Requiem for a Restaurant

In the shadow of Hemisfair Tower, at the gateway to the King William neighborhood was El Mirador. The Mexican restaurant was surrounded by mansions abandoned after regular river floods, and later restored, Castroville-style caliche homes, and dollified frame houses, gardens with iron gates and nearly no Saint Augustine lawns such as are popular in other San Antonio neighborhoods. 

The proximity of El Mirador to the King William neighborhood, along with its passable coffee and reliably top-notch food made the restaurant an easy meeting place. That's what any good restaurant can do, but in this case, that was just the start. 

In the morning, the breakfast coffee klatch at El Mirador was called to order by an early rising regular who scanned the paper while listening in on the real news, the neighborhood gossip. "Who shot whose dog?!!" The klatch was a tableau of longtime friends and new ones readily welcomed, chowing down breakfast tacos. Politicos rubbed shoulders with preservationists, journalists listened closely. "Time to go!" 

At noon, tables were crowded by clumps of people curing hang-overs, downtown business owner in suits cooking up the next deal, and artists/writers/creative types musing over crispy tacos or Sopa Azteca. 

At the end of the day, enchiladas, other TexMex comfort foods, (and pitchers of margaritas) healed the wounds of the worker warriors of all the classes. 

Behind the scenes were the Treviño family's long-time cook staff, presided over by Mary (pictured above in early years), Julian and Diana's mother and front-door neighbor, who had learned to cook in Mexico. Mary and her husband ran the restaurant for decades while educating a family. Son Julian, who was a school administrator and later school board member, and his wife Diana, bought a large King William home of their own to restore. That was the kind of magic made at El Mirador. In one generation, hard work and education created prospering families. All from countless homemade tortillas. 

From the parking lot, you entered the spell of El Mirador under a cooling bougainvillea arbor. Banana trees lined the portico. Wooden double doors led you into the Saltillo-tiled low-ceilinged building.  Deep red, yellow and gold walls comforted your sun-blinded eyes.

Waiters in white guayaberas, waitresses in peasant blouses and black skirts, each friendly and prompt, took your order. They were delightfully empowered to bring their own personality's uniqueness to the job. One waiter greeted you like an accomplice to an adventure. One waitress told you about her children's progress in school. Another's twinkling eyes told you this job was a side-gig to her full-time job of making merry over any of La Vida‘s daily deliveries. Bring it on, she seemed to say.

Like any human undertaking, El Mirador wasn't perfect. Unlike its name would suggest, El Mirador didn't have a fabulous vista.  My sister slipped and hurt her back on the sloping tile floors. Yet, a dear friend's mother hosted a birthday party for her there. Mary celebrated her 100th birthday surrounded by long-time customers. 

It was an adjunct home for many of us. I looked forward each week to the bean soup on Friday served with handmade corn or flour. There are memories of cheery exchanges, glances, warm embraces, surrounded by giant prints of Botero and Rivera. Two private dining rooms (one so hidden few knew of it) hosted parties, political organizing and funeral wakes.

I drove by last night and saw El Mirador had been razed to make room for a new Rosario‘s restaurant, (which has its own amazing story). 

In the Mexican food Cielito Lindo heaven I hope to occupy one far-away day, I’ll expect to walk beneath Bougainvilleas and banana trees to see Mary Treviño beyond the kitchen counter, poised on a stool, over-seeing the day's production with her exacting standards for salsas and sofritos. 

I’ll pull up a chair with the coffee klatch bunch and chew the fat over the newspaper, comforted by the hum of people talking and the predictable calling out by the waitstaff, 'hot plate!'

History Hologram or Welcome to My Town

 

I traveled the span of 290 years last night at San Antonio's San Fernando Cathedral.

"San Antonio: The Saga" is a unique-to-San Antonio multimedia installation created by French artist, Xavier de Richemont. The projection of images and music upon the walls of the cathedral is a blend of new and old media which premiered in 2014. The 25 minute art/history video uses images to teach local history in the same way stained glass, statues and oil paintings for centuries have taught the lessons of the Bible. It is shown free of charge at Main Plaza on Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 9:00 p.m., 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m.  

We watched with a small group of friends sitting on outdoor pillows amid tables of tourists and locals mindfully spaced apart. This was the third time that I had seen the show over the past few years, but last night it seemed like the first time. Blame it on Covid Fog.

The show has surely outgrown the term from the 1960's, "multi media," which calls to mind the mind-bending 360 degree Dome Show about Texas heritages that was a highlight of HemisFair '68. 

"High Resolution Audio Video Animation Digital Projection" is too clunky. While a new word to more accurately describe the show eludes me, I will try my best to describe what the experience of watching "San Antonio: The Saga" evoked.

We watched while partaking the refreshing autumn climate taking us gratefully into a new season. Against the night sky, the facade of the nearly 300 year old cathedral transformed with brightly colored still and moving images. They drifted, flowed, floated and swept in and out of the frame of the night sky, fitting precisely onto the corners and curves of the ornate, hand-carved surface of the three-story structure.  

The images interacted with the physical surface of the cathedral to create a new medium. For kicks, let's call it a History Hologram: The center medallion on the front of the church above the doors became the face of Quanah Parker, Comanche chief. Later we saw the image of Catholic priest and Mexican revolutionary Padre Miguel Hidalgo and then, the United States' President, Abe Lincoln. The Edwards Aquifer was portrayed as springs gushing from each of the Cathedral's windows. It was a tall order for my Covid Fog brain to make sense of each of the images but the audio collage of music helped to guide the passages from one era to another, from the native flute at the start to "Jessica" from the Allman Brothers at the end.  

