So many choices for early morning walks: head downtown and loop around the bend or continue north to the locks and dam. Since this spring and early summer, I have been increasingly drawn southward by the wildflowers blooming along the river’s banks and the water birds hunting for their breakfast of crawdads. After dining, they always neatly arrange a pair of leftover claws on the sidewalk as evidence of their fishing prowess.
I like to walk about 70 minutes or so, and Eagleland is not quite long enough. If you are familiar with the area, you probably know where I head after passing under the railroad tracks….
I’m never the first one. Almost as soon as the work crew leaves in the afternoon, southsiders eager for their stretch of the River Improvements Project to be finished begin to mash down the flimsy orange webbing meant to discourage access to the new pathways skirting the river’s edge. By the time I arrive in the morning, it and its “keep out” message are flat on the ground, easily ignored.
But, until now, no one has uttered a peep about the largest environmental art installation. The mainstream media certainly has missed this boat. Supposedly, this artist is currently focused on gaining permission to suspend fabric over almost six miles of the Arkansas River, but the following photograph stands as evidence he stealthily slipped into San Antonio to execute a piece reminiscent of his earlier works. According to the website of the artist and his late wife:
Wrapped Power Plant, rumored to be the work of Christo, on the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River Improvements Project.
The last time an idea for a wrapping came out of their heads and hearts was in 1975, when they had the idea of wrapping the Pont Neuf in Paris, and then it took them ten years to get the permits.
Remember, you saw it here first, and you should be so grateful to Postcards from San Antonio for giving you the inside scoop that you will not fail to bail Gayle out of jail!
Update on August 28: Access to the first phase of the Mission Reach is delayed by typical gardening woes – weeds growing like weeds. Hopefully the city will use part of this time to round up the stray dogs hanging around entrances to the sidewalks as though thugs hired to guard the paths from impatient pedestrians, runners and bikers prematurely breaching the flimsy orange netting.
Update on September 4: Not sure the artwork is finished yet, but inspected Mark Schlesinger’s painted crowns on the crenulated footbridge this morning. It brought back memories of sitting on the floor with a luxurious new box of 64 Crayolas confronted with a coloring book seemingly demanding monochrome castle walls. Nothing to do but rebel and color each crenulation a different shade plucked from the box. Same sort of satisfaction as giving a Barbie doll a dramatic haircut, except no one would punish me afterwards.
Mark Schlesinger adds color, texture and elements of surprise to his footbridge project, “Up On the On.” Up On The On integrates a repeating pattern of painted, textured rocks alongside natural river rocks. Schlesinger uses the same polymer stucco material he used in the Museum Reach and seeks to combine the urban with the natural. “When, for instance, this urban bridge begins to emerge from a natural flood, it will do so with a colorful, visual softness.” That softness, Schlesinger says, makes a strong statement, without overpowering the forces of nature. Several of the blocks will also glow softly at night.
I found myself wishing his gaudy colors had been applied instead to the giant support columns under the interstate, distracting us like Donald Lipski’s “F.I.S.H.” The thundering echo of cars and trucks zooming overhead also made me wish it were possible to move Bill Fontana’s “Sonic Passages” there as well.
In both the Museum and Mission reaches, Schlesinger’s work leaves me cold, but, of course, a major role of public art is to stimulate thinking, reaction and conversation. And his work achieves that or I would not be blogging about it.
Update on September 12: Amazed at how many people of all ages were out on the Mission Reach at dusk and after dark on Saturday night – many on bicycles. People are ready, even though the plantings are not, even though the banks seem moonscaped more than landscaped.
We were down there because we finally got around to experiencing G&G Mobile Bistro, tracking them southward to 116 West Mitchell, tucked away behind Boneshakers. Parking is limited, but, as half the customers seemed to arrive by bike, that presents no real problem.
Shaded by trees, the new location offers a sweeping view of the river’s voluptuous new curves in the Mission Reach. Once we have something growing, this could actually turn into the prettiest spot along the river’s course through Bexar County and is ideally positioned to catch the evening breeze from the south.
