is one of those areas that the terminology has changed just significantly and quickly because partly the procedures have changed, and partly because the way people identify themselves have changed. Talk to me just generally, what are the terms, what are the procedures, not all of them, but just generally what are we going to be talking about here today?

Dr. Curtis: The procedures we perform?

Justin: Yes.

Dr. Curtis: I think we're most commonly known for phalloplasty, just because there's fewer people in the world that know how to do that, but phalloplasty is when you build a phallus. You've got a donor side of the forearm, the back or the thigh, then the phallus with the urethra, you can have sensation, you build a scrotum, this is for someone born with female genitalia.

Justin: Sure, and then you build them a penis.

Dr. Curtis: You build them a penis. It's like a 17 hour surgery. It's a microsurgery. Me and another microsurgeon get under an operating microscope and we sew tiny one, two millimeter blood vessels, nerves, arteries, veins together under an operating microscope using suture that you really can't even see unless you're under the microscope and we build a penis.

Justin: Phalloplasty is building a penis. I've heard you call something a vaginectomy?

Dr. Curtis: Ectomy is removable, like appendectomy you remove an appendix, so vaginectomy would be for a trans man that was born with a vagina and does not want that, so we do a vaginectomy and remove it, but then speaking to the trans female population, we do facial feminizing surgery, breast augmentation, vaginoplasty. Vaginoplasty as opposed to vaginectomy, vaginoplasty would be building a vagina.

We do for trans men, we also do chest masculinizing surgery, liposuction, so that if a trans man has a female body fat distribution, we can sculpt that into a masculinized body fat distribution. Women tend to have fat in their breasts, buttocks and thighs, men don't really have fat there, they more have, if they're obese they have a truncal obesity, it's in their trunk unless it's all in those areas.

We can sculpt, we perform chest masculinizing surgery, phalloplasty. I mentioned there's a cool procedure called metoidioplasty. It's made up, it's a Greek origin, meta means towards, oidio is male genitalia and plasty is plasty. It's towards male genitalia, metoidioplasty and that's basically releasing all the suspensory ligaments around the clitoris and making the clitoris as long as possible. Sometimes I can get it two, three inches long and then building the urethra underneath it. It ends up being a microphallus that the patient can stand to urinate through.

Justin: I saw that, you all did a question and answer recently on your Facebook page about that, and I had to look up the term. Not a term I've heard before. We're going to get into more of that. Got a few more questions. How many Burning Mans have you been to?

Dr. Curtis: Man, sore subject, it just got cancelled yesterday or two days ago, two days ago, I think. I was going to be this year and that would have been my second time back. I went the first time in 2013 and I've just been still busy, I haven't made it back since, but I always want to. It's such a great time, so many wonderful people, so much creativity and expression.

Justin: I remember your pictures. It looked very expressive. [laughs]

Dr. Curtis: You can do what you want.

Justin: I always like to tell people whenever I was younger, I grew up in the country. All the terrible things I did, I wore overalls backwards, I had a mullet. What terrible trends did you follow growing up?

Dr. Curtis: Oh, man, what terrible trends did I follow growing up? Man, compared to life now, my life as a kid was probably relatively boring. I wore parachute pants in grade school.

Justin: The MC Hammer.

Dr. Curtis: What's that?

Justin: The MC Hammer?

Dr. Curtis: No, parachute pants were before MC Hammer. This is mid-80s, where you wore these-- It was pants made out of like some kind of tent material it felt like, maybe it was waterproof.

Justin: [chuckles] I know what you're talking about.

Dr. Curtis: Back then it wasn't child abuse to leave your kid out in the rain, but this had zippers all over it. It felt like it was more Michael Jackson inspired. That was the thing. We wore parachute parents in grade school and then instead of playing-- I guess occasionally you get in a soccer game or a foursquare game out on the recess, but we would try to breakdance. [chuckles]

Justin: Did you carry a round cardboard?

Dr. Curtis: We had either a mat or one time there was cardboard. I grew up in the suburbs of Peoria, Illinois, not exactly known for its breakdancing, but we were trying to make it known. We were trying to put it on the map for breakdancing, and I never found out if we were successful. Is Peoria known for breakdancing?

Justin: Not last time I looked, but I don't know a single thing Peoria is known for.

Dr. Curtis: Me too. Maybe Richard Pryor.

Justin: Is he from there? [crosstalk]

Dr. Curtis: Yes, Jo Jo Dancer was filmed there.

Justin: I didn't know that. Was that before or after he set himself on fire?

Dr. Curtis: That was before, that was the down part of his career [crosstalk]

Justin: I would think so. When you set yourself on fire from freebasing cocaine, I hope that's not the up part of your career.

Dr. Curtis: I guess it depends how-

Justin: [chuckles] What your career is-

Dr. Curtis: [crosstalk] much of an influencer you are in these days.

Justin: There you go. What's the one thing you miss about living here?

Dr. Curtis: You.

Justin: Well, I was going to say me. I actually wrote down me. I was going to prompt you, but you beat me to it. I went between that questions--[crosstalk] What's that?

Dr. Curtis: I got that question right. What am I, one for five now?

Justin: Yes, one of eight. Were you student of the decade for University of Texas Health Science Center here, or was that your friends joking with you?

Dr. Curtis: No, I actually was. You've really done some background reasons.

Justin: I do my research and I saw on Facebook when that happened and I thought, "Is his friends just screwing with him or is that a real deal?"

Dr. Curtis: No, I got invited to their plastics graduation first in 2016. I was the speaker, the commencement speaker. I think that speech was famous for me finishing the graduation speech by saying, "Don't wait to wish upon a star, because by now that star is a million years old and dead just like your dreams," which I think is a nice thing to say too, right.

Justin: They had to know what they were doing inviting you to speak at a graduation, honestly. It's their fault. Whatever had happened, if you had taken your clothes off, it'd been their fault. Okay. What do you find to be the biggest misconception about what you do and the community of your patients?

Dr. Curtis: It's interesting, there's a lot of misconceptions. The most personal one is a friend is talking to someone else and says, "Oh, I know a transgender surgeon." They immediately assume that I'm transgender and obviously we're very supportive of the community. It's just that I'm not. I've had situations where someone meets me and they're like, "Wow, you really passed," and I'm like, "Yes, I was born male and I identify with male pronouns." Being a transgender surgeon, sometimes means that you are a transgender individual, but it doesn't have to.

Justin: Because there is a

Tommy Calvert, Precinct 4 Bexar County Commissioner and Leader in COVID-19 Response

Justin Hill — Sun, 12 Apr 2020 05:30:00 -0600

San Antonio's born and bred Precinct 4 County Commissioner Tommy Calvert discusses a lot of issues related to Bexar County's pandemic response, how we got here and how things look moving forward. He is candid, honest and open about our successes and failures. Great episode and a must listen if you live in San Antonio or the greater Bexar County.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello in Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion and a keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

[applause]

Welcome. Today's guest on The Alamo Hour for Episode 8 is Precinct 4, Commissioner Tommy Calvert. Tommy, thank you for being here.

Tommy Calvert: Super to be on with you. Congratulations on your show.

Justin: Thank you. This is our first Zoom. Hopefully, it goes well.

Tommy: We're trying to move everybody into the new century here.

[laughter]

Justin: All right. Tommy has been representing Precinct 4 since 2014. He's in his second term. He's been involved in lots of stuff including international policy, antislavery issues. He was recently named top 40 under 40 by the San Antonio Business Journal. In my opinion, I think the most impressive thing about you, Tommy, is your retail politics, what you're doing for your actual constituents is something you don't see political leaders do enough of. Hats off to you, man. Seriously, kudos. You do such a good job. I just want you to know that a lot of people notice that.

Tommy: Oh my God, thank you. I couldn't have done it without my father's teachings. He deserves the credit.

Justin: Well, hopefully, he'll listen to this.

Tommy: I'm sure he will.

Justin: [laughs] We have Tommy on here today to talk about a few things. These are one of the things that I don't know how to do. Are you hearing that, Tommy?

Tommy: I do hear that.

Justin: I don't know--

Tommy: It was like a light bulb. It's probably my father saying thank you.

Justin: [laughs] We might just be dealing with that some today since this is Zoom and I don't know how to turn off that stuff. We have Tommy on here today to talk about a few things. The elephant in the room is your work and the County's work as it relates to this pandemic response. I want to talk to you a little bit about a few things. We are going to talk about the response, the science, the expectations of people in San Antonio, what resources are available and then not gloom and doom, I want to talk to you a little bit about what's next for the County and San Antonio moving forward because this isn't a forever thing but this is a really tragic, heavy, bad thing right now. All right?

Tommy: Sure. I'm ready whenever you're ready.

Justin: All right. We've been doing this with everybody who comes on the show so far is talking a little bit about a top 10, a little color commentary and I've changed it for you a little bit because I realize you're in a different position. How are you spending your time decompressing right now?

Tommy: There's not a lot of time to decompress because we have an emergency. I'm like a general in a war zone and it's a seven-day a week and it's first thing 5:00 AM to midnight hours for us right now. I will get to work out maybe two or three times a week. I'll decompress that way. We have just family. We might have a couple tequila shots and some beer on Friday and Saturday night and just decompress as best as you can. That's not a lot. I've been to a park and walked. I've got a five-mile walk in one day but that's about it. Everything's closed. A decompression might be a drive to the store out of the house because you're in the house so much. Maybe a drive to the courthouse office or something like that. That's a way to get my mind off of things or dropping things off [crosstalk]

Justin: Not enough. No matter what. Not enough of it.

Tommy: No. I've read a little bit of the Bible from time to time. I'll read Exodus since it is Passover today. I'll read a little bit tonight. We'll have a Passover Seder tonight at my house.

Justin: Who will be there? Family?

Tommy: Yes, family and then my Jewish brother, Aaron Chasen Cohen. He's a Cohen. That's the high priest class of the Jewish faith. He will lead it. His girlfriend will be here and some other friends. We will have a Seder tonight. I'm looking forward to. I found out of my Ancestry.com I'm 1% Jewish.

Justin: Fair enough. [laughs]

Tommy: Rabbi block let me in the services and I'm loving it.

Justin: [laughs] All right. That's going to go to my last question but we're not going to skip ahead. Are you listening to any-- You're driving all around the county. I've watched your social media and your YouTube videos. Any go-to music or podcasts you've been following?

Tommy: Right now, it's really all news all the time because every hour is very different. I'm listening to a lot of news whether it's in NBPR, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, Local News. I've done a couple of music videos because of my radio station KROB but I have never collaborated with Drake until several hours ago. I was in Jose Hoffman from a typical Mexican restaurant. He had a videographer make a music video of us giving away enchilada platters to God's Plan and Drake . I've been listening to Drake's God's Plan lately.

Justin: Did Drake give you a license for this or you're just hoping for the best?

Tommy: Look, lawyer, stop your nonsense, he gave away 750 enchilada plates. That's a good deed.

Justin: I'm sure he'll let it slide.

Tommy: He said he doesn't have it and I don't condone it. Don't sue me, Drake or [unintelligible 00:05:30]Records, whoever.

Justin: Maybe that answers the next question. You had a whole video on YouTube about ordering local, buying local, help support local. What are some of the restaurants and businesses there you go that you've been going to? I'm going to get it wrong. I saw it but I can't remember the name.

Tommy: It's TexaCola. It's Southside Craft Soda. Brother Anguiano really lit a fire under my rear end. I, of course, reached out to our mutual friend Jodie Newman and Steve just to see did they have any of their restaurants open. [unintelligible 00:06:03] there aren't a whole lot but then you can always go to the Grub Hubs and things like-- I had to figure out what was open. I went down the Tito's Mexican restaurant. I've been just trying to spread the love as many places as I can, but really for my own health and just because I am in such a busy schedule where I don't necessarily have time to go out a lot of places, I've actually been cooking a lot here at the house and meal prepping. We've been doing a lot of that.

Justin: We had a group called Catalina Produce who dropped off. It had to be 10 or 15 pounds of produce, delivery and everything and we had to cook [crosstalk]. It was great.

Tommy: Yes. There's a lot of great options for folks. You've got everything from American Express with the small business centers that they offer online. We're putting some lists together on Bear County. Thanks to Brother Anguiano from Southside Craft soda raising the awareness. I'm trying to get our county institutions to do things like purchase his soda whether it's a university houses.

And we're not really operating our cafeteria very much at the courthouse right now because of the real decline in the way the courts are operating and just there's not a lot of people really. A lot of us are working from home but we're doing what we can.

Justin: We are. We're doing the same thing in my house and doing the best but it's a weird mix. You don't want too much interaction but at the same time, you want to support. We're doing that every other day. We're cooking. Every other day we're ordering out.

Tommy: Keeping it real. That's what's going on.

Justin: What is your precinct? You explained it to me one time and it's gigantic. Just give us a general geographic location.

Tommy: It's God's country and we represent-

Justin: Better be.

Tommy: -all the great things that really make up Texas. My precinct is bigger than major cities like Milwaukee. It has half a million people in it. It's downtown and the Alamo, it goes west to [unintelligible 00:07:59] and Hildebrand by Chris Madrids. It's South East Brooks City base and the Pecan Valley and Elmendorf and beyond as if you're going into the Eagle Ford Shale down 37. It's the east side and going all the way down IH-10 as if you're going to Houston. It's the northeast side. It's [unintelligible 00:08:16] and Lookout Road and Selma, Universal City, Live Oak shorts, Windcrest, Converse, Kirby, all of those northeast cities. About the 12 cities, half a million folks.

It's the most diverse precinct so we have, like I said, the pearl and we have great poverty and great opportunity as well. Of course, the new challenges of the economy coming out. I'm not sure everybody is truly pivoted to the before coronavirus and after coronavirus understanding yet but I don't think this is going to be gone any short of two years. The president's own memos indicate it's an 18-month situation and most scientists and people who deal in disease, infectious disease, recognize that the virus will probably come back in the fall again.

It could come back worse than it is now. That's what the flu and things like that do. They actually come back a second cycle after their first cycle even worse. We have to remember that this particular disease has mutated like eight or nine times. Right?

Justin: Yes, seven or eight.

Tommy: Even if we get a vaccine it may mutate in the time that the vaccine is created and then once you get the vaccine, think about how long it'll take the world to actually receive it. It'll take years. This is a life-changer. We're in a disaster economy and we're in it for years because as a guy with an economics background, there's not a lot that the government can do other than maintain basic bills. Just basically pay people's minimum sustenance because normally when you have stimulus and things like that, you can stimulate the economy, but if you literally can't get out because of a health issue of the disease to work, the only thing the federal government can do is to print money, like only, it can do states. Local entities cannot print their own money and help just maintain, I would call it a reset. It's a flatline kind of economy. I'm not sure you knew but I think--

Justin: It's a great point. Even if there's a million jobs, a million healthy people can't work in them because you can't get out of your house.

Tommy: Well, and it's worldwide.

Justin: Yes. No, that's right.

Tommy: It's all over the world.

Justin: We're going to get into this a little more in-depth, but I wanted to have you run through real quick. You've been appointed co-chair of the social services COVID-19 Community Action Working Group which apparently it looks like a mix of city and county elected officials, some citizens, but it's a pretty high powered group of people. What is the role of the Community Action Working Group?

