Party Time

Best and brightest events to celebrate Fiesta San Antonio's springtime return

It's time for Fiesta!

Courtesy of Fiesta San Antonio

Alamo City's favorite party kicks off Thursday, March 31 with many days of celebrations to follow. After the beloved festival was canceled due to COVID-19 shutdowns in 2020 and delayed in 2021, the colorful cultural tradition returns to its spring runtime with more food, music, and entertainment than ever before.

And while you can hardly walk around San Antonio this time of year without bumping into a Fiesta-related event, we’ve rounded up a few of our favorites to put on your radar.

Opening Ceremony, March 31
Taking place at Hemisfair Park, Fiesta Fiesta celebrates the official Opening Ceremony of Fiesta, where guests can enjoy food and beverage, live entertainment, a parade, military salute, and a fireworks finale. Head to fiestasanantonio.org for a full list of food vendors, event map, parade times, and music lineup.

Taste of the Republic, March 31
The fifth annual Taste of the Republic event helps kick off Fiesta 2022 by highlighting the cuisine of Texas. Located at The Good Kind on 1127 S. St Mary’s St., the culinary event runs from 5-9 pm. More details and tickets are available at tasteoftherepublic.com.

A Day in Old Mexico and Charreada, April 3
Celebrating the customs and family traditions of Mexican horsemanship, this family-friendly event features food vendors, ballet folklorico performances, and live mariachi music during the season opening of our charreada — Mexico’s official sport predating and inspiring the American rodeo. San Antonio boasts the oldest Charro association in the United States: established in 1947, the Asociación de Charros de San Antonios aims to preserve the skill of charreria and educate future generations to come. Tickets are $20 and will be available to purchase on the day of the event, which will take place at Rancho del Charro (6126 Padre Dr.).

Tobin Center, April 4
The Tobin Center will host a Texas Cavaliers Fiesta River Parade Party at 6 pm on Monday, April 4, at the Will Naylor Smith Riverwalk Plaza. Limited $20 parking is available for advance at the tobincenter.org.

Hotel Contessa, April 4
Another hotel with special Fiesta programming, Hotel Contessa is offering river parade tickets and dinner tickets, free live music, specialty cocktails, and more. In addition to tickets for three different viewing areas at the hotel for the Texas Cavaliers River Parade, the hotel will host a special pre-fixe dinner beginning at 7 pm. Featuring a three-course dinner and a carafe of cucumber margarita, tickets for the dinner are $150 per person and include direct access to the parade, plus gratuity, tax, and valet parking. The hotel will also be selling its Fiesta medals for $10 at Ambler Texas Kitchen + Cocktails while inventory is available.

The Ford Mariachi Festival
This free, three-day event takes place along the River Walk and features mariachi bands and folklorico dancers from local schools. The tradition began in 1972 and is one of the best ways to enjoy festival entertainment from the comfort of a patio chair, margarita in hand, at one of the River Walk’s many restaurants. Between 6-9 pm every day, boats carrying performers regularly stop along the route, each wearing traditional mariachi and folklorico costumes. Head to thesanantonioriverwalk.com for more info.

A Night in Old San Antonio (NIOSA), April 5-8
This four-night festival in the heart of downtown celebrates San Antonio’s diverse cultural legacy for more than 85,000 revelers annually. Sponsored by and benefiting The Conservation Society of San Antonio, this year’s event will be the 73rd NIOSA presentation. The event, which started in 1936 as a harvest festival on the grounds of Mission San Jose, is now the top fundraiser for preservation in the country with over 155 booths featuring food, drink, decorations, souvenirs, and live entertainment. Head to niosa.org for tickets and more information on each of the event’s 14 culturally themed areas.

Hotel Havana, April 6
While the official Fiesta 2022 medals are available at venues around San Antonio, Hotel Havana will host its own Fiesta Medal Release Party in the hotel bar from 5-10 pm on Wednesday, April 6. The Havana Bar will have tiki drinks from Denim and Leather, music by DJ Heavy Medals, and its 2022 medal for sale for $12.