We went out back and ordered the five featured courses for $14, no choices to make. What’s on the blackboard is what you get. Then we went in to grab a not great, but very inexpensive, bottle of wine from Boneshakers, which boasts a pretty impressive beer selection.
Arriving at 7:45, just in time to secure prime seating, seating in short supply by 8:15. Don’t know how they possibly keep track of who ordered one item, three courses or all five, but, somehow our little cardboard cradles came out one at a time, each one delivered to our table precisely as we finished the course before.
The first course featured a mound of caramelized onion on brie served with croutons and slices of apples. The apples had a dose of coarsely ground pepper on them, which I wouldn’t have thought would work. It did. Next was a plastic glass filled with an acorn squash soup, bravely made without ladling in too-rich cream and unexpectedly spiked with a flavor burst or two from chunks of lime pulp. Then we were served a great little salad, followed by pork flavored with balsamic perched on perfectly herbed vegetables. Everything tasted so fresh and healthy. The only course we didn’t care for was the dessert, a flan-cake.
My husband kept repeating G&G is his new favorite restaurant. It’s the type of place you want to tell everyone about on the one hand, but realize the danger that it will soon be too popular for you to get that prime seat. Shhh….
Hope they let us return. Occurred to me on the drive home we committed a food truck faux pas. We completely forgot to return our wine and water glasses to Boneshakers, rudely left them on the table under the trees. We’ll be better next time.
Note Added on September 17: David McLemore’s take on the Mission Reach
Note Added on October 23:
After many a morning walk, I am adjusting to Mark Schlesinger’s Crayola treatment of the crenulated footbridge, but not on any sophisticated terms. I have decided to view this as a magical place for families to weave their own river-based fairy tales, to invent stories of mischievous San Antonio-bred trolls or gnomes. Or maybe they are sprites from other parts of the country, hobos who hopped off the train to dwell under the bridge. Or maybe it’s a spot to ponder philosophically with Winnie the Pooh:
Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.
The best news is that soon we southsiders will no longer have to be “illegal trespassers” on this portion of the Mission Reach. While this stretch of the river will not officially open to the public until late November, the San Antonio River Authority’s spokesperson seems a little harsh on those of us who are eager to walk the river’s banks:
“We know people are already out there,” said Steven Schauer, a spokesman for the river authority. “Maybe we can open so people are no longer breaking the law when they are trespassing right now.”
November 16 Update: The “Christo” is now unwrapped; looked better wrapped. And the River Authority posts photos on its website showing progress along the Mission Reach.
December 30 Update: Now that the Power Plant is unwrapped, Christo is concentrating on the Arkansas River project.
Blame this post on the cowgirl, the one serving as my “gravatar.” She was the first one I stumbled across with part of “San Antonio Song.” Then some postcards in the Anglo Life Series began dishing out portions of the lyrics piecemeal.
Santoniobsessed (apologies for the poor portmanteau), I had to track down the music. Maybe this is the theme song San Antonio needs, I thought. Maybe this could be the After Midnight Blues Band’s greatest hit, I speculated.
Finally found the sheet music written by Tin Pan Alley pioneers, Harry Williams and Egbert Van Alstyne, and published in 1907 by Jerome H. Remick & Co. The pair collaborated on song upon song, many of which endured into the ‘50s and ‘60s to torture young children forced to sit through the Lawrence Welk Show with their parents and grandparents. The songwriters’ sheet music for In The Shade of The Old Apple Tree sold more than 700,000 copies, a record sales level at that time.
Came across this Petula Clark version from Vote for Huggett:
Prepped by Petula, I’ll now punish you with the lyrics of “San Antonio Song.” Remember, this was a huge hit, not just here, but throughout the country, as seen on postcards (too prehistoric for “as seen on t.v.”).