Tommy: There's actually more community citizens on it. It's just that the elected officials are chairing it except the philanthropy committee. Social services, in particular, is really, I think the frontline of what we have to deal with. It's a broad enough subject matter talking about nonprofit social services that we can dabble into what we want, but there are other committees that are dealing with the frontline issue, which is food security or food insecurity. Let me tell you, there is a huge amount of food insecurity in San Antonio. If you look at the statistics in Texas, San Antonio of the six major cities actually is going to receive the most stimulus checks, the most qualified people because of the big cities not in terms of [crosstalk].

Justin: Per capita.

Tommy: Per capita. Because the wages are higher in other cities around the state. Our wages, you can't make more than, I think $150 or $140 or something like that. We're going to receive a lot of those checks. People are living paycheck to paycheck, and if we're at 10% unemployment now, by the time "this" clears up for a short-term in late June, mid-July, we'll probably be at 30% unemployment at that point.

We will be in depression era times and so the Social Service Committee is looking at everything from how do we get senior citizens who cannot go to a food bank distribution, who are not on a Meals on Wheels list,how do we make sure they're taken care of and the variety of needs dealing with staying aware of information because they may not be technologically savvy. Family are told, "You can't go visit them or else you might make them sick." It's some very complicated issues. How we deal with domestic violence, runaways because you and I are both getting amber alerts on our phones with children abducted.

Justin: Got one this morning.

Tommy: Exactly, I got one. We all got it. When people have to stay in domestic situations that they don't want to be in, obviously those situations happen, so domestic violence is probably going to increase 30%. What that means is human trafficking is going to increase 30% because people run away from the domestic situations and they become poached by pimps and traffickers. The organized crime networks want to focus on trafficking because they can't get some of the supplies across the border because of the closing of the transportation routes so they're going to start getting into selling of commercial sex, exploitation.

We're looking at everything from the fact that the schoolchildren in this city don't have access to internet. We have areas, I'm sure it's quite frankly, that don't have internet. I have large parts of my precinct that are rural in the east-central area and beyond that don't have a good internet connection. They're basically using satellite stuff, and it's very slow. How do you communicate with your teacher if you're poor and don't have internet? All those kinds of things are really major obstacles. What happens to the kids long-term when they don't really have the interaction with the teacher? Do schools need to be year-round? I think they do at this point.

One of the superintendents told me, "Well, we can't make school year-round because people have vacations planned." I'm thinking, I don't think he understands a lot of hotels are going to die. A lot of air routes are not going to be available. It's not going to be a lot of vacationing. People are still going to be concerned about their health in getting on a plane which is almost a sentence to get COVID-19 right now. We're told not to, so it's going to take a little while before all that gets back into motion where our plane routes have been cut in half in San Antonio.

We're looking at how do we use CPS Energy's dark fiber, fiber they're not using to be hooked up so that we have internet because we probably have-- I'm a dork that looks at spatial maps. I looked at the spatial map of 40 of the largest cities in the United States and San Antonio had the lowest internet usage. In the east, south and west sides, only 25% to 40% of the households have internet. North sides, 80%, 90%, 100% of the census tracks, so have a huge digital divide that's going to be a problem in a world where people are going on Zoom and all this other digital stuff.

There's tremendous issues before the Social Service Committee. We're prioritizing those, but at the same time, this is very important. What I'm encouraging our committee to do is we can't let the other nonprofits die. Just because we're prioritizing the stimulus funding the people feeding and sheltering, people have to go first, doesn't mean that with the increased capacity to feed, while volunteers are down to the food bank, because people are concerned about their health because there are a lot of seniors who volunteer at the food bank, and that's understandable, they should be concerned.

Why not use the workers from those other nonprofits to help and hire them from the stimulus funds to serve food or to help with the epidemiological fight or the hotlines when you want to call in and you want to get an appointment for a test and the line is busy, why not hire more people from the other nonprofits demand those lines, or the food service workers to take the food to the senior citizens as a job from the stimulus?

What I'm trying to get people to understand is, it's like a war. When we went through World War II, the men went to war and the women got into the manufacturing. They made the airplanes and the bombs and everything. I just don't hear a lot of that thinking from...

Brian Steward Bonus Episode on Texas Abortion Fight

Justin Hill — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 08:00:00 -0600

Brian Steward had to come back on the show due to the changing nature of the litigation and rulings coming out of the courts about Planned Parenthood's fight with the State of Texas.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

Okay, welcome to The Alamo Hour. This is our first attempt at a bonus episode. We have Brian Steward with us. He's rejoined us today. He will be the guest on tomorrow, which will be today's episode of The Alamo Hour, discussing Planned Parenthood's lawsuit and ongoing issues in the fight with Texas over reproductive rights and what COVID-19 means for people who are trying to exercise what has been determined to be a constitutional right to access the reproductive freedom or rights.

When he was last on the show, we discussed the course of a legal fight between the State of Texas and Planned Parenthood that centered around, as you just heard, whether or not access to abortion, abortion procedures would be outlawed during Abbott's ruling that non-essential medical procedures are put on hold during the pendency of the emergency order related to COVID-19. After his order, the next day, the Attorney General said that it includes abortion and abortion procedures. The Texas Medical Board weighed in. A lawsuit was filed. Austin Federal Judge Lee Yeakel basically said, "We're going to put that ruling on hold and allow access to reproductive rights and abortion procedures to continue until I get some evidence from you all, and we'll have a hearing--" April 13th was that, right?

Brian Steward: April 13th.

Justin Hill: Then in the meantime, that got appealed to the Fifth Circuit. As we sit here today, about 35 hours ago, I think if I'm right, somewhere around that, the Fifth Circuit weighed in. As we sit here right now, Brian, what is the status of reproductive rights in the State of Texas? What is the next step forward for Planned Parenthood or the State of Texas in this fight?

Brian Steward: I'm going to answer your question and back up a little bit. As of 2:30 this afternoon, it's Thursday, April 9th, 2020, Judge Yeakel, who's in the Austin Western District, requested a hearing with the various parties to this litigation. In that hearing, he requested information about the pending lawsuit, the pending litigation, and evidence. You did a great job of walking us through this procedure-

Justin Hill: Thank you.

Brian Steward: -and walking us through these last 30 plus days, but I want to go back through it because there are certain things that are going to be really important. There are certain things that have been clarified since the last time we met. Thank you for allowing me to come back again.

Justin Hill: It's always good to see you. We're actually just so- we're supporting local. We're drinking some local beer from a Boerne Texas Brewery. We're trying to support local as we also try to give people something to listen to that's not COVID-19. It's a heavy, heavy deal. Let's have a conversation that is not focused on that necessarily. I mean, there's hinges on that, but it's a real legal issue going on. So walk us back through and fill in the gaps that I missed.

Brian Steward: All right, so let's back up. COVID-19, we're all aware of it now. We may not have taken it as seriously as some, but certainly we're on this path, and we can walk back to March the 22nd, 2020. That's when the governor, Greg Abbott, issued Executive Order GA-09, which postponed non-essential surgeries until April the 21st, 2020 at 11:59. What is that mean? It meant that surgeries which were not considered essential under some amorphous rules were deemed to be not necessary, and as such shouldn't be performed. None of us knew what that meant.

I can tell you that these types of orders have been coming from various places across the nation. Whether it's North Carolina or Michigan, we have had these orders, and they've been issued, and we've all wondered what that meant. As a board member of Planned Parenthood, South Texas, obviously, there was some communication about that because on March the 23rd, 2020, the Attorney General for the fine State of Texas issued a press release. In his press release, he specifically mentioned abortion providers, and the fact that that was non-essential, and as such, we shouldn't be able to proceed with abortions. So elective abortions, or pre-viable fetuses in the State of Texas.

On March 25th, 2020, Texas abortion providers and a specific provider up in Dallas filed suit and sought a temporary restraining order on this executive order. This is executive order, again, GA-09. Essentially, they said that there are substantive due process issues, as well as equal protection claims, and sought to enjoin enforcement of this executive order. Also, it sought the implementation of a rule which stopped the Texas Medical Board emergency rule from implementing this order, which was important because while the order, in essence, said that there were going to be civil penalties as well as potential jail time, the most important thing for healthcare providers was the fact that under the Texas Medical Board, they were going to implement this.

That meant that various doctors might lose their license, might lose their ability. On March the 26th, 2020, after this lawsuit was filed, Judge Yeakel, who's in the Western District in Austin, gave the parties until March the 30th, 2020 to provide briefing. That was done. Briefs were exchanged on March the 20th, 2020. Judge Yeakel issued a temporary restraining order against the executive order, which was issued by, of course, Greg Abbott.

Justin Hill: What day was the TRO entered, because I've got my dates off?

Brian Steward: Sure. The TRO was entered, it was issued on March the 30th, 2020 by Judge Yeakel.

Justin Hill: You said the 20th. Sorry, that was--[crostalks] March 30th is when Yeakel entered the TRO.

Brian Steward: What the TRO said, and it was well written, and if you have the opportunity to read it, please Google it or Google Scholar it because it's well written. There's a lot of beneath the scenes that is connected to that order. But essentially what it said is, it acknowledged the healthcare emergency, obviously. It found that under the circumstances the language of GA-09, which is this executive order from Greg Abbott, it effectively banned all abortions before viability. That's important because that fits into other precedent. It fits into other cases. We're going to get to that when we get to the Fifth Circuit, but Judge Yeakel obviously sees that, and says, "Okay."

Based upon what he sees and how he interprets the briefing and how he interprets the information that was provided to him, this executive order contravenes the Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit precedent. Ultimately, he decided that this executive order cannot be enforced. This is a temporary restraining order, which means that the next part is going to be a preliminary injunction hearing. That was scheduled on April the 13th, 2020. The expectation according to the order was that we're going to hear evidence at that time on the validity of applying this executive order to specific restrictions. What that means in this fight, in this reproductive rights fight is this.

There's a difference between medication abortions with a medication called mifepristone, and surgical abortions. Surgical abortions, if you think back to Roe versus Wade and its progeny, surgical abortions are D&Cs, dilation and curettage. There were instruments are introduced. Medical abortions or simply medication. There are references in that initial opinion from Judge Yeakel which precede and pre-focus on us, on what is coming. We get that. Now, on March the 30th, 2020, the State of Texas as expected sought a writ of mandamus against the order, which means the State of Texas went to the Fifth Circuit, which is above the Western District federal district court judge level, and said, "Okay, we need an emergency stay of the TRO which Judge Yeakel had issued. We also need a temporary stay of the administrative stay from the Texas medical board, and we need for you the circuit panel, which is going to be three justices, to take in information and ultimately make some rulings with respect to this TRO."

Justin Hill: What day was that that the State of Texas asked for an emergency stay?

Brian Steward: The State of Texas asked for the emergency stay on March the 30th, 2020.

Justin Hill: So right after the TRO was entered?

Brian Steward: Absolutely.

Justin Hill: Just to get the legal ease out of it, the trial court Judge Lee Yeakel is the first level of the courts for anybody who have a dispute, they're going to file- same and except- very random exceptions, and very rare exceptions. After that, the Fifth Circuit is the next level of appeals that somebody goes to if they have an issue they want to file, and then from then on it goes to the US Supreme Court, which everybody's heard of and everybody knows what they do. The State of Texas said effectively we got a TRO, which means Judge Yeakel in Austin said, "We're not going to enforce this order just yet until I get the hearing on the 13th," right?

Brian Steward: That's right.

Justin Hill: The State of Texas said, "This is such an emergency that we can't wait 14 days that we need to have this determined now, Fifth Circuit." That's where we are now, which the Fifth Circuit is starting to weigh in. What was the process once it got to the Fifth Circuit?

Brian Steward: Sure. I think what you just pointed out is really important because mandamus, which is one of these legal terms, it really translates into something fairly important for all of us. What it means is mandamus is proper only in exceptional circumstances amounting to a judicial usurpation of power, or a clear abuse of discretion. So essentially, what the State of Texas did is they said this Western District trial court judge, Judge Yeakel, has usurped the power of the fine State of Texas. We're going to get to that when we get to the ultimate ruling from the Fifth Circuit, but essentially, it's saying that, "Judge, you did wrong, and the only way for us to figure out and change what you've done is to go to Fifth Circuit [crosstalk]"

Justin Hill: Immediately. Emergently.[crosstalk]

Brian Steward: Right, because if we don't go emergently, there are going to be problems which we cannot solve. So within this window, and again, this writ of mandamus was filed on March 30th, 2020. On March the 31st, 2020, the Fifth Circuit comprised of a panel of three temporarily stayed, which means they said, "Okay, the TRO which Judge Yeakel had issued, we're going to hold off on that, and we're going to set an expedited briefing schedule," which means they wanted additional information from both sides about this issue. Meaning they wanted information about how this truly would impact the people of the State of Texas, but also whether the rulings from Judge Yeakel were appropriate.

So briefing was exchanged, and actually things were fairly quiet. It was weird, until April the 7th, and I think it's April the 9th today, my days blend together. But on April the 7th, 2020, the Fifth Circuit granted the writ of mandamus, which again is extraordinary remedy, which says that our trial court judge, Judge Yeakel, has done some things wrong. I want to talk about the reasoning because it's important because I think it's going to predict to all of us where this thing goes. You made some mention about the United States Supreme Court, that's a possibility. But in the short-term, this goes back to the Western District and Judge Yeakel. That's really important because of his history.

Justin Hill: What I think is just so bizarre is we're in the middle of a global pandemic. We have a situation nobody's ever seen in our lifetimes in which people are told don't go to work, people are told keep your distance from other people, people are told accept losing your job, and trying to get government assistance because we're in such a terrible situation. And this microcosm of a 40-year political fight of abortion with the State of Texas and our taxpayer dollars is playing out-- Political inclinations aside, this is bizarre that we are 22 days from Abbott's order saying we have an emergency, withhold non-essential medical procedures, and we have hundreds, if not thousands of man-hours, including taxpayer dollar man-hours fighting something like this.

To me, this is politics aside, I don't think this is the best use of our state's time and money. That's for other people and voters to decide, but this is a wild ride of a lot of legal complexities and strange movement. And now we're at the Fifth Circuit when you say they stayed the TRO, just to put that in normal terms, they're saying, "We're going back to Abbott and Paxton's order. So ignore what Yeakel did, ignore what they did at the District Court, we're going back to Paxton's order of all reproductive right procedures, abortion procedures are put on hold due to COVID-19." What was the reasoning of Fifth Circuit?

Brian Steward: The reasoning of the Fifth Circuit is fascinating. I was a history major in undergrad, I still enjoy history. I can tell you that when you look at constitutional law cases, I don't even pretend to be a constitutional law scholar. When you look at constitutional law cases, you're always amazed. So here's where they went. States like the State of Texas, like North Carolina, like Michigan, have a state police power, and the state police power gives them certain rights in certain emergencies. There are things called emergency public health measures. And what the Fifth Circuit did is they went to a 1905 emergency health case, which is called Jacobson versus the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Justin Hill: You mean pre-Roe v. Wade?

Brian Steward: By at least 62 years.

Justin Hill: All right, so we went way back.

Brian Steward: Let me tell you what Jacobson was about-[crosstalk]

Justin Hill: Pre-World War I.

Brian Steward: Yes. Let me tell you what Jacobson's was about because it's really important when you think about this, and it may precede or preview some things that may be coming. What that case dealt with, and I'm going to give you the highlights because I think that's important. Here's one of the holdings from that 1905 US Supreme Court. Under the pressure of great dangers, constitutional rights may be reasonably restricted as the safety of the general public demand. That's general and that's fine, but this dealt with smallpox. It dealt with smallpox in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and what it dealt with was an individual who said, "I'm not getting the damn smallpox vaccination. I'm not doing this."