The Battle of the Flowers Parade, April 8
Known as the founding event of Fiesta San Antonio, the first Battle of Flowers Parade started it all in 1891. The parade began as a patriotic celebration to honor the heroes of the Alamo, Goliad, and the Battle of San Jacinto, and today attracts crowds of more than 550,000. It's also the only parade in the U.S. produced entirely by women. For a full parade route and tickets, head to battleofflowers.org.

Fiesta Flambeau Parade, April 9
One of the festival highlights every year is the illuminated Fiesta Flambeau Parade, which attracts over 750,000 street spectators. Celebrating its 74th year, this year’s parade features The University of Texas Longhorn Band, followed by spectacular floats, marching units, dance groups, and other attractions for a night to remember. The 2022 Fiesta Flambeau Parade theme is “Celebrating Literary Classics,” and both seating information and tickets can be found at flambeau.org.

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Movie Review

Saoirse Ronan plays a WWII-era mother in melodramatic film Blitz

Photo courtesy of Apple TV+

Elliott Heffernan and Saoirse Ronan in Blitz.

The horrors of World War II are 80+ years in the past, yet they remain a fascination for many filmmakers. The latest film to tackle the era, Blitz, is centered around the German Blitzkrieg air raids on London in September 1940, but uses a more personal story to illustrate its impact.

Rita (Saoirse Ronan) lives with her 9-year-old son George (Elliott Heffernan) and her father Gerald (Paul Weller) in the lower class neighborhood of Stepney, but no one in the city is immune from the bombs being dropped by the Germans. The government has opened up some of the Underground (aka subway) tunnels for residents to use as bomb shelters, but the haphazard nature of their availability leads Rita to send George to safety in the countryside to protect him.

George, who is biracial, experiences racist abuse on the train, and instead of remaining with the other children to their destination, he jumps off and tries to make his way back to London. Meanwhile, Rita is doing her best to keep her mind off of George’s absence, working at a munition factory and volunteering at a bomb shelter, not knowing that George has put himself back in danger.

Written and directed by Steve McQueen, the film should be one that elicits emotions relatively easily, with ordinary people dealing with the effects of war and a mother separated from her only child. And while all the elements are present, there’s that certain something missing that leaves the story somewhat uninvolving. McQueen makes you want to see George make it back safely and for Rita to be reunited with him, but there is a degree of sentimentality that’s missing from the film as a whole.

Instead of going down that road, McQueen puts a big focus on the racism and bigotry experienced by various people in the film. Flashbacks give a sense of what George and his dad, Marcus (CJ Beckford), went through prior to the war, and Ife (Benjamin Clementine), a warden who tries to help George find his way home, encounters it multiple times while just doing his duty. While McQueen’s point — that people of color still had to endure acts of hatred in a time when people should have been coming together — is valuable, his methods of showing it are often heavy-handed.

Still, the film is well-made and remains visually engaging throughout. The combination of practical sets and CGI put the viewer right in the middle of the bombed-out London, and there are few missteps with how the city is presented. And even though the main mother-son story is only lightly effective, the trials and tribulations that each go through individually are interesting and occasionally suspenseful.

Ronan is a fantastic actor who might get nominated for an Oscar yet again for her other recent film, The Outrun, but this role pales in comparison. Whether it’s because the 30-year-old is a bit young to be fully believable in a mother role or because of the storytelling missteps, she’s merely good instead of great here. Heffernan does a solid job in his film debut, reacting ably to McQueen putting him through his paces.

Blitz joins the seemingly never-ending well of stories from World War II, and while it doesn’t succeed as mightily as other notable war films, it never becomes anything less than watchable. The family story at its center could have been more heartfelt, but McQueen is still a great filmmaker with a flair for visual composition.

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Blitz is now streaming on Apple TV+.

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