Viewing the images and music projected onto the cathedral’s façade brought to mind an idea that we were witnessing the birth of a new medium.  Marshall McLuhan wrote extensively about the evolution of media. It was easy to see the arrival of something new, born from the application of high tech digital projection system onto the three-dimensional facade of the limestone structure displaying beautifully curated images and music to tell the story of San Antonio through the centuries.  

There is something in my brain--maybe the same part that, each time while standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, struggles with the scope and majesty of that natural phenomenon. Similarly, the projection onto San Fernando of color and music was perceived by my eyes, ears and heart as very, very close to real. So close, the mind can temporarily lose any distinctions. It is understandable. The color, sound and size are of such realistic proportion and detail.  They very likely appear just as they would have appeared to anyone walking past the church on the plaza anytime during the past two or three hundred years. Consider, in contrast, the difference in the same representation on a postcard or screen of whatever size, whether still or moving. No contest.

McLuhan might have appreciated the intersection of media and the façade used as an instrument for teaching and transmitting the story of us and our city.

Seeing how the installation was placed on a church, and not a bank or a civic building, I see now that I’ve actually traveled more centuries and than three. In a church, every statue and image has a function and that is to teach a story, a parable, a lesson.  San Antonio: The Saga continues the tradition of teaching a story, now on the exterior of the building. 

Do You Know A Drag Queen With a Story to Share? Contact Me Please

Here is a link to a short film I produced that was used during the exhibit "Jessica St. John: Memories of a Drag Queen at JumpStart Performance Company as part of the Fredericksburg Road Studio Tour. Queen of San Antonio

John McBurney is a San Antonio treasure. He's been helping make pretty many faces in San Antonio for decades. He's a professional make-up artist who has worked in theater productions and movies. John is a performing artist whose characters are camp, sharp and are full of San Antonio flavor as they are curvaceous. 

John, Chuck Squier and I are partnering this year to produce a documentary video that celebrates the fabulous and kick-ass courage of drag culture during the past 40 years in our community.  

What we hope to find: 

Stories about people, who, with their courage to dress up as they wished and to lip synch songs from their favorite singers, used their bright spirits and humor, to fight the often violent homophobia and machismo of the era. 

Photos and film (including video) of local performers
Stories about performing drag
Stories about the changes in drag culture's acceptance
Stories about the courage and persistence performers showed in just being who they are. 

We need your help as a supporter of the project. Send me an email so we can discuss the project and how you might be involved. Perhaps you attended 1960's-2000's drag shows, or you performed in them or like many others, played a backstage role with the artists. Tell us your story and share your photos and movies. Contact Linda at lindaacuellar@gmail.com 

Food, drink, memory

Food, drink, memory

We stopped in for a quick dinner before our long drive back into the Hill Country. 

The waitress was young and friendly and we liked being back where we had enjoyed many lunches and dinners in the past, when the place had another owner and name. The new menu was ambitious, less regional. As we ate our dinner, we were grateful for such good food and service.

As I lurched toward the ladies' room (the building slants several discernible degrees as it has done for the past 70 plus years) past the bar where a few couples sat eating, I suddenly realized I was older than any of the customers or waitstaff, and had known the building before anyone else in the whole restaurant had been born. My memories of the place stretched back to the trio of fellows who moved here from California to open the restaurant in the early 1980's and who set the bar (no pun intended) so high for the present owner. 

I marveled that I had been a witness to a history of a sort, and that so many memories of the place still lingered and meant so much. I thought of the San Antonio celebrities I had run across there in years past: Susie and my brother Israel and I had had the interesting aural surprise one warm Sunday afternoon to hear the voice of the actor Tommy Lee Jones booming from behind us while entertaining his friends over lunch.  I had watched the El Paso writer Dagoberto Gilb duck paying his dinner tab late on a Saturday night while there with writers from Macondo Workshop with Sandra Cisneros. The last time I had walked past the bar there was three years ago when I spotted a handsome and gifted photographer looking much older catching me staring and and probably thinking the same thing about me.

What is great about a place to eat and drink and be with friends is the odd and out-of-focus movie that whirls like a Fellini film. There is a drunkenness that comes from the alcoholic spirits, but also from the people's spirits rising in conversation, storytelling and laughter.  The door opens to new arrivals and waiters in white shirts escort them to tables, all new players on the tilting floorboards of the restaurant turned into impromptu theater. Friends amble by, stop and say hello, and the rooms are charged with smoke and sounds, aromas and energy-- gossip and news, discussion and persuasion. Squeeze past two overcrowded tables, chortles, hey waiter, can I have a slice of Virginia Green's chocolate cake, please?

I sat in the glow of the neon rimmed window where I had sat for many dinners over the decades and remembered the times when for a few minutes the old orb we lived and loved and labored on was transformed to a planet friendlier than before, and even how it traversed the sky changed from straight across to samba shuffle.  I could almost hear the little slanted restaurant's chatter, chairs shuffling and riffs of laughter. Good luck to Minnie's Tavern. You have big shoes to fill at the old Liberty Bar.