Listen, vaxxers, because this could be coming your way. What the Commonwealth said is, "No, wait, hold on. We're looking at the general well-being of the general populace, so if we want to enforce this, we're going to be able to do it because we have the state police power, and this general response is going to protect more of the people than the limited number of people who might not want to get this." The United States Supreme Court in 1905, please don't forget the 1905 part because it's important. They said, "You know, you're right. The state has certain police powers, and within the constraints of the Bill of Rights and other amendments, because remember, there are other amendments which aren't in existence at that point as you look to the '60s, we're going to permit this to take place."

That was the first punch that was thrown. It was this whole Jacobson versus Commonwealth of Massachusetts case. It's a 1905 case, which preceded much of the litigation and much of the legislation which we all deem important to our everyday lives. The second part was simply this. There was a case after Roe v. Wade called Casey. It was Planned Parenthood of I think it's Southeast-[crosstalk]

Justin Hill: Wasn't it Pennsylvania?

Brian Steward: Yes. Southeast of Pennsylvania which looked at the restrictions because, of course, Roe v. Wade said it recognized the right of privacy and the right of women to have abortion for pre-viable fetuses. Casey was the case, and which 17 years later, which essentially gave you parameters, and looked at pre-viability issues and said, "Okay, here's what the parameters are, here's what the legislation from the states can be. Here's how we can make this work." So the Fifth Circuit, when it's looking at this ruling, says, "Okay, Judge Yeakel, you failed to apply the Casey undue burden analysis. You fail to balance the executive orders temporary burdens on abortion," because remember, the executive order placed a restriction on these non-essential surgeries until April 21st at 11:19. But the fun one was this, you usurped the state's authority to craft emergency health measures, which you didn't even pretend to do.

The court then gave itself sort of a pat on the back and said, "Given the extraordinary nature of these errors, the state's critical interest in protecting public health, we find the requirements for the issuing of the writ satisfied." In other words, we need to enforce GA-09, this executive order, and these non-essential procedures need to be stopped and we need to protect the fine citizens of the state of Texas. Then there was this comment made in the ruling which is really important because it shows you how confusing all of this is. Based upon the prior ruling from Judge Yeakel, there was a telephonic...

Brian Steward, Attorney and Planned Parenthood Board Member Discusses Covid-19 Legal Issues

Justin Hill — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 04:45:00 -0600

Brian Steward joins and walks us through the fight between the State of Texas and Planned Parenthood regarding the state's attempt to ban all abortions and non-essential medical procedures during the COVID-19 shutdown. He also discusses growing up in San Antonio and his involvement with the zoo. Great discussion on some very specific COVID-19 related legal issues.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo hour discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonio and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

Hello, and welcome. Today's guest is Brian Steward. Brian is a board member of the San Antonio zoo formal board member of the San Antonio public library foundation or system. A board member of Planned Parenthood of Texas. He's a dad, he's a husband. He's a local injury lawyer and I won't hold it against him, but at one point he was a defense lawyer. For those who don't know, that means he's the guy that tries to keep people from getting justice in the courthouse, not criminal defense those guys are still good.

We've asked Brian on here today to talk about a few things, but one thing he's going to talk about is the fight with the state, between the state and Planned Parenthood. This is not a political show and it's not going to be, but it is something that's happening in the state of Texas right now where Planned Parenthood in the state of Texas are in a fight regarding medical procedures that can be performed during the coronavirus COVID-19 shutdowns.

We're going to talk to him a little bit about that. We're going to talk to him a little bit about the zoo and what's going on there. One thing he wishes I would talk to him about is Duke, he's a blue devil, but I refuse to talk about Duke, for a variety of reasons. Mostly, I could not even tell you what state they were in if I was forced to on jeopardy because I choose to not know that kind of information because Duke has no bearing on me.

Another fun fact, Brian Steward has a vanity license plate. Everybody should know about it. I think it's San Antonio, blue devil or something like that. I mean, I'm not going to give it any credit. We'll get to you, Brian. He's itching to talk. Brian, we're going to start like we started with everybody. A few questions to start top 10 questions to give some color to who you are. Do you have any pets?

Brian Steward: I have two dogs currently.

Justin: Are those your mother's dogs?

Brian: No, my mother has two puppies. She's got two chocolate labs, but we have two dogs. My wife's child and I have two dogs.

Justin: Do you also have two puppies at your house right now?

Brian: I do.

Justin: You've got two dogs and you are-- I don't know waystation for two black labs right now.

Brian: Chocolate labs, I feel like I'm a foster with benefits. I think that's how I would characterize it.

Justin: Your daughter Grace clearly thinks there's benefits involved. I saw the pictures.

Brian: My daughter, Grace, knows that those are her dogs. That's why she was able to name them. Colby, that's right. Not Colby, Colby Bryant, Steward, and Hunter Bush Steward. Good looking dog.

Justin: Is your mom going to stick to those names?

Brian: I think the dogs may have alternative names and that's okay. Like [unintelligible 00:03:06].

Justin: Well, I hope your daughter still calls them these random names years down the road as she sees them.

Brian: She will. She really doesn't care what other people think.

Justin: All right. What is your-- I hate when people ask me I've got friends that'll call and say you eat out a lot, which I don't know if it's a compliment or not, but they'll say, what's your favorite restaurant in town? That's a terrible question, but what is your favorite restaurant right now? If you were going to go eat this week, what's the spot that you're into right now?

Brian: Sure. I mean, part of that is obviously we're in different times, we're all trying to do our best to help and aid these restaurants that they're facing some dramatic and horrible times. I love going to Beto's just because I love the people, I also like going to-- I'm going to stop there.

Justin: The empanadas, isn't that what sort of thing.

Brian: It's a whole package.

Justin: I'm pretty sure I've never eaten there.

Brian: That is on you.

Justin: I mean, I've been there late at night and then like the adult kickball teams get off and they're partying their but which is an actual thing, but I've never eaten food there.

Brian: Again, I don't want to delve too deeply into your personal life, but I'm not around many adult kickball players. I'm simply out looking for a good meal.

Justin: If you go to Beto's, you are.

Brian: [unintelligible 00:04:29] we're probably gone by the time your derelicts roll in.

Justin: Do you also eat at Taco Garage a lot because it's in that corridor.

Brian: No.

Justin: You remember [unintelligible 00:04:38] you was still open?

Brian: Absolutely.

Justin: Beto's I mean, I really would. You could have given me 50 choices and I would have never thought Beto's would be your go-to spot but [unintelligible 00:04:49]. Next question, what is your hidden gem in San Antonio? I tell people, hey, San Antonio, you're coming to visit. These are great spots, but if you want a PhD in San Antonio tourism, there's a few things and probably PhD is a little over the top to say like the Japanese tea gardens, but there's a few of these great little hidden gems that I didn't know for probably at least a year or two living here that when I went to, I thought, how on earth did I not know. What's your favorite hidden gem?

Brian: My favorite hidden gem is connected to my childhood and it's the old white family home which has become a part of st Antonio city-system of parks and it's at the bottom near Salado Creek and it started out as a home where Jack White and his father, who is the mayor of San Antonio in the 50s, they had carved out about 40 to 50 acres right off Salado Creek, right North of I35.

It's a beautiful location. When we were kids, third, fourth, fifth grade the whites live there, Jack, Karen, and their children, Jack and Scott lived there. It was like being in the country, in the middle of San Antonio and at someplace I still try to go as often as possible because it reminds me of those times and it's still a beautiful, beautiful location.

Justin: What is it now?

Brian: It has become a part of the Salado Creek, Tobin run area.

Justin: It goes all the way up to what is that little--?

Brian: It goes up to McAllister Park.

Justin: And Los Barrios.

Brian: It goes behind Los barrios. I'm not sure if the actual home is open. I haven't been in the home, but the original home that I remember from the late 70s is there and it looks the same way and it reminds me of some really good times.

Justin: You should tell Jack White of the white stripes about this. He's into that kind of kitschy stuff he might.

Brian: Jack White did not know who is my old friend is older than that Jack White and he probably doesn't play guitar as well, but you're right.

Justin: My favorite Jack White story is they had a neighborhood barbecue and the neighbors said there was some random guy that lived behind a gated fence that they had never seen and at the barbecue, this dude walking around he's pale with long hair and then they all realize, "Oh, that's the new guy. Oh my God, that's Jack White." It just showed up to a neighborhood barbecue with nobody else. I was like, that story.

Brian: I like it.

Justin: Outside involvement, we've covered Planned Parenthood, we've covered the zoo. We've covered the library. Any other things in San Antonio that you're involved with [unintelligible 00:07:37]?

Brian: In San Antonio?

Justin: Or the state.

Brian: Sure. Or the nation. Here's what I do. Probably for the last six years, I've been the chair of the Duke alumni interviewers, which means that at least in San Antonio and sometimes South, sometimes all the way to the Laredo, we try to coordinate interviews and help students get into that prestigious university in North Carolina. Really sorry, you didn't understand the Duke was in North Carolina.

Justin: Did you say prestigious. Did you learn that [crosstalk]

Brian: No. I learned it before that because we're going to talk about that too. Obviously, I'm involved in Duke admissions and on April the first, Duke admitted, I think it was seven students, seven local students and I hope they all matriculate there so that I can see them this summer at my party, which is the Duke going away party.

Before that, I'm also involved in the executive committee of the alumni council of Deerfield Academy in Western Massachusetts. I was fortunate enough to attend that prestigious prep school. I'm still very involved in that. I have been on the boar of San Antonio Academy where I attended and I was the alumni council president of San Antonio Academy. I'm committed to education all of its forms, although it appears it all these private schools but--

Justin: It's a name dropping, it sounds like. Is that education?

Brian: More importantly, my parents were educators. My dad was a principal at the Negro school in Stanton and my mother was the sixth-grade teacher at that school. It's a great story. If you actually want to Google it, you can Google Christine Smith Steward who gave a deposition on July the 17th 1965 because the school was shut down because they didn't have the assets to continue these separate but equal schools systems and standard, and they didn't offer my parents a job.

As part of that litigation, my mother had to give a deposition on July the 17th. She then jumped in her car and drove to San Antonio, which is where my parents had decided to leave and the next day at 5:55 or 5:56, depending upon who you ask, I was born.

Justin: I didn't know that about you.

Brian: It's a good story. You need to ask Christine. She's got ton of--

Justin: I would love to. Would she come on the podcast?

Brian: No.

Justin: Okay, I also still want to point out, my parents were both educators as well, but you don't hear me dropping the names of the fancy schools I went to like Texas A&M or Baylor or Burkburnett High School.

Brian: I think you just did.

Justin: Okay, wow. Any odd hobbies that you have? I know you run half marathons, which means you're half crazy, but what else?

Brian: I think that the best sport that I play to the extent I'm allowed to play it by my wife and child is Ultimate Frisbee. I still love Ultimate. It's a thing that I will wake up even at my advanced stage and wonder how good I could have been if someone had simply turned beyond Ultimate earlier. Last spring I went to see one of my best friends in college. Her son plays for the UNC ultimate team, which is probably ranked number one in the nation. We spent two days watching them play. I honestly thought that I could play again. I was wrong.

Justin: Are they only ranked number one because there's literally no other school in America that plays Ultimate Frisbee?

Brian: You are so sheltered from the things that matter most to many of us.

Justin: Other than sports, do you have any hobbies other than sports? Clearly, you're athletic, you play Ultimate Frisbee and run half marathons. What about things that other people can relate to?

Brian: I have a five-year-old. Her sports are my sports. We had piano class the other day. We had hip-hop class the other day. I do things and move in certain ways that I'm not designed to move in at this point, but I do it because I love her.

Justin: Next question, do you own Alf on DVD?

Brian: I own every episode and every season of Alf and I'm working through Alf with my daughter who doesn't understand why her dad is laughing.

Justin: Is this because you hate cats?

Brian: It has nothing to do with Lucky the Cat or Melmac and how they treated cats. I think cats are a symbol, but if I delve too deeply into this, I don't think you'll understand.

Justin: So did Egyptians.

Brian: Well, that's good because Melmac is a country that-- I'm sorry, a planet. It probably proceeded this planet if you're keeping track at home.

Justin: I'm not. Worst trend you followed when you were younger.

Brian: Worst trend I follow when I was younger, I think when I was in the sixth grade, during the summer I had my hair braided. I know that there are photographs of this somewhere, but I haven't seen any, but I remember even at the time thinking this is bad. I also had a perm once. I think that was closer to seventh grade, but again, there aren't any photos.

Justin: What kind of braids?

Brian: Not Iverson [unintelligible 00:13:02] more Kawhi, like a second-year straight and not even. They were kind of a mess, but I loved them.

Justin: That's a good way to put it because Kawhi never looked as put together as Iverson did.

Brian: He didn't.

Justin: Yes, he didn't. I can say now-- He was better though. I think you can say it and I was going to say, and I can't even say it was better, but I think you can say that. I'm going to say that, he was a better player.

Brian: He was a better player.

Justin: Kawhi is a better player than Iverson was.

Brian: Well, that is your recency bias. If you could remember back to 2001 when this 5/9 personal is playing 41 minutes a night and averaging 26 to 27 points, he was awesome.

Justin: I like how you're looking at paper as though you brought your statistics to Iversion.

Brian: No, that lives within me. That's what all people do.

Justin: He was awesome, but Kawhi might be a transcendent player. He shut down the brain.

Brian: What does he transcend?

Justin: In a day and age in which there's really nobody that changes the game, Kawhi might be one of those players that does. He has gotten better year to year in a way that almost nobody gets better in the NBA because they already start at such a high level. LeBron started at such a high level and got incrementally better. Kawhi continues to get better if they'll play him, if he'll quit sitting out. I think is the best way to put this.

Brian: Well, the thing is, as a competitor, you would expect him to play and want to play like Allen Iverson. Kawhi is never going to average 41 minutes for a season.

Justin: Okay, we're getting off track.

Brian: For a season.

Justin: When did you move-- How long have you lived in San Antonio?

Brian: I was born and raised in San Antonio. I was born at the Nix Hospital. I know my doctor.

Justin: Which is now going to be an apartment or something.

Brian: Right, at best. It should be torn down.

Justin: Really, it's still a nice building.

Brian: Not a thing.

Justin: Okay, a favor Fiesta event.

Brian: It's got to be King William. King William is the event where my wife and child can enjoy themselves. We can go from house to house and laugh at people and feel a part of that community. It's a fun community down there. I don't live down there, but if I had the opportunity I would.

Justin: Do you know the Hill Law Firm was the first aid tent sponsor last year and this upcoming year?

Brian: Since I didn't spend any time in the first aid team, I didn't know that.

Justin: If you did at least, you know it's got a good sponsor.

Brian: That's good. I hope you got some mass down there.

Justin: Last question, what is the single biggest change you've seen in San Antonio in the last 50 years? Assuming you're 50, I don't know with you.

Brian: I'm 54, but thanks for that. I think the single biggest change was the change from the government where the good Government League ran this town to the current structure.

Justin: How would you describe the good Government League?

Brian: The good Government League looks like it sounds. It was government of this town by a really small section and portion of this town and it was restricted. I think now with the ascendance of various groups, the government is much more representative of the people as opposed to certain zip codes.