San Antonio Song
Just as the moon was peeping o’er the hill, after the work was through, there sat a cowboy and his partner Bill. Cowboy was feeling blue. Bill says “Come down pal, down into town pal, big time for me and you. Don’t mind your old gal. You know its ‘cold’ pal, if what you say is true. Where is she now” Bill cried, and his partner just replied: [Chorus} San An-to-ni An-to-ni-o. She hopped up on a pony, and ran away with Tony. If you see her, just let me know and I’ll meet you In San An-to-ni-o. You know that pony that she rode away, that horse belongs to me. So do the trinkets that she stow’d away. I was the big mark E. I won’t resent it. I might have spent it plunging with Faro Jack. If she’s not happy there with her chappie, tell her I’ll take her back. No tender foot like him could love her like her boy Jim.
If the lyrics did not convince you to fail to launch a movement for the song’s revival, listening to it surely will. “The Denver Nightingale,” Billy Murray recorded “San Antonio” for Edison the same year the sheet music was written, and the library of the University of California at Santa Barbara has preserved it for us, “San Antonio Song.” Don’t think After Midnight will be rushing to add “San Antonio” to its set list, but, according to Red Hot Jazz, Murray was one of America’s best-selling recording artists during the phonograph era:
Around the turn of the century, Murray joined the Al G. Field minstrels as a blackface singer and dancer. When the troupe traveled East to New York City in 1903, Murray… freelanced for any record company that was willing to pay for his services, and soon became one of the most popular singers in the mid-naught years…. Until microphones were used for electrical recording in the 1920s, recordings had to be done acoustically by the use of a horn. Murray was a master at the acoustic process because certain qualifications were required in order to achieve acceptable results. Soft sounds didn’t reproduce very well, so one had to have a clear, strong voice to achieve acceptable volume during playback. Murray had powerful lungs, excellent intonation, the ability to sing at a rapid-fire speed without taking a breath, and delivered his songs with a distinctive style that’s easy to understand and recognize. In the 1920s, new styles were coming into vogue. Microphones were beginning to replace the early acoustic horns, and the soft whispering style of singing, known as “crooning,” became a favorite. Murray was more used to singing in a full voice instead of toning it down. His popularity waned….
“Cowboy Blues: She broke my heart…and I miss her rabbit stew.” This collage uses the Starmer-designed cover of “San Antonio Song,” original sheet music by Harry Williams and Egbert VanAlstyne copyrighted in 1907. Part of the chorus serves as a backdrop for the “gal” who got away, pictured here as a huntress.
Postcards from San Antonio ~ No 20, “And ran away with Tony.” This postcard is part of an “Anglo Life Series” of postcards dating from 1909 and relating to the lyrics from “San Antonio Song.”
Postcards from San Antonio ~ No 12, “They Rode off into the Sunset.” Couple on horseback at sunset combined with San Antonio cowgirl postcard and song lyrics: “San Antoni Antonio. She hopped upon a pony and ran away with Tony; If you see her just let me know, and I’ll meet you in San Antonio.”
One of the Starmer brothers designed the cover for “That Slippery Slide Trombone” by Williams and Van Alstyne, with lyrics sliding down the slippery slope of sexual innuendos.
Chorus of “The San Antonio Song” written by the Tin Pan Alley pioneer team of Harry Williams and Egbert Van Alstyne in 1907: “San An-to ni An-to-ni-o. She hopped up on a pony and ran away with Tony.”
I’d conclude the music was from some earlier more naive time, still pure enough for replication 50 years later on Lawrence Welk, who “fired Champagne Lady Alice Lon for ‘showing too much knee’ on camera,” but….
Wait. What did Jim mean when he was talking about spending his money “plunging” with Faro Jack? Was that a card game or would that be a trick?