Justin: I had a recent experience with a man who was probably about 60 and he explained to me how we don't understand how much good was done by and he named like six families. He never said good governments, but I assume that too is what you're talking about.

Brian: I can probably tick those families off, but without ticking those families off I won't, but yes, that's how it was. If you look around and you look at highways and malls and things, you can sort of figure out who they were, but it was a different time. There were some obvious patronism and some forward-thinking in some of those groups, but there was a point where the rest of us needed to weigh in.

Justin: I think this is probably a story told throughout America, really.

Brian: Sure.

Justin: Yes, I was going to spend more time talking to you about a few things, but I want to get to the meat of what we were going to talk about today. Clearly, you accomplished. Did you all hear, he went to Deerfield. Clearly, you've got a background, but one thing you do do as a volunteer basis is you're on the board of directors for Planned Parenthood. Such a political hot potato, such a weird lightning bolt for everybody politically. Nobody's in between on that it seems like anymore, even though you get a strange crossover of wealthy conservatives' wives and/or women who do cross that spectrum.

It's just this strange thing. When I was in college, we would help girls get from their cars to the front door because there were people screaming and yelling and I was fresh off the turnip truck. I just thought that's mean. I really didn't have any grand political feeling about it other than a buddy of mine did it and I thought, "This is crazy. What are you yelling at these poor girls for?"

What's going on in Texas right now cutting everything short is Governor Abbott said, "Hey, we are going to cut non-essential medical services." Attorney general Paxton says, "Okay, everybody, that also specifically means and I am declaring that abortion is a nonessential service." Planned Parenthood of Texas sued the state of Texas and it landed on the desk of Lee Yeakel who was a George W. Bush appointee, a federal judge in Austin, Texas. Talk to me about generally what are the arguments from both sides on that?

Brian: Sure, the timeline you provided is amazing because this all started back on March the 22nd 2020. I'm going to go back and go through it a little bit because I think it's important for everyone who's listening to this to try to frame this because it's happening even as we speak. March 22nd, 2020, Governor Abbott issues, executive order GA-09. Jokingly, we say get abortion, but that's not actually what it meant, but the executive order related to hospital capacity during this disaster, the COVID-19 disaster.

It was in effect from March 22nd, 2020 to April 21st, 2020. Remember that, because we've got a month window where this is in place. Essentially what it says is, "Hey, obviously there is a crisis, and during this crisis, we don't want to take resources away from our hospitals and our healthcare providers." Generally, I think we will all agree with that. March 23rd, things changed. March...

David Lesch, Former Pro Pitcher, Middle East Expert, and Professor

Justin Hill — Mon, 06 Apr 2020 05:15:00 -0600

Dr. David Lesch has published over 16 books with a particular focus on Syria, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Middle East and the current regional issues. He talks about how he became to befriend the leader of Syria and worked to counsel restraint in the Middle East. He has been sought after by many NGO's to help broker peace and he joins us to discuss it all.

Transcript:

[music]

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

Today's guest is Dr. David Lesch. Dr. Lesch is a San Antonio local, former professional athlete. I think Harvard PhD, right?

David Lesch: Harvard PhD.

Justin: I want to say Yale just to mess with you. He's a Middle East expert. He's a professor at Trinity. He's one of my good friends. We have him on here today to talk about a few things which the plan was always to have you on to talk about Middle East but now we get to talk about the international effect of this. I still want to talk Middle East, I still want to talk Syria, but first, thank you for being here.

David: Pleasure to be here.

Justin: I've started with everybody the same way. I want to just go through some general information. First, important to me, do you have any pets?

David: No. I used to have two, one good one, one bad one.

Justin: What were they?

David: Dogs. [laughs]

Justin: All right. Why not now?

David: Because I've been there. I've done that. We have actually good furniture now. We don't want to get these things bitten or feed on or anything else.

Justin: This is exactly what I expect your response to be. I know what your favorite restaurant is right now. That one's marked off the list. What's your--

David: What do you know about that restaurant?

Justin: That it has good food.

David: There's one other thing. [laughs]

Justin: I don't know right now.

David: That's okay. You just need to look at the menu next time. Yes.

Justin: Oh, they have a to go?

David: Yes, yes.

Justin: I forgot. I will let you do that. Dr. Lesch has a--

David: Oh, no, no. It's not for me. It's for you to mention it so I look humble.

Justin: A dish named after him-

David: A dish named after me-

Justin: -at J-Prime.

David: -at J-Prime.

Justin: I can't imagine what [crosstalk]

David: It's called the Lesch Lobster or Lesch [unintelligible 00:02:00]

Justin: Okay.

David: It's a dish I found at a restaurant in Toronto. I brought it to the manager there. He loved it and he honored me, because I spent a lot of money there, [chuckles] to name the dish after me.

Justin: Very manly dish.

David: It is a very manly dish, especially when you dip it.

Justin: Other than J-Prime, what's your favorite place to eat in town?

David: J-Prime. [laughs] Did you mention J-Prime?

Justin: Do you ever eat like the locals eat? Maybe a taqueria or a burger joint?

David: What are those? I don't know.

Justin: Yes, okay.

David: Perry's maybe, The Perry's--

[laughter]

Downtown maybe Bohanan's.

Justin: Okay. This is going about where you should go. I asked everybody this. I'm going to because I think everybody's got this- if you come to San Antonio, you have to do this one thing. What is your hidden gem in San Antonio that you told visitors they've got to go see?

David: Oh, J-Prime.

[laughter]

It's going nowhere. You regret having me on. Now, hidden gem? It used to be the Liberty Bar when it was at its other location. Before I brought anybody anywhere from out of town it used to be on where the Pearl is now, that house that's leaning over and warped and everything. It was a fantastic place, and now it's on the Southside. That used to be the unique experience. Other than that right now, it's just, I don't know, there's something called the Alamo? Is that something that people go to?

Justin: Yesterday's guest said, "The Esquire bar."

David: The Esquire bar. Oh, maybe the 1919 bar, which is pretty good, the Southtown. I love these old iconic places bar.

Justin: Liberty Bar is in Southtown now, not Southside.

David: Did I say Southside?

Justin: You did. You do live in Stone Oak [crosstalk]

David: Do you need a passport to get down there?

Justin: You probably do.

David: Yes, I probably do. Okay.

Justin: All right. This is going great. Next, what are you involved with outside of work? Usually, we're asking, are you involved with any nonprofits?

David: I'm involved in a number of them. A number of conflict resolution, NGOs, international NGOs. One that I'm very proud of in which I'm very much engaged currently, is an organization called Cure Violence-

[laughter]

-based in Washington, DC. You see, you should never do this with a friend.

Justin: I don't even know what's funny now.

David: You should never do this with a friend.

Justin: Okay, let's keep it going

David: Yes, based in Washington, DC. What it does--

[laughter]

Justin: This is part of the shutdown coming.

David: This is what you need to edit out.

Justin: Cabin fever [crosstalk]

David: Exactly. Now, Cure Violence, it was rated by whoever rates these things, the number one conflict resolution or violence prevention NGO in the world, and it's number nine overall. What it is? It's apropos to what's going on in the world today.

[laughter]

Justin: This isn't getting edited out. This is [crosstalk]

David: You know what? We need levity in this world today.

Justin: We do.

David: [laughs] Never ever do-- The audience, if you can see this, he's making faces at me.

[laughter]

David: Anyway, going back to Cure Violence. It's a world-renowned epidemiologist, who used to work on Ebola and HIV in Africa, he wants to bring a health solution to violence. In other words, treat violence as an epidemic. How do we deal with epidemics? We contain it, we find vaccines, antibodies, things of this nature. He developed this model for interrupting violence at the local level in prisons, to gang violence in cities, to curtail violence. Finally, where I become involved, more specifically to violence in terms of war. Particularly, right now, we have operations in Syria.

What the organization does is it trains local community leaders in the areas where there's a lot of violence. They train them as interrupters in order to enact compromise, in order to talk to various people that may be on the verge of conflict, to try to get them down from that perch. It's worked beautifully.

Justin: A scientific approach to ending violence.

David: A scientific approach to ending or curtailing violence and murders and so forth. In a number of cities in which they are involved have gone down precipitously by 40% to 60%.

Justin: Internationally or more of an American-based [crosstalk]

David: It started American and domestic in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Baltimore. It's been very, very successful. They don't go to the whole city. Usually, they start out in, obviously, the various neighborhoods where there's a high incidence of crime. Then, from there, they started to go internationally. They go into Central and South America and deal with cartel situations where there's a high incidence of violence. Of course, as I just said, they have expanded into the Middle East. They're in the Gaza Strip. They are in Iraq in a certain degree in the last year. We've been going into Syria, into government-controlled, as well as opposition-controlled areas, to train people.

In a situation such as Syria, where eight years of civil war, the war will end- and in effect, in some ways, it has ended. As one of my colleagues, one of the top conflict resolution specialists in the world, said to me one time, he said, "When the war ends, that's when the conflict begins." You have all of these animosities, you have all of these vengeful attitudes, all of these things you have to deal with. You have the fractioning of society, economic dislocation, all of these things, all of these triggers for potential violence. We come in or Cure Violence comes in and identifies those triggers and help prevent them from being pulled, and if they are pulled, prevent it from getting worse.

In fact, recently, we may try to get them into San Antonio, into some areas. I have been in discussion with the city to do that. Obviously, with what's going on right now, it's in abeyance for the time being, but at some point, we may bring them into San Antonio.

Justin: We had a big spike in violence there for a while, violent crime.

David: Yes, particularly. Yes.

Justin: Is that the impetus in getting them involved here?

David: Yes, exactly. The key in all these things is funding, will the funding come from the city, will it come from the state, how much is needed, and so forth and so on. We're just in beginning discussions with that right now.

Justin: Do you have any hobbies outside of what I know about and come on, be careful here. I know you play tennis.

David: Play tennis.

Justin: You were a Major League Baseball pitcher at one point.

David: Professional baseball but I never made the major leagues. I was the number one draft pick of the Dodgers and it was in the minor leagues for a few years until a rotator cuff injury ended my- what, otherwise, would have been an illustrious career in the major leagues. I'm sure--

Justin: You were a professional baseball player.

David: I was a professional baseball player. In fact, I used to be lots of things. I was many, many things.

Justin: I've heard you tell people that.

David: I know. Yes, currently, I play tennis not as much as I used to because I've-- I'm a young guy as you know but my knees are quite old because of all the wear and tear that professional athletes go under.

Justin: Yes, being an international diplomat is very tough on the body.

David: Well, you walk a lot. Seriously, you walk back and forth, you shuttle diplomacy. [crosstalk]

Justin: With working, I could see you being a crochet guy.

David: I have a dream to play Cristofori's Dream on the piano, as well as Moonlighter, Midnight Sonata by Beethoven. It's Moonlight, whatever. Those are my two-- Before the arthritis in the fingers set in, I used to play--

Justin: Can you play the piano?

David: I can play some piano.

Justin: Okay.

David: Do you want me to-- Do you have a portable piano here?

Justin: No.

David: Too bad. The listeners [crosstalk]

Justin: For our listeners, he's pantomiming the piano right now.

David: [laughs] I'm putting myself in great jeopardy by saying I can do that.

Justin: How many languages do you speak?

David: 35.

Justin: Shut up. [laughs]

David: I can say yes in-- I speak Arabic, of course, French, Spanish somewhat, and a little bit of English. I'm trying to get better at English.

Justin: This is one I need you to be real honest on. Whenever I was a younger man, I had a mullet. What was the terrible trend you followed when you were young?

David: Good heavens.

Justin: I'm sure there's a good one for you.

David: Well, it's called the 1970s. That was the terrible trend.

Justin: Fro?

David: No, no. I was in a fried long hair and I was in the disco. I had--

Justin: Gross.

David: Gross? Dude.

Justin: [laughs] It's the worst confession.

David: Thanks. The last time I come on your show.

Justin: I think hair metal would be better if you could tell me that.

David: [laughs] I had a John Travolta outfit from Saturday Night Fever.

Justin: Big ABBA fan?

David: No. No, no. I was more of Led Zeppelin and that sort of thing, but also, I like disco because you went clubbing. That's what you do.

Justin: Fair enough. Disco, another time. What year did you move to San Antonio?

David: 1992.

Justin: You lived here straight ever since?

David: Yes. [chuckles] Are you asking my orientation? [laughs]

Justin: There's something behind me at this point. Since you're on the Northside--

David: I just want to let you know that after we're done and if you air all of those and when it airs, if you air this, about 25 organizations are going to come after you for this and sue you for everything. All the--

Justin: I don't think they will.

David: The thing is in this type of situation we need less PC and more levity.

Justin: I agree.

David: Everyone, loosen up a little bit and if we laugh a little bit and joke.

Justin: We're a bit going to be stuck at home for at least two weeks.

David: Believe me, audience, Justin and I are being on our very best behavior.

Justin: I'm always on my best behavior.

David: Yes, right. [chuckles]

Justin: I was going to ask you what's your favorite Fiesta event but you're a Northsider. Do you even go to any Fiesta? If you say just on the Southside--

David: Is that on the Southside? [laughs]

Justin: Yes, for you it is. For you it is.

David: Of course, when we moved here, we went to all the events once. I went to...

Tim Maloney, Attorney, Reality TV Show Producer, and Friend

Justin Hill — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 05:45:00 -0600

San Antonio's own, Tim Maloney, a son of personal injury lawyer legend Pat Maloney and personal injury attorney himself joins us to talk about his other interest. Tim is one of the producers of Southern Charm: New Orleans which is on Bravo. He has also produced movies, documentaries and is here to talk about that path and upcoming projects.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Hello in Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Today's guest is a movie producer, television reality show producer, former Riverwalk restaurant tour/bar owner, local injury attorney and one of my very best friends Tim Maloney. Tim, thank you for being here.

Tim Maloney: I appreciate the opportunity, sir.

Justin: Tim, we're not going to talk about the things- you and I like to talk about at bars, which is usually law and other high-minded things. I want to talk to you a little bit about some of your passions outside of the law. How did you get into television producing?

Tim: Seventh grade Maria Fleming, I wanted to make out with her. The reason I got into it was I produced Charlie Brown Christmas show and I cast her. I injected a controversial scene to the seventh grade production, which of course got me suspended, and that was she actually kissed Snoopy. That's absolute true story. That's how I got started in production.

Justin: It turns species love scene?

Tim: Pretty much. By the way, very controversial, not only the kiss with the beagle, but the beagle was also a female in a costume. I was actually, shall we say, ahead of my time.

Justin: You were definitely ahead of your time. For everybody to know, I have warned at Tim and let him know that this is a family friendly podcast, and we're only going to talk about family friendly things today.

Tim: They were very friendly.

Justin: Okay, well, Snoopy.

Tim: They were lovable. You all love Snoopy.

Justin: Tim, I want to talk to you more about the TV and stuff like that. We're probably not going to talk much about the law. I'm going to start with a top 10 for everybody because I think it's important to just get a little bit of a slice of who you are. You're never going to know what they but they're going to be pretty simple, okay.

Tim: I'll give it my best shot.

Justin: All right. I know the answers to a lot of these, but some I don't. First, do you have any pets?

Tim: Yes, I do.

Justin: Cats?

Tim: Yes.

Justin: Feral?

Tim: Very feral.

Justin: You got feral cats you feed, but you name them?

Tim: They like Will Ferrell, but they're also like some of the other SNL characters do.

Justin: All right. Cheri Oteri?

Tim: Actually, they were more old school, Eddie Murphy in the day.

Justin: What's your favorite restaurant right now?

Tim: Boy, I would say the Palace at lunch.

Justin: What's the buffet special there?

Tim: Sushi. [laughs] Cut. You have to edit that out.

Justin: What were going to try it again. What is your favorite restaurant eat-out right now?

Tim: A signature I think right now is on top of their game.

Justin: The [unintelligible 00:02:46] ridiculous?

Tim: It's really good. I did not want to like it, and it's now my new go-to.

Justin: I'm embarrassed that I know what that is, but it's pretty good.

Tim: It's really tasty.

Justin: I think I know the answer to this. What is your favorite go-to hidden gem in San Antonio?

Tim: Boy, hidden gym.

Justin: Doesn't have to be a bar, doesn't have to be restaurant, can be just anything in the city that you think, man if you want your PhD and know in San Antonio, you've got to know this place.

Tim: I would say the library then in my street.

Justin: I was going to say the Japanese tea garden for you because you're a big fan of that.

Tim: Absolutely. That's one of the great hidden place in town.

Justin: You told me time about a trail behind it. Tell everybody what you're talking about?

Tim: There is a wonderful secret trail. You go to the tea garden, by the way, if anybody hasn't been it's an absolute must. They've redone it, and it's just spectacular. It is right next to the zoo. You go up. Instead of going down to the actual Koi pond, you stay up high and you keep following a trail it's not marked and you've been cut over to the left and there is a road that is blocked off, but you can get through it. It goes behind sunken garden. You are literally about 200 feet above the sunken garden stage, looking straight down on to the stage and to the right is the highway, trinity word. It is absolutely spectacular at night.

Justin: Where does it kick out? If you're not in the gardens? Where could you get on it to get to the gardens?

Tim: You could actually come across Trinity, but you would actually have a crop come across that overpass over the highway that says IWC. That will take you to a grassy area and you make it that way.

Justin: I've still never done it. You've told me about it. Something I really wanted to do--

Tim: He said must, see, do.

Justin: Because this is our very first episode, and I don't know what I'm doing. I just started our video a little bit late with Tim Maloney, local TV producer, great friend of mine, local injury attorney. We're going through our top 10 list. He's got some feral cats.

He says, "Will Ferrell." I think that they'll give you a fever if they scratch you. Favorite restaurant now signature hidden gems in San Antonio, the land a library but also close second Japanese Tea Garden. I think I know this, but what's the nonprofit charity that you're most involved with here in town?

Tim: That's a tough one. There's battered women's shelter, Planned Parenthood. It's odd, but a lot of the the causes for women who are struggling, dress for success. The battered women's shelter I think is by far the one that I'm quietly involved in.

Justin: What is the gala you've invited me too many times?

Tim: Let's say that would be the cancer. That would be Healing Hearts. That is for a good friend of ours, Karen Martinez, who was a anchor here for years, she died of breast cancer. Before she died, it was remarkably brave of her to actually film from her hospital room going through the procedure to encourage other women that they're not alone. Happens every year in March, and it's a very special charity.

Justin: It's a very heavy?

Tim: Yes, this is

Justin: I'm not one for galas, but I've gone to it with you a few times in this past year in our efforts to be magnanimous, we both entered into a few auctions. I was lucky enough to win what I thought was a metaphorical wheelbarrow full of alcohol that turned out to actually be a wheelbarrow from Home Depot. It was full of booze.

Tim: They weight 400 pounds.

Justin: That's right.You won for how much of a hunter you are.

Tim: Because you know, my joy, my love, my life is of course, the slaughter of very nearly extinct animals. Passion of mine.

Justin: You won the hunting trip to Africa?

Tim: I did it because I thought it was a photo journalism. Safari and I finally found it in my drawer the other day, and I'm thinking, "I might as well use this." I look down and apparently I get to kill an impala, couple of wildebeests, and something that got horns. What's really nice is then they will cut the animal's head off decapitated right in front of you and boil all the meat off and salt it. You too can have your photograph taken with a skull and horns of a animal you've just shot from basically like a caged hunt.

Justin: Which is something a lot of people like.

Tim: I can't imagine a better time.

Justin: Not so much my thing. I don't think so much or thing either. Next question--

Tim: Unless of course, the impala is wearing a maga hat, but I don't get started.

Justin: This is a non-political show.

Tim: I'm a non-political maga hater.

Justin: Do you have any odd hobbies? [laughs] I know where that can lead with you. "I've got a friend who's into woodworking, I just found out." Do you have anything like that?

Tim: Yes, vintage watches. I collect very rare, old vintage wristwatches.

Justin: I didn't know that and I'm apparently the beneficiary of these one point--

Tim: I'm wearing one as we speak. Yes, I do. I have developed a love for old watches. Because between the years of 1966 and 1972, the greatest watches of history were made, because there was a huge competition among which ones could develop the first automatic chronograph. Very, very impressive thing happened in 1969. Those watches are still out there, and they're still running perfectly, and they're just so much cooler than I say what we have today.

Justin: I did not know that. I know you've told me the history of all the watches you have and how rare some of them are, but I didn't know that that was the reason.

Tim: That's it.

Justin: You've lived here your whole life?

Tim: Born and raised.

Justin: What is the single biggest change you've seen in this city in the time that you've lived here? I'm sure that kind of transcends everything, but what's the one thing that really sticks out to you in terms of the city's identity?

Tim: That we've matured into a city. We used to have a chip on our shoulder that Houston, Dallas, and [unintelligible 00:09:03] Austin was always-- There was always a fourth city. There's Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio. What's happened is with multiculturalism and the idea of that being Hispanic is nothing to, quite frankly, be ashamed of.

Because, quite frankly, when I grew up it was. The city was very, very prejudiced. It was very, very close minded. What's happened in the last 25, 30 years, gloriously, in my opinion, is Hispanic culture, it's become the dominant culture as it should. Also, the idea that the tolerance in the gay and lesbian community, and also the idea that San Antonio has become a very cool place. That was almost a possible think of when I was growing up.

Justin: I'm glad you said that. I think is one of the ideas behind this podcast I wanted to do. I think our city is this-- I say it's the best kept secret in Texas, and people have the shirts that say, "You can keep Austin." Because I think we have this weird thing happening here. We're a little bit 10 years behind other cities, but it is this wonderful thing that I think many people in Texas still consider us to be the fourth city.

Tim: Kind of what Chicago for years. That's why they call it second city with that chip on its shoulder. Then after New York and then there were Chicago. Everything in New York and then there were Chicago. There's Austin and then there's San Antonio. What's cooler Chicago or New York? Give me Chicago any day of the week.

Justin: Next question. This is near and dear to my heart because when I was a young man, I had a mullet. A real, real mullet, but I think these things follow all of us in life. What is the terrible trend that you bought into when you were junior high high school?

Tim: This is a family show, but I do have a wonderful story of humping my geometry teacher, but I won't get into that, in high school. Fros, back then, we literally have fro picks. We'd pick our hair off like the brothers. I actually had a fro and I have a fro. I made Julius Irving look like an amateur. There was a reason for that. This is honest to God true story. I don't know if I can say it on this family show. Anyway, in my senior year in high school, I ended up getting a fro, permanent, from one of my teachers. I went to her house and she actually did it.

Justin: Hold on. You glossed over that. You got a perm?

Tim: A perm.

Justin: You said, a permanent, from a teacher. You get a perm in your hair?

Tim: Permanent. That's why they're called permanent.

Justin: I know, but most people--

Tim: A perm in my hair because that was a trend, and she graciously agreed to--

Justin: Do the perm for you.

Tim: Do the perm for me in her [crosstalk]

Justin: Different people, different upbringings. I've learned yours is very different than mine. I was quite edgy with mullet, but now it's a cause for--

Tim: Did you have a Rush t-shirt too?

Justin: That was before me. I was post-Rush, pre-MC Hammer pants mullet. I was more Joe Dirt mullet.

Tim: I would bet in the greater Burke Bennett area, did you have a little wispy mustache?

Justin: No, and I couldn't have a rat-tail. That was a rule my dad laid down. I could have a mullet but no rat-tail.

Tim: You had the proverbial pickup truck?

Justin: I'm talking I had a mullet when I was eight. Not when I was in high school. When I was a kid, I had a mullet. I'm sure I did a million of other terrible things whenever I was in high school, but I'm not going to [crosstalk]

Tim: Did you really have a piece of hay- sucking on a piece of hay too?

Justin: I had a bronco too. No truck. You've lived here your whole life. [unintelligible 00:12:52] Which one's your favorite fiesta then?

Tim: King William Fair.

Justin: King William Fair. You throw a great party every year at King William Fair.

Tim: Every year. What we do is also we donate a bunch of money to the fair. That, to me, is what fiesta used to be and should be. Awesome neighborhoods. We have pride in the neighborhoods, pride in their friends. It's by far, to me, the best of the--

Justin: Still small. Feels small. It's still about noon.

Tim: By then, quite frankly, does anybody really remember?

Justin: The parade's, what, nine o'clock or something?

Tim: Yes, but it's over by 10 o'clock. The bar is open at 10:01. It's getting people out of the office is the hardest part.

Justin: 10:01. Come on.

Tim: Maybe nine.

Justin: You have to test. I'm having guests for God's sakes. All right. We're fixing to get into some of your extracurricular involvement with television. You do produce a reality show, currently, on Bravo. Since we're talking about reality shows and we're going to talk about reality shows, what is your favorite reality show outside of the ones you've been involved in?

Tim: That's a hell of a question. I'll tell you why, because people don't really understand the history of reality shows. The very first reality show was when HBO was a nascent network. It was called An American Family. It was about the Loud family. It was actually filmed early 1970s. It was the first time, actually, we're going to follow a family around. It was going to be a joke because how could this be interesting? It became an absolute phenomenon. No one had ever done it before. They just follow the family drama, and no one really knew what was going to happen.

It was really reality TV. That really started the whole genre. If you go back and look at it, it was so well done and so good that it shows you that the form can be elevated into something more than just rich people screaming at each other. That got me interested in it. What's going on today, unfortunately, is you have broadcast stuff, that is for entertainment. Then you have reality shows. Stuff like a little shot in Mexico on the border, crime stuff. Incredibly serious subject matter show. If you're looking for entertainment, below deck by far. It just ain't as awesome. I happened to meet her a couple times. She is a pain in the ass. She's great. That's a very well-done show, I think.

Justin: I always thought the beginning of reality was Real World because they were one of the first movers on--

Tim: That was the first entertainment. I think, for entertainment, it was. That was geared toward an entertainment show as opposed to, really, a family drama, real drama in the family.

Justin: What would be the line between documentary and reality show then?

Tim: The spontaneity of it. I've done documentaries. I did one on a diviner called Halston. It did very well. It's called Ultrasuede. They're online. You can still buy it. Please do. We were on Showtime and we're on HBO. We knew exactly where the story was going to go. It was a recreation of events that have already occurred. When you're doing a documentary, you have a blueprint from A to Z. When we do these shows, we really don't know what's going to happen. It's called a story bible. The story bible is, "Let's go to dinner, and we'll have a few cocktails and it's because somebody said something about somebody else, turn the camera on, let's what the hell happened." In that aspect, it really is real. That's what people don't really get and that people also don't really understand how difficult it is to make these shows.

Justin: To be fair, it's real, the same way like throwing an injured animal into a pen with a lion would be real, but you all are creating an arena for drama to occur with people that have been pre-vetted to probably be that lion.

Tim: Interesting though because it's more like you throw a wolverine, a bear, a lion, a tiger, and some drunk guy with a gun.

Justin: All hungry?

Tim: Yes, and throw them all into a pit, and just see which one survives. You think maybe the tiger is going to pull it off but that little wolverine, quick. You don't know.

Justin: I guess now, I never even thought about this but what's the Showtime show that's been following politics that follows-- You know what I'm talking about? End of the circus or something like that?

Tim: I have heard the name of the show but sure.

Justin: You have that fine line between what a documentary is if it's consistently paying out as opposed to a reality show that also follows a less structured. Really, if you think about it, there's a gray area. Nobody would call Real Housewives a documentary but you could.

Tim: A documentary is a very specific format that you follow. In that regard, to say, when we were doing a documentary and also just how it was done. That was a really witty show and he did a great job with it. I was a producer on it, but they did most of the work but I took all the credit. They did all the work. Typical producer.

Justin: I've seen it. I saw your name.

Tim: It was scripted from day one. That's still what we were trying to do. In other words, we were trying to really show in New York in the '70s and '80s. Really about Studio 54. The AIDS crisis was just starting. Stonewall in '75. It just happened. All of these things. That was really what we're trying to do when we voiced it through a designer named Halston. He was king of New York. You know where you want to end up. In other words, there's no surprise because we know he died. We know where he lived. We knew the end of the story, and that's the biggest difference.

Justin: That's what I'm saying. This political one. Would you call that a reality show? Each episode changes as the campaign goes.

Tim: We call them docudramas.

Justin: Docuseries?

Tim: Docudrama. Docuseries would be like a political show. It's a docudrama.

Justin: Let's go back a little bit, Tim. You were a practicing lawyer. I'm going to skip over. You came from a lawyer dynastic family in San Antonio. Your father's a legend. You and everyone of your siblings, and I think almost all of your nieces and nephews of age are attorneys. You spend some time in politics, and then you became a practicing lawyer as well. At some point,

Dr. Kasi Howard Discusses Mental Health in Trying Times

Justin Hill — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 22:00:00 -0600

Join us for a discuss with Dr. Kasi Howard. We dive into how to distract, cope and be mindful with the financial, health, and personal stressors associated with the coronavirus pandemic and ensuring shutdown. We also discusses with us some of the non-profits she is most passionate about and why.

Transcript:

Recording: Hello and bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

Justin Hill: All right. Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Dr. Kasi Howard. Dr. Howard's one of my close friends and has been for a long time. She's a clinical psychologist who owns and runs the Nova Recovery Center. She's an author of Strength for the Journey: Helping you bulk up emotionally, mentally and spiritually for the journey of life. She's a mom, she's a volunteer, she raises money, blah blah. She's everything. She's joining us today. I think no time is better than now to talk about handling the mental stress and strain of what's going on now. Thank you for being here, Dr. Howard.

Kasi Howard: Thank you.

Justin: We're going to start, give a little background to who you are, a little color on who you are. Do you have any pets?

Kasi: I do. I have a three-legged dog named Lucy.

Justin: Okay. I'm going to leave that there, but did you name it Lucy?

Kasi: I did. She's Lucy Lihua. Lihua is a flower in the garden.

[laughter]

Justin: Okay.

Kasi: I could tell you about the little flower, it's okay, yes--

Justin: I like that you didn't name her something calling out her issue.

Kasi: No. We're all about acceptance in our household.

Justin: All right. Favorite restaurant to eat at right now, currently?

Kasi: Oh. I've actually been cooking a lot. I stocked up on food and now I feel like I need to eat a lot.

Justin: You have your food handlers license?

Kasi: [laughs] No.

Justin: You don't run a restaurant. What's your favorite place in town currently?

Kasi: Oh my gosh. I love sushi, so I'm a big fan of Sushima [crosstalk]. They have half-price sushi Monday through Wednesday 4:00 to 6:00. Their entire menu half off, including sake and wine.

Justin: It's a little far for me, but I have been, it's great.

Kasi: Yes, worth the drive.