Times were not as naive as I tend to think. “That Slippery Trombone Song” written by the Williams and Van Alstyne team in 1912 was about as subtle as an old blues song peppered with jam and jelly:
That Slippery Trombone Song
Down, down, down in an old Rathskeller, where the strains of ragtime fill the cellar, there’s a musical man. Are you listening? Grandstand trombone “feller,” weepy, creepy, music mellow, from his old trombone would slide, and Lucy would shout as she hustled about just to get up by his side. Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, slide me a ragtime slide. [Chorus] Honey, honey, hear that tone on that slippery slide trombone; Um Ain’t it beautiful! Um Tu-ti-frui-ti-ful! Honey, don’t blow “Home Sweet Home.” Stephen, don’t you ever waste a breath to telephone. Slide, slide, when I glide, glide, glide, to the music of your slide trombone. [Verse 2] Up, up, up from an old Rathskeller, why, they both slipped right up from the cellar, on a slippery night. Are you listening? She and that young “feller,” they went out to slip the preacher, but she slipped upon a stone. She fell with a sprawl; he accompanied his “doll” on his slipp’ry slide trombone. Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, all that she did was moan.
When the Drury family decided to convert the former Alamo National Bank Building into the Drury Plaza Hotel Riverwalk, there was a problem with the location. The 24-story building overlooks the river, but it is on the flood channel. No River Walk passed by its doors.
So they paid for and built one themselves. The Drurys transformed the sidewalks skirting the banks of the San Antonio River from a horseshoe shape into a full circle in the heart of downtown. And in the stretch of River Walk they added, they spared no expense in following the original Robert Hugman concept of making it varied and interesting along the way.
But eliminating those deadends was not enough. Across the river from the hotel the River Walk came to a halt at Main Plaza. The Drurys wanted a footbridge to stimulate foot traffic to and from the recently reconfigured Main Plaza. (We’re not entering the fray about what one preservationist now calls “Maimed Plaza.”) I suggested Rick Drury install one of those coin-tornado gravity wells like the Witte Museum has but with a sign reading “Wishing I could cross here” – thereby enlisting kids to convince their parents to part with every bit of change in their possession.
But the Drurys decided to forge ahead and remedy the situation themselves. The extremely chunky main support post stood forlornly in the river for several years awaiting its reason to exist. Its bulkiness makes it appear as if it was built to withstand a flood, which of course it was.
Then a stark-looking bridge was installed with yellow tape at each end prohibiting crossing for months on end. The bridge is a bit shoehorned in, but again, of course, isn’t the entire Paseo del Rio awkwardly confined in a tight and narrow space? The intimacy created by this is a major part of what makes the River Walk such an incredibly successful urban park.
But finally the aha! moment has arrived. It is now clearly evident what the Drurys were awaiting – the installation of copper panels designed by Isaac Maxwell Metal, a studio where architect Judith Maxwell carries on the tradition of fine craftsmanship nurtured by her late husband. Gentle light shimmers through the pierced panels at night.
While the panels seem overly ornate juxtaposed with the heavy support column (remember, though, its flood-channel location), the metalwork theme is already in place a little upstream in the form of punched-pendant lights the Drurys commissioned. The panels also reference the spectacular original ornamental metalwork and trim filling the hotel’s lobby up to its soaring 50-foot-high ceiling.
Finally, thanks to the Drurys (Father David blesses you), one can actually circle the full river bend on foot and emerge at the doors of San Fernando Cathedral. And parents do not have to empty every nickel and dime out of their pockets for children wishing they could cross there.
So many choices for early morning walks: head downtown and loop around the bend or continue north to the locks and dam. Since this spring and early summer, I have been increasingly drawn southward by the wildflowers blooming along the river’s banks and the water birds hunting for their breakfast of crawdads. After dining, they always neatly arrange a pair of leftover claws on the sidewalk as evidence of their fishing prowess. 
I’m never the first one. Almost as soon as the work crew leaves in the afternoon, southsiders eager for their stretch of the River Improvements Project to be finished begin to mash down the flimsy orange webbing meant to discourage access to the new pathways skirting the river’s edge. By the time I arrive in the morning, it and its “keep out” message are flat on the ground, easily ignored. 
Postcards from Barton Springs 