Justin: Hidden gem in San Antonio? I always say that you got your visitor who's never been here, Alamo and all those things, but you've got the guy and they're like, tell me what the PhD visitor tour is? What is your hidden gem in San Antonio that you tell your friends, "You all got to go see this."

Kasi: I actually love the mission trail, biking the mission trial, in the Blue Star, have a beer. Super fun [crosstalk].

Justin: Have you done a kayak version of it?

Kasi: I have not.

Justin: I haven't either, so it's embarrassing. We're going to get into it more but quick one-o-one on your job and what you're most involved with outside of your professional career.

Kasi: I am a psychologist. I own a trauma and PTSD treatment center. I'm most involved with the Alzheimer's Association, and I recently started my own charity as well.

Justin: Currently are you the chair?

Kasi: I'm the chair of-- Well, the chair of the 2020 Alzheimer's Gala which sadly COVID 19 has cancelled out, so we're currently regrouping.

Justin: Well, that doesn't take away from your commitment.

Kasi: It does not, no, definitely still devoted to the cause.

Justin: Any odd hobbies? The one thing I think is most odd about you is you like to go take a seven-mile run when it's 110 degrees outside and you find that refreshing.

Kasi: I love running in the heat. I'm a huge fan. I'm also really crafty. My goal for this quarantine season, I bought a wine bottle candle-making kit, and so I'm going to take all those wine bottles I've been drinking and turn them into candles.

Justin: Where you like shave the top off of them?

Kasi: Yes.

Justin: How do you do that? Do you do the string that you see on Facebook?

Kasi: No. Well, I bought this thing that you put it on a razor blade and it cuts the bottle around, but I haven't quite been able to get that to work yet, so I may go for the acetone string.

Justin: Well, tell me if it works like Facebook says. That brings to the next, what is your best or favorite shelter-in-place activity? You're currently living almost in a commune, so I assume you'll have some good ideas.

Kasi: I am. The other night we had a karaoke and dance party in the kitchen, so I would say that's definitely my way to shelter-in-place.

Justin: You're living in a commune because somehow or another you and another family are having your homes renovated and so you all decided to cohabitate?

Kasi: We have, yes.

Justin: Bunch of kids?

Kasi: Yes, lots of kids.

Justin: You better have a good answer to this because I've had some poor answers so far, some good but some poor. I had a mullet as a kid, it was a stupid trend we did. I was a kid. What was the dumb trend you followed when you were younger?

Kasi: Oh my gosh. I had a perm which I have super thick hair, that was a big big big mistake. My favorite thing as a kid was to bring out "colors". I remember I had this shirt that was neon pink and it had six little crayons across the top and I decided I should take one of those crayon colors and wear like leggings to bring out the purple in the shirt.

Justin: So you looked like a crayon?

Kasi: Yes, basically that was--

Justin: You know who also said the terrible trend they followed was a perm? Tim Maloni.

Kasi: [laughs] Tim and I share the same hairdresser, so--

Justin: Tim has no hair now.

Kasi: That's why you shouldn't give perms.

Justin: Do you all actually have the same hairdresser?

Kasi: No.

Justin: Because he goes I think every week to get his hair done.

Kasi: The one hair that's left?

Justin: I don't know. I think he just enjoys like the relaxation of it.

Kasi: My 12-year-old son is like, "Mom, can I go back and let them shampoo and massage my head?"

Justin: Because it feels great.

Kasi: It does.

Justin: What year did you move to San Antonio?

Kasi: 2010.

Justin: What's your favorite fiesta event?

Kasi: I love the Pooch Parade.

Justin: That's a good one. Morning, early.

Kasi: Yes.

Justin: If you've been fiesting too hard, it's sometimes hard to make it.

Kasi: That's right, but it's all for the love of the game, you got to get up and do it.

Justin: I got the game for fiesta. I think we all know that. In the world of psychology, every one of us who took psychology in college realized there's all these different branches and arms and even from the perspective of how you treat, there's multiple different-- What is the specific area or focus of psychology would you consider yourself to either be a disciple or that is the type of treatment you like to provide, what's your area?

Kasi: PTSD and trauma.

Justin: When you and I met, you worked with an eating disorder clinic and since then you still do a lot of that but you also do a lot of PTSD as it relates to military veterans.

Kasi: I do, and females who have had abuse. My previous training, I had about 10 years of training and eating disorders and then over the last six years, I've regrouped and respecialized in PTSD and trauma.

Justin: We've talked off the record obviously, but I think you said that a lot of the eating disorder clients were people that were there really for trauma-related issues usually.

Kasi: That was what honestly led me to respecialize, is, as I worked in an eating disorder clinic, we would say to people, "Okay. Well, when you leave here, you're going to go home into your trauma work in outpatient world, in the community." Then I left working there and I started my own practice and I was in the community and I went, "Oh my gosh, there's no one to help these people do trauma work." That really led me to respecialize in trauma so that I could provide that.

Justin: Well, good for you.

Kasi: Thank you.

Justin: I can't tell you how many clients I've had come in who tell me how hard it is to find either the specialist that they need or just anybody with capacity to see them. To have somebody more out there who's got a broader range of treatment, it's great for the city.

Kasi: Absolutely. I will tell you, I do see a lot of veterans, I do a lot of evaluations. As I meet them, a lot of people have no idea that there's actually really good treatments for PTSD, and it just hurts my heart because as I start to explain that, "Look, we have known therapies, like EMDR, CBTDs, different types of things that actually work so we can get rid of your nightmares, we can stop your flashbacks." Some of them will start to cry in my office and say, "Why hasn't anybody ever told me this?"

Justin: It strikes me in our world nobody took concussion seriously and then there was really nothing to do but because of the NFL, that science is moving quickly, diagnostics have changed, treatments have changed. I think they said in Vietnam the signature injury was, I think, amputations and the signature injury maybe in the most recent complex has really been a lot of psychological as well as traumatic brain injuries, and that seems to be moving the science forward and really opening up a lot of therapeutic advances that we didn't have before, they're testing LSD and all kinds of things to treat PTSD that all seem pretty promising.

Kasi: Absolutely. I had one veteran, he was a Vietnam veteran, and he said when he got back he would scream in the night in his sleep and his dad was a World War 1 veteran. He just came in one night, handed him his pistol and said, "Sleep with us under your pillow, it makes you feel better," and that was our approach. I feel like until recent years when people have really started doing research and really looking at what these guys are going through whenever they come back.

Justin: I had a surrogate grandpa who is a neighbor who caught me taking apples off his-- It sounds stupid, but really became a the closest thing to me as a grandpa figure as a young kid and they called it the demons. He had the demons. He was in World War II as a belly gunner, those are one of the first people to die. I never knew until I became an adult that he had a massive alcohol problem and he'd picked me up Saturday and we'd cleaned his car and Sunday, we'd go run errands and I was like is grandzie, he didn't have one.

As he got older and got sicker, his wife told me that's why I had to go home at five o'clock because five o'clock is when he started drinking. It was just the eye-opening. As a kid, he was the nicest man but he had these real demons he was dealing with and back then, that's how they dealt, they drank.

Kasi: He didn't have-- Well, unfortunately, it's still a lot of how people deal with because they just don't have another way to cope.

Justin: Sure, and they definitely wish they did.

Kasi: Absolutely, they want a better way.

Justin: We're going to talk about COVID, it's the elephant in the room, it's what is literally just consuming everybody now and rightfully so. My perspective, Lindsay, the other day walked out to talk to Juan who helps me around the house on occasion and she said hello and then just started sobbing. She said it was because it was really the first time she had talked to another human in six days and you don't really think about that but it starts this stir-crazy and cabin fever really starts to take its toll on you.

I was looking at some data before we got started today and China who dealt with this first did some research and it said almost half of the population is dealing with real serious anxiety issues as what could result from COVID specifically financially, whether they'll get sick, whether their family will get sick, whether they'll lose their job. Talk to me about how these environmental or societal anxieties can come to really overtake our day to day lives.

Kasi: Absolutely. I think the best way to look at anxiety is to really look at your bandwidth. If you can just pretend that your brain, your human capacity as an individual it's sort of like a computer, right? We'll say it's more like a 1995 computer that has a little less hard drive space on it actively functioning than maybe a modern-day computer. We have a certain amount of things that we've filled our life with that probably max out our capacity at the moment.

We can deal with our children, we could deal with or spouse, we can deal with maybe our aging parents, whatever we're at with that. We can deal with work, we can deal with someday today's the water heater breaks. We've got this average baseline capacity to deal with things. Then now, we've taken this pandemic which is unlike anything that our generation has ever had to deal with and we've added that on top of the bandwidth.

Now in addition to remembering that you need to put the dishes in the dishwasher and all of the things you need to do on a daily basis, if you go out in public, now you need to remember things you never had to think about before like, "Hey, don't touch your face, remember to wipe down the car before-- Use hand sanitizer when you get in the car."

Justin: Keep six feet distance between you and everybody else.

Kasi: Exactly. Don't go down a crowded aisle if you have to go somewhere. Meal planning. I personally am a fairly intelligent person, I think and yet my general habit I buy groceries several times a week because I'm not good at planning ahead with meals. Then going to the store a couple of weeks ago and going, "Okay, I'm going to forecast if I was going to stock up for a few weeks, what would I need?" I couldn't even-- I came home with Rotel tomatoes and tomato paste.

Justin: Because that's all that was left.

Kasi: Some quinoa, well, that too, right? I was like, I guess I'll do something with this. Now we've had to deal with that, right? In addition to all of that and then plus you add the financial stressors and the how long is this going to end and now if you have children, now you're a homeschool teacher. The average person's bandwidth has now been multiplied two, three, four times depending on how many kids and their financial situation and all of that.

Justin: Yes. I was looking at NAMI, NAMI is the mental health main group. It's fair to say the main nonprofit trade association in America. They talked about they have, all of them have resources for COVID right now because they know and they walked through and said the anxiety associated with what's next. The people that are prone to obsession, the obsessive hand-washing or avoidance, loneliness. That's what we're dealing with at our house. Lindsay's pregnant and she does not want to get exposed which I get.

The last thing which I hadn't even thought about is they talk about the stress or traumatic stress that would be associated with if you're quarantined. Maybe you don't have it but you know somebody that did, all of a sudden you're stuck on a 14-day quarantine where you're in your house and not...

Art Pruneda, Staying Fit, Healthy and Sane during COVID-19

Justin Hill — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 13:00:00 -0600

Art Pruneda and his wife were some of the earliest disciples of Crossfit in San Antonio. They have owned and operated Crossfit Unchained in the Eastside of San Antonio for over seven years. He joined us to talk about how to stay health when the gyms are closed, how to find information for at home workouts, and some general thoughts on staying healthy and sane.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonioan, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Welcome to today's episode of The Alamo Hour. My guest today is Art Pruneda. Did I say that right?

Art Pruneda: Pruneda, but close enough.

Justin: Close enough. Art is one of my good friends. Art is also one of the original CrossFit aficionados in this city. He has owned CrossFit Unchained since when? Seven years.

Art: Seven years. Yes. Well, we got our affiliate with CrossFit in December of 2012.

Justin: Also, a small business owner who had the guts to be one of the first early movers into the Eastside, I think it would be fair to say.

Art: Yes, fair to say. When we first started looking in that area to open our gym, there was one CrossFit downtown, and then by the time we did get our lease and get open, we were the third one there.

Justin: The city has had a hard time getting people to move into the Eastside, so it's great that you did. You're still in the Eastside. You're in the near Eastside, I guess, would be the best way to put it but pretty close to Sunset Station.

Art: Yes, very close. About half a mile from Sunset Station, so not too far.

Justin: Art is one of my good friends, and Art helped me right the ship when I had let health issues go the wrong direction. I didn't have any diagnosis at that point, but I just knew I was eating and drinking and being a slob. Art helped me get everything righted, and I was pretty consistent for about three years, and then took about six to nine months off, and now I'm back dipping my toe in the water.

I've got Art on here today to talk about a few things. One of the more important things is staying fit, staying sane, staying calm during our impending shutdown which starts tomorrow. We're going to talk a little bit about that. Before we get started, I want to run through some things with Art. I'm doing top 10 lists with everybody. That's going to change a little bit, but a few things stand the test of time. For one, I have my dog in here right now as we're doing this, so it's really two guests and a dog which was the lesser-known canceled NBC show. Art, do you have any pets?

Art: Yes. We have a dog. Her name is Aspen. She is a golden retriever. She is five years old. We recently got her less than six months ago from a breeder. Our 18-year-old daughter has pretty much coined that we saved her from sex slavery, so she had four litters, and now she's ours. She's an awesome dog. Before her, we did have Abner who was a Basset hound. We had him for 14 years. We got him when he was about six or eight months old and had him for his entire life, and we miss him a lot. Aspen has been really good. She's a really good dog.

Justin: A golden retriever named Aspen. I feel like the picture needs to be like an American flag flying in the background. I tried a case against a defense lawyer and he got up and he started and he goes, "I have two dogs, a golden retriever and a black lab, General and Scout." I just knew it was all bullshit. None of that was true. He was just trying to like paint this picture. Next question. What's your favorite spot to eat at in town right now?

Art: Favorite spot to eat at in town right now? Gosh. Right now, at the moment, I would have to say favorite spot go-to is usually Sweet Yams downtown. It's not too far from the gym. I usually hit them up for lunch. I really don't go out to eat too much. We do a lot of eating at home. The last few times we have gone out to eat together, my wife and I, the last two times, we've been to Marisol or Marisol.

Justin: Marisol.

Art: Marisol, yes. I went there the last two times.

Justin: Because it's delicious.

Art: Other than that-- It is delicious and the drinks are good. That's about it. We really don't have--

Justin: The new one or the old one?

Art: The one that's over there at a lawn.

Justin: The fancy one.

Art: The fancy one, yes. It's closer to our house, I guess.

Justin: All right, fair enough. I always tell people that come to San Antonio, "Okay, you should go do these things or you should do those if you have kids," but if you really want a PhD in San Antonio, you need to check out these hidden gems. What is your San Antonio hidden gem that you recommend to people?

Art: Being in the Eastside, very close to downtown, we get a lot of traveling CrossFitters. What we usually recommend for them, depending on how many times they've been in San Antonio, once or twice or even how long, we always recommend heading to The Pearl. There's just so much down there now in regards to restaurants, little bars, they got that food court now, they've got shops. It's a really good spot for people who are visiting to go and hit.

Even if you have lived in San Antonio all your life, maybe you live outside 1604 somewhere or out by SeaWorld, if you are going to hit downtown, definitely go check out The Pearl. That's usually where I'll tell people to go. After that, any of the missions, there's a lot of history involved not only in the Alamo but even the other missions that are a little bit further south.

Justin: I lived here five years before I knew what the other ones even were. I got there and thought, "What in the hell have I been doing this whole time?" They're beautiful.

Art: Yes. They're really nice and a lot of history. We'll usually recommend people go and do that. For us at the gym or me personally just talking to people that are visiting us, it's always, "You got to go hit The Pearl." Sometimes, we have families coming in with kids, "So got to go hit the children's-- the new Doozium down off of Broadway."

Justin: Yes, that's great.

Art: Yes, go hit that. Then, definitely, of course, walk the river just once. Don't spend all three days there. It's like just go walk at once, you'll see everything, and then venture out.

Justin: Your wife is a San Antonio police department officer. I think you all are pretty involved with church, but what outside of your professions, activities, nonprofits, church, any other groups, what do you all do outside of that?

Art: We used to be involved in a lot, but recently with our kids, we've got two high schoolers, we've got one in college, we've got one on his own, our youngest, they're seniors, we've put a lot of any extra stuff on hold for at least these last four years since Alicia started on with PD and our kids got into high school. Before that, yes, we were involved with our church. With the church, they would do things with the food bank.

We were at Bandera Road Community Church which then went to City Church Downtown, and now they recently changed the name to The Tribe or something like that. I don't know for sure because it's probably been about a year or two since we've been to that church.

Justin: Now, kids, that's your hobby right now.

Art: Yes, kids are our hobby and our last two are seniors. Now with the shutdown, they're doing school from home, so they're home all day.

Justin: Fun.

Art: It's been fun. I had a talk with them just recently, last night actually about, "This is a taste of what it's going to be like when they finish school, so don't get used to just sitting around and doing nothing. You better start getting out there looking for work, getting things done. No more sitting, playing video games until 2:30 in the morning or going and hanging out with friends. Your mom and I, we go to bed early because we both have to get up early. You all got to be in the house by 7:00. You got to be quiet by 10:00. If you don't like it, you can move out." That was a good talk yesterday.

Justin: Do you have any odd hobbies?

Art: Gosh, odd hobbies. Computers. I've always been involved with computers at some point. My college degree, I got a degree in information systems. I started doing software development. The first year that I was doing software development, my coworkers, they got me into online gaming.

Justin: Counter-Strike.

Art: Counter-Strike. That was back then. Condition Zero now. It's changed over the years. I started building computers. Since then, man, I was going through my garage recently and just throwing out a bunch of old computer stuff that has been sitting there and it's pretty obsolete. My son, he's doing a lot of online gaming, so I recently built a new computer and started doing some gaming with him online which the computer got put away probably about a month ago because I hadn't been on it for about six months, but there was a time for probably about a good six to eight months that he and I were doing some gaming together. It was fun.

Justin: We're going to get into this more. What is your recommended shelter in place activity? Mine is going to be Netflix.

Art: Right now, mine is probably playing with Aspen. Being a rescue dog, she's just been very timid. She lived in a kennel all her life being with the breeder. We're trying to slowly get her out of her shell, and so just spending time with her and having her feel comfortable around us enough to where she won't just go lay on her bed all the time. She'll actually come up, she'll engage and talk. That has been my favorite, favorite thing to do right now.

Justin: Winning over your dog's love.

Art: Winning over my dog's love. You know what? The funny thing is this, that when we talk about her, is we went out and we bought her a bunch of toys and she does not want anything to do with any of the toys that we bought her. I took an old towel and I cut it in strips, tied a knot in it, gave it to her, she will tear that thing up. She's funny. She won't touch toys, but an old towel or something, she just goes to town on it.

Justin: All right. I and most people in their youth followed some terrible trends. I had a mullet. During the Kriss Kross days, I wore overalls. I was probably in third grade then, so it's excusable, I think. What terrible trend did you follow?

Art: Gosh, Girbaud jeans.

Justin: No, that wasn't a terrible trend.

Art: How was that not? No.

Justin: That was a sign of status. I couldn't afford Girbaud. What are you talking about?

Art: Dude, I got all mine from Solo Serve. They were the irregulars.

Justin: Solo Serve is a cup, I thought.

Art: Is a what?

Justin: A cup.

Art: No. See, that wasn't until after YouTube.

Justin: Okay. Well, let's not do the humblebrag because, honestly, you saying your terrible trend was how much money you had, because I couldn't afford Girbaud. I wore Arizona jeans back then.

Art: It was all a facade, man.

Justin: Anything else?

Art: I would get them at-- No.

Justin: JNCOs?

Art: No. K-Swiss? Again.

Justin: Oh my God.

Art: No, I was that prep. Yes.

Justin: Okay, so you were a jerk back then, obviously.

Art: Pretty much, yes.

Justin: All right. When did you move to San Antonio?

Art: When I was three years old. All my family is from San Antonio. My dad was in the Navy, so he was actually stationed out in California in Twentynine Palms. I was born in Twentynine Palms. When I was about two or three, it was whenever he was done, so that's when we moved back to San Antonio. People ask me if I'm from here, and I'll tell them, "Yes, I've lived here all my life, but I wasn't born here."

Justin: I think since three is long enough to be your whole life, yes.

Art: 45 years out of my 47. Yes.

Justin: Favorite fiesta event?

Art: Gosh, favorite fiesta event, it has got to be NIOSA, but like on the Tuesday, not Thursday. The first day it opens when it's not crowded, you go early. You can walk around, you can get food. That would probably be my favorite thing. Because you can see a lot and taste a lot when it comes to the different cultures that are out there.

Justin: I've got three King William Fairs. I've got one guy that said NIOSA. He doesn't really do that stuff. You're the first NIOSA because it's usually just a cluster. All right. Last question. What is the best excuse you've heard in a CrossFit class?

Art: Gosh, the best excuse?

Justin: "I can't do that coach, I--" blah, blah.

Art: I don't have time.

Justin: You don't have time?

Art: People say they don't have time or too busy.

Justin: I feel like there's a better one, like I got bursitis or something, these made-up things.

Art: No, not in CrossFit class. We don't get too many excuses.

Justin: I tried everyone.

Art: You've tried but--

Justin: When I was in CrossFit, I would go up in front of drop-ins who would take my space in front of a fan, I would tell them I had a medical condition. I had to have the fan in it. It never did not work. Every single time, it worked.

Art: It was your gym, so they would move. They didn't know you.

Justin: You do what you can. If they had challenged me, I wasn't going to fight them about it. I'm a sweater. I needed it. Okay, I got Art on here today. I want to talk about a few things. Every gym in town teams is doing a how to stay in shape during the lock-in. For a lot of people, it's not about staying in shape. It's more about maintaining some semblance of routine and mental health, and just getting out and sweating and getting that stress out of your body.

Let's talk about a few things. One, is there any place you're posting information for the general public about workouts or anything like that, or do you have any recommendations where they could go and look?

Art: Right now, there's a lot out there, especially with this nationwide shutdown, lots of gym including mine. If you go to our website, unchainedaf.com, we have an at home page, which is our blog that we are putting workouts, daily workouts on. These workouts, they can easily be done with somebody using a backpack. Inside the backpack, you can put a couple of objects to change the weight. A lot of gyms right now are doing stuff like that.

Anybody, even if you've never had a gym membership, you've never had guidance, now's the time to get online, find a gym that's doing this and just start moving around. Follow the videos. Some gyms are doing zoom classes. It's like a virtual meeting, everybody signs in, everybody does their workout together and then you're done. Some will pre-record an hour-long class and you can watch that. Some just do little tips of movements and stuff so that you can see what the movement is supposed to be like.

Justin: For people that don't know, what is CrossFit? It's a scary, nutty, weird world of people for the people that don't know. What is CrossFit?

Art: CrossFit, it's a strength and conditioning program. Have you heard of Zumba?

Justin: [chuckles] Have I heard of Zumba?

Art: Yes. Everybody has heard of Zumba. Zumba is more conditioning than strength. They don't use weights. Have you heard of boot camp classes?

Justin: I have.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini, Epidemiologist & Scientist talks COVID-19

Justin Hill — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 06:00:00 -0600

San Antonio's own Dr. Rohr-Allegrini whom headed up San Antonio's flu pandemic response for the H1N1 pandemic joins The Alamo Hour to discuss what is going on locally and globally. She gives us her insight into the virus, San Antonio's response and the unknowns, currently.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Hello and bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Okay, welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Dr. Cherise Rohr-Allegrini. Did I say that right?

Dr. Cherise Rohr-Allegrini: You got it.

Justin: All right. I'm joined with her and my dog Winston, in case you hear him bark, I apologize. Our guest is an infectious disease epidemiologist and consultant, has a long list, a long resume. I think one of the more important things or what I thought was interesting was you were the pandemic flu coordinator for San Antonio Metro Health District, which I think probably has a lot of overlap to what's going on right now.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Yes, that's right.

Justin: We're going to get to Covid, we're going to get to how people are responding and reacting, what San Antonians should be doing to make sure they're looking out for their neighbors. First, I want to go through just a few general questions with you and get to know you. This is the first time we've met. Jody Newman told me I should reach out to you and you were gracious enough to give me a little bit of your time. Do you have any pets?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: I do. I have a dog, Chico, and three cats.

Justin: All right. One thing I did notice, you and I both have been where I live for Rivard Report.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Right. I actually did a lot of writing for Rivard Report.

Justin: I saw that too. [laughs]

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: It's a great series.

Justin: Favorite place to eat right now?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Right now? Thai Lucky. Or there's a Chinese place on the west side, whose name I always forget. It's on Ingram Road and we go there for takeout quite often.

Justin: Is it the one behind the mall?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Yes.

Justin: Okay. Kind of a younger lady who runs the show?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Yes, probably.

Justin: I think Jody and her husband took me there.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: They go there a lot. Yes.

Justin: It's fantastic.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Awesome. Yes, it's our favorite place. My kids keep asking when we can go get takeout again.

Justin: Okay, so I think you'll probably have a good answer to this. Everybody that comes to San Antonio, I always say, "Okay, you've done that but you've got to go do this." What is your sort of hidden gem you tell everybody about?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Usually, it's a friendly spot.

Justin: Okay, fair.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: It's not really hidden but it's one of my favorite places to hang out. I often just say, "Just take a stroll along the river, it's absolutely wonderful." I love walking downtown super early in the morning, 5:00 AM, 6:00 AM when nobody's out, it's really quiet and beautiful.

Justin: Japanese Tea Gardens is one of them.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: That's gorgeous. Yes.

Justin: I've had a guest say Esquire Downstairs. There are some hidden gems.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Right.

Justin: Other than your job or your professional involvement, which we're going to talk about, are you involved in any outside nonprofits charities that you're all passionate about?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: I'm involved in a lot of things, I wear a lot of hats. For a long time, I was the president, I'm not anymore but friends of Bonham Academy which is our public school, we have a foundation that supports Friends of Bonham. I've been with them for eight years or so. It's a Title I SAISD School and we've done a lot to raise funds for their programs there.

I am also the president of my neighborhood association, the Lavaca Neighborhood Association. I have been doing that for a few years, so heavily involved in urban planning issues and community issues at that level.

Justin: Your neighborhood, it sounds like everything's kind of right there.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Justin: Any odd hobbies?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Odd hobbies.

Justin: You make birdhouses, you quilt, anything strange?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: No. I feel so boring. God. I do a lot of things. I'm usually so busy doing different things. I've got kids so that takes up a lot of my time. I love theater, mostly to watch and memorize all the songs, I don't actually perform. My kids are in theater, so I support that. I used to play soccer, I don't anymore. I used to be a diver and I'm not anymore, but I try to do a lot of little things here and there. I'd love to tell you I have one hobby and now I don't know. I'm usually supporting my family's hobbies. [laughs]

Justin: Yes, jack of all trades- [crosstalk]

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: That's what happens when your mom too. [laughs]

Justin: This is one of my favorites. I had a mullet when I was a kid, what terrible trend did you follow?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: I'm so not a trendy person. I feel like I've had the same hairstyle since 1995.

Justin: Not when you were 14.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: No. I'm trying to think. When I look back at those photos, my God, they're not any different. I was, "Something's wrong with me." I was never that cool.

Justin: The first guest is [unintelligible 00:04:43] and his horrible trend was he had a picked out Afro which is just funny-- [crosstalk]

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: All right. That's awesome.

Justin: How long have you lived in San Antonio?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: I moved here in 2001.

Justin: Favorite Fiesta event?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: King William Parade.

Justin: Okay. All right. That's I think the standard now among every guest has been the King William Parade.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Really? That's great.

Justin: Yes.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: It's my neighborhood event. I would say the fair except usually we just do house parties during the fair. I don't really go into it anymore but it's like a big community party.

Justin: My law firm is the first aid station sponsor for King William Fair.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Wonderful.

Justin: Yes, yearly.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Awesome, that's great.

Justin: You're the only second epidemiologist I've ever met and the first had some sort of strange interest and I want to say crop funguses, would that be right? Would that be an area of epidemiology?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Absolutely, that's an area. It's a disease of plants.

Justin: Do you have any weird specific interests among epidemiology? I saw your post today about armchair epidemiologists, apparently, that's an interest but any others?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: [laughs] I've worked on a lot of different things and most people know me now in relation to TB, STDs or flu or respiratory diseases, but I actually started in vector biology, so diseases transmitted by bugs of some sort: mosquitoes, ticks, fleas-- not fleas, not really, sand flies. I used to work on all of those, and that's really my first love is the mosquito-borne diseases.

Justin: Is that what vector means, is it travel species?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: The vector is what's transmitting the virus or the parasite or the bacteria from an animal to human usually, or between humans.

Justin: We have a real problem if a really bad one starts getting transmitted by mosquitoes here in San Antonio.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Yes. Dengue exists in Central and South America. We've seen a few cases pop up, coming north but not anything transmitted locally. We were very worried about Zika virus for a while, that's definitely around but it hasn't been as bad as we were worried about but it's there. We used to have malaria in the US until 80 years ago or so. Then we drained swamps and a lot of places. Washington DC actually used to be full of malaria. It has existed here before, we've just been able to get rid of it.

Justin: DDT, was that a big part of it?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: DDT? No, I think for the malaria mosquitoes, it was really draining the swamps in a lot of places.

Justin: Different species.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Different species of mosquito, yes. DDT has helped to get rid of mosquitoes in a lot of areas but now we see resistance so we see the mosquitoes coming back.

Justin: Got you. What is an epidemiologist?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: An epidemiologist is a jack of all trades, really. I say jack of all trades, master of some because you have to know a lot about a few different fields but you have your hands in a lot of different things. It was perfect for somebody like me who's interested in many things. I started college as a political science major in international relations. Then I went to biology and then I went back to political science then I went into epidemiology in graduate school.

I love it because you have to understand not just the science of the disease, not just the modeling. A lot of people think of epidemiologists are just modelers, they're working on data behind a computer. An epidemiologist is actually someone that has to understand the social dynamics and disease transmission. You have to understand the culture of the place, you have to sometimes understand the history and the politics of a place.

A lot of the work I did initially was in tropical diseases, so in a lot of countries in Africa or Southeast Asia, where you really have to understand the local community and what's their historical context. Have they had a disease like this before? Have western doctors come in and told them something and that's made them not trust us and so you have to be very conscientious and work with the folks there.

You really have to know anthropology and sociology as well as infectious disease and a bit of data modeling. Although, and frankly, I like to turn to the statisticians to do the data part and then I can explain it. I let them play with the number. I like playing with numbers too, a lot. [laughs] I would say that's a little bit of a hobby. Give me an Excel spreadsheet, I'm really excited. Really, the high-level statistics I ask the statistician to do it then I can explain it in terms of the context of the community that's impacted by it.

Justin: I guess from the same perspective of like a pharmacist, you can be a retail pharmacist or you can be a research pharmacist. From an epidemiological standpoint, it sounds like you have more involvement than probably some in the government role and or response to disease, would that be fair to say?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Yes. I started in academics but the people I was trained by were usually physicians who were also epidemiologists and had worked in the field. They were the ones that were doing the outbreak investigation. Some of them had done the original Ebola investigation in 1976 or Lassa fever around that same time. Those were my early professors, which was just amazing to have that experience, the real-world experience. I think that's a lot different from when your experience is based on computer modeling. One of the advantages that I had was coming to work for San Antonio Metro Health District, I came in as a quasi-academic.

I had also done a lot of fieldwork because I'd worked in tropical diseases but I hadn't done on the ground EPI locally and working for San Antonio Metro Health, I was working with an epidemiologist who was not academically trained but was really a bootstrap EPI. We butted heads a lot at first because I was this young highly educated epidemiologist. I was going to show him what to do and he would get annoyed with me. In the end, I'm so grateful for the experience I had, the mentorship I had from somebody like that, who had so much real-world knowledge of what the diseases look like and how we had to investigate it. I had learned it but I hadn't actually seen it in practice.

Justin: And they knew how it looked in a community.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Exactly. It was little things like this is how you talk to that community and I knew that academically because we did study it. You often come in with this idea and you expect people to follow it and then you realize, "Why aren't they listening to me?" Because you didn't talk to the right people. I knew that in the African situation but I didn't think of it locally. I remember going with him and he's chatting with somebody and like, "Ask them the question. Come on, we need to get the information." He's like, "Just wait," and then he eventually got all the information we needed because he knew how to work, ask about the family, ask about the kids, then they're more likely to talk to you.

That happens here as well as in Central Africa.

Justin: It's so strange to think that you've got to have those skills even when it's your own neighbors, as opposed to going into a different culture and country.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: You do because our work is so dependent upon trust. The folks have to trust us and if they see us as this outside force, even if it's just somebody in a tie, we have to get them to trust us and so that matters to have that link. I think I had that experience because I've worked at the local level and so a lot of government EPIs have but that's different from academic EPIs who-- Some of them might have worked in that area and some of them have not.

Justin: I think my biggest exposure to it was listening to a PBS show about how epidemiologists and anthropologists went into Africa during the most recent Ebola and got them to change burial practices. How much effort that took to convince people about hundreds of years of cultural changes, cultural significance needed to be changed. It's pretty interesting.

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: It's fascinating stuff and I'm glad you bring up Ebola because, in the '76, original Ebola outbreak, that was one of the big issues. These Western scientists said, "Okay, you need to stop burying people like this." and they were like, "Get out of here. We're not going to listen to you."

It took a long time and they finally worked with the village elders to discuss why that needed to be done. Then the village elders went and told the people and got them to change the practices and so they had to do it again in the last Ebola outbreak.

Justin: Which is crazy that we're talking about that in terms of this and I still have people that want to meet up tomorrow for drinks. We're dealing with this right now culturally, whether we want to admit it or not and we look at our neighbors and our neighbors are almost foreign people in terms of following the rules and what we know is the safe practice. Talk to me a little bit about why Covid is such a unique danger to our community and why it needs to be taken differently than what you see on Facebook of, "Hey, it's a flu. It's close to the flu." Why is this different?

Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Flu is pretty bad, to begin with. Seasonal flu kills a lot of people every year but it has a lower case fatality rate, so 0.1% versus what we're looking at 2% to 3% of people that get it die. So already a lot more people die from it. It also has a higher contagious rate, so you're going to give it to a few more people than you are with flu. It's a little bit higher and so it's going to spread faster and it's going to kill more people overall. We're still in the early stages of that. It's a completely different virus from flu. It

Jody Newman, Chief Friend and Mentor

Justin Hill — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 09:00:00 -0600

One of the most successful and influential business leaders, restauranteurs, entrepreneurs and female mentors in San Antonio discusses a myriad of topics. From Fiesta to the very tough economics of COVID-19, we get into it.

Transcript:

Justin: Hello and Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonio and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

Okay, welcome to the Alamo Hour, today's guest is Jody Newman. Jody is the chief friend of The Friendly Spot. Soon enough to be hopefully Two Friendly Spots. She mentors small businesses through Cafe Commerce. She was the first-ever Queen Anchovy, which is how we met and became great friends to this day, a random Fiesta event, which is one of the reasons I love San Antonio, honestly, is Fiestas. This weird thing where you make lifelong friends. That's where we met.

Jody: It happened.

Justin: We asked Jody on here today. We're going to talk about small business, small business mentorship, and honestly, what's going on today, the biggest thing, the gorilla in the room, the elephant in the room is Coronavirus and how small businesses have been affected. Thank you for being here.

Jody: Thanks for having me, Justin. I'm happy to be here.

Justin: All right, so we're going to start with one of my start with everybody, with a little bit of just random background about you. Do you have any pets?

Jody: I do not have any pets.

Justin: Do you have human pets?

Jody: Yes. I have two wonderful kids. I have a 14-year-old son named Wilson who is a freshman at Holy Cross on the Westside, and then I have a daughter named Simone who is in the fourth grade.

Justin: Okay, what is your favorite place to eat in town right now? I know there's a million, but right now what is it?

Jody: My super favorite place to hang out without a shadow of a doubt is The Dakota East Side Ice House on Hackberry and if you have not had their pork casserole, you have not lived.

Justin: All right. I've seen you and Steve post from there quite a bit.

Jody: It's so good.

Justin: I still haven't been there. I've got to.

Jody: You got to. You have to.

Justin: Another thing. Everybody's got this weird hidden gem thing in San Antonio. When you tell people, "Okay, you visit San Antonio, but to be a PhD tourist, you've got to go to this or do this thing." What is your hidden gem?

Jody: For you to experience San Antonio fully, I think you must go to the Esquire Tavern.

Justin: For me, it's the Downstairs.

Jody: Yes. For sure.

Justin: Such a great hidden gem. Okay, we're going to get into this more in a second, but you're very involved outside of your job, which everybody in town knows what The Friendly Spot is unless they've lived under a rock. What are some of your biggest involvement outside projects?

Jody: Interestingly enough, several years ago I was spread so thin. I had The Friendly Spot Ice House. I had interests in other ice houses. I joke that when I see an ice house, the more dilapidated it is, the more I want it. I'm super into ice houses. I started spreading myself thin and several years ago my husband said, "Pick a lane sweetie." I decided to choose Launch SA, which is San Antonio's small business incubator. We also have the first culinary accelerator in the country called Break Fast & Launch. I sit on the advisory board. I'm also a mentor at Launch SA. Oddly enough, I think it's been the greatest school of my life as well.

A lot of my weekly, monthly, yearly efforts goes to Launch SA. I'm also active in Fiesta Cornyation, which I was the invented royalty and several years ago, the queen anchovy.

Justin: What year was that?

Jody: I believe it's 2014. [laughs]

Justin: I was trying to remember. I couldn't remember.

Jody: I was the Queen Anchovy One. Then I'm also active in a relatively new movement happening down in my neighborhood called Southtown The Arts District, applying for cultural district status and just supporting the creatives and creative sustainability in Southtown. Those are my passions but certainly, Launch SA is my gem.

Justin: Okay, I assume if I talk to you in a year from now, you're going to have a new list probably.

Jody: I hope not. I'm hoping that I'm old enough to actually start committing. [laughs]

Justin: All right, and Launch SA is business mentorship, is that correct?

Jody: That's correct. It's essentially the 311 for small business in San Antonio.

Justin: Any odd hobbies?

Jody: A lot of people would really laugh, but I actually have a butterfly garden. I'm super into butterflies and chrysalis and caterpillars and all of that. I also am well known for cruising my cruiser bikes around Southtown, either with my husband, my mother or my children.

Justin: How are the milkweed doing?

Jody: They're doing really great. We have 11 caterpillars currently today from a monarch that I knew was pretty much producing. [laughs]

Justin: We went over those on New Year's. Was it New Year's, we looked at those?

Jody: Yes.

Justin: Okay, next question. What is the one thing you think San Antonio needs that it doesn't have? That's a very broad question, but it's left up to you

Jody: To tell you the truth right now, as funny as it sounds, I think that San Antonio has a slower pace. A lot of people would say we need a faster pace, but I think we're actually on a sustainable pace for the exception of one thing. I think we need improved mass transit and we need it immediately.

Justin: Perfect, yes. When I was younger I had a mullet, so what was that terrible trend you followed when you were younger?

Jody: I have an Oakland Mills picture-- My senior picture at Oakland Mills with this pose that I was in. I always had a bob. I was always the tallest girl but in that photo, I know it's hard to believe, but I was wearing orange and had gold earrings on, big hoop gold earrings.

Justin: Can we get a copy?

Jody: No, no, no. I have it. I'll send it to you. It's hilarious.

Justin: I'm going to hold you to that. What year did you move to San Antonio?

Jody: I started living in San Antonio full time in 2002.

Justin: You've been here a while?

Jody: Yes.

Justin: Okay, I know your favorite fiesta event is Cornyation, so what is your second favorite?

Jody: Actually, one of my most favorite fiesta events is the King William Fair. I've been the volunteer to put the kids float together for years because my kids have always been in it. I also love the Southwest School of Arts and Crafts arts fair. It's pretty fabulous.

Justin: That's where we met.

Jody: Yes.

Justin: All right, and finally, what do you think will be the best thing about having a November fiesta?

Jody: Interestingly enough, I always think about beer when it comes to that stuff, so I've recently found out from one of my fabulous distributors, Ralph Good, who is my glacious dude that Fiesta and the Wurstfest are the same week. Fiesta is one of those things where, if you do it right, you don't remember. Listen, November Fiesta, first of all, big shout out to the Fiesta Commission and Ron Nirenberg for their leadership and not canceling Fiesta, but postponing it because it's saved thousands and thousands of local vendors from significant financial hardship. I feel like that was such a great decision.

Justin: No. I agree with you.

Jody: Also my fiesta this year, my metal is good and I want to be able to use it.

Justin: You mean now you get to use it because it will make it here in time?

Jody: [laughs] Yes.

Justin: Because that's what my big concern was.

Jody: Yes. That's right, for sure.

Justin: Okay, let's get to it. I want to talk to you about-- Let me tell you the way I feel about what's going on, is that I am insulated because I am in a job and a career that is not going to have as much of a negative effect as so many other jobs are. I'm sure we are going to feel it. I'm sure we're going to have a problem as well. As we sit here right now recording this-- Who knows by the time it airs, what's going on, but as we record this, the hospitality industry and the entertainment industry are really the only in San Antonio that have been really locked down. Fair?

Jody: That's right.

Justin: I see things online and we're going to go over those. Like bare necessity and Culinaria and all these to-go menus and all of those, and they feel good to try, but they also feel like putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. What is your advice? Let's start with the people that their jobs have been lost because of this. What advice do you have? As a small business mentor, what kind of guidance can you give for people?

Jody: Sure. Over the past 72 hours, I've had the pleasure of speaking to almost a hundred of our food and beverage operators at all different levels. What I will say first of all is that there's nothing fair about this. These are people who are in one of the riskiest industries of all time anyway and a lot of them have made it. If left to continue doing what they were doing, some would succeed and some would fail.

For some people, this is really speeding up the failure and really the personal financial ruin of their life. To those people, there's really not much you can say to them. This is the loss of their investment. Sometimes they cashed out their 401k. Sometimes they use their entire savings. We're talking about true financial ruin. It's also very difficult sometimes to say to those people that there are people that are losing their lives because the statistics that are coming out are that there will be hundreds of personal bankruptcies for every death from the Coronavirus. The fallout from that is significant.

The one thing I would encourage people to do is understand, don't judge. When someone is calling you and they want to vent, listen. Don't tell them what to do because most of these people are successful and they got there. They got there on their own with their own sweat and their own grit and their money. I'm seeing two different directions. One is a direction of preservation, and that is the direction that I have gone.

I've realized that the jobs that I have created and speaking with my employees, they don't want to be unemployed forever. They want their jobs back in 30, 45, 60 days whenever we're allowed to operate. My commitment to them is that I'm going to do every single thing in my power to keep healthy so that when we open we can have a full staff and we can have product to sell. We actually sell physical items, so we have to invest in that.

Justin: Sure.

Jody: Then you are seeing groups like Culinaria, which in my opinion, Culinaria is the most well equipped nonprofit in San Antonio food-related to get the message out there. Culinaria has done a fantastic job. They're not only one of the best event throwers in this town. I know you've been to events thrown by Culinaria but I think that Culinaria, their response to this has been amazing. It's been immediate--

Justin: I'm a little embarrassed. What is Culinaria? I know they're non-nonprofit, but what is their actual mission?

Jody: Culinaria is a lot of the reason why San Antonio's gastronomy is on the map. Culinaria is a nonprofit that tells the story. It tells our stories of how we got there and how we created what are some of San Antonio's greatest treasures. That is their job. They don't toot their horn a lot so that's why a lot of people don't know them but they do assist with food and beverage staff when they go through hard times, when they get ill, they have children that say get cancer. When I saw that Culinaria was heading up a to-go restaurant week and stuff, in my opinion, that was the best option for something to succeed.

Justin: Did that come out of the blue, I should know this, or was that Restaurant Week they just flipped to a to-go menu?

Jody: That's Restaurant Week. They already had the process and the procedures for Restaurant Week and Restaurant Week is extremely popular here in San Antonio. They were speaking with a lot of chefs and a lot of industry insiders and that's how they came up with the To-Go in the curbside.

Justin: Okay, I listened to one of your previous podcasts today with a restaurant industry podcast. [crosstalk]

Jody: Sure, yes.

Justin: One of the things that he highlighted in yours and one thing you highlighted was that you listen to your staff.

Jody: Yes, for sure.

Justin: How are they?

Jody: They're down. They know that they were being safe. They know that we were making decisions to social distance. That we are in an outdoor environment. Frankly, they feel like the world needs a Friendly Spot right now. They're down but they're not out. I just had some great response from my staff that did not want to file for unemployment because they thought it was going to hurt me and Steve.

A lot of our people have been with us a long time. They gave me their feedback and they trust me to do the right thing. What they want is their jobs back. They want to be making the caliber of money that they were making the day we closed.

Justin: To the Friendly Spot, I wonder a little bit, one day you offhand told me which turnover rate was and it was just insane compared to every other industry job. Y'all don't have people that leave y'all. Y'all have people that stick around.

Jody: We really do. To tell you the truth, until the day we closed, we were staffing up for the spring. We had a bar staff position open and a kitchen staff position open. Up until the very end, we were hiring. The people that work for the Friendly Spot are some of the greatest people in the world. Some of them I know very well, socially. Some of them I don't really know anything at all.

We have joked that we have this one staff member that's been with us for over five years but we joke he's in the witness protection program.

Justin: [laughs]

Jody: I think we're going to deal with this as a friendly family but for me, the day that I can get those people back to work that's what I'm fighting for. That's what I'm preparing for.

Justin: Hopefully, we have listeners that have never been to the Friendly Spot because they don't live in San Antonio. Recently you started selling alcohol but until then you were always sort of a beer and wine--

Jody: That's right.

Justin: Really beer for the most part and one of the largest beer sellers in South Texas. Fair?

Jody: Yes, for sure. I will tell you that it took us 10 years to be RateBeer's best place to have a cold beer in the state of Texas.

Justin: Very cool.

Jody: That award came the month that my husband and I got our mixed beverage permit which for people that don't know is that it allows us to have liquor. We joked like, "Is this God telling us something different?" We're definitely able to take and make some Friendly cocktails on tap and Friendly frozens that have been great sellers. My staff, one of the things that several of them said to me on Wednesday and Thursday was that we were about to have a record year. They wanted me to know that they knew that and they wanted me to know that this was taking that away from us. I love them for that.

Justin: I was thinking about this. The last time I felt this ominous feeling,...