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City drops jam-packed summer schedule of downtown family fun in San Antonio

SUMMERTIME RADNESS

Photo courtesy of City of San Antonio

For parents, it’s an eternal struggle. Though they look forward to giving their kids a well-deserved break from the academic wind, the energetic flock also needs things to do during the long summer days. Luckily, the City of San Antonio has locals covered with a packed schedule at downtown Travis Park, La Villita, and Market Square.

The affordable family activities start with the ever-popular Movies by Moonlight at Travis Park. Every Tuesday in both months (with a break on July 4), guests can enjoy nostalgic favorites like Cool Runnings, The Karate Kid, and A League of Their Own. A full schedule can be found here.

Over at La Villita, the Alamo Kiwanis are bringing back Fiesta Noche del Rio, a series of cultural performances at the Arneson River Theatre held every Friday and Saturday from June 10 through August 6. Tickets for the dancing spectacular are available online for $8-$20 or can be picked up at any local H-E-B with a business center.

June will also find weekend happenings at Market Square. A rotating assortment of live entertainment will delight visitors every Friday and Saturday from 10 am-6 pm. The attractions will include music, working artists, and, of course, food booths.

Speaking of food, vendors will be popping up downtown throughout the summer. On the second Thursday of every month, guests can marvel at La Villita’s architecture while noshing on favorites from La Villita Cafe and Guadalajara Grill. Guests will also want to check out Lunch Break on Houston Street. On the first and third Thursday of every month, food trucks will park outside the Majestic Theatre with special musical guests.

In case folks are worried about that frequent bugbear — downtown parking — the city has a webpage with an interactive map. San Antonio also offers free parking downtown on Tuesdays from 5 pm-2 am in city-owned parking facilities, and the City Tower Garage provides free parking on Sundays from 7 am-midnight at 117 W. Commerce.

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Popular Hill Country winery to open tasting room in biggest city yet

Bishop Arts News

A winery from Central Texas' wine country is opening an outlet in Dallas. Baron's Creek Vineyards, dubbed one of the most Instagrammable wineries in Fredericksburg, will open a new tasting room and wine lounge in the Bishop Arts District.

The winery, which posted a help-wanted note on the door to the space at 418 N. Bishop Ave., was founded in Fredericksburg, and has three other locations in Georgetown, Granbury, and McKinney. This will be the fifth.

According to Meghan Delgado, who manages the Fredericksburg location, the vineyard aims to open Bishop Arts in mid-October.

A family-owned venture from a trio of businessmen brothers, Baron's Creek opened its first location in Fredericksburg in 2015.

Baron's Creek Vineyards make wines from Texas grapes — the unofficial litmus test for authenticity — but also use grapes from other districts in the U.S. and Spain, from vineyards owned by their winemaker Russell Smith, formerly of Becker Vineyards.

Baron's Creek is a big tourist attraction not only for their wine-tasting options, but also for their on-site villas where visitors can stay overnight. Two Italian-styled villas with six rooms each accommodate up to 24 guests. The vineyard rents out the property, which has a cool outdoor courtyard defined by an almost Alice-in-Wonderland checkerboard pattern of stone platforms, for weddings, corporate retreats, and other special events.

Its satellite locations, including Georgetown Square, Granbury, and McKinney, which opened in 2022, serve as lounge/tasting rooms with flights, tastings, and tapas.

Delgado says that Bishop Arts will be most similar to the McKinney location. "It'll have two separate bar areas, and will definitely be serving food including charcuterie," she says.

Other menu items include a trio of pizzas that include pepperoni and artichoke & goat cheese. The tasting rooms offer mixed flights of five white and red wines or a flight of five red wines for $21/person, as well as wine by the glass.

Texas Book Festival releases full lineup of 300 authors, including Roxane Gay and Ali Hazelwood

meet your favorite authors

After the initial release of the first 16 featured authors at the 2023 Texas Book Festival, the full lineup of guest authors and speakers is here.

More than 300 authors will be at the 28th annual festival, taking place at the state Capitol and along Congress Avenue in Austin on November 11-12. The weekend will be full of panel discussions, author readings, book signings, and much more.

"Our full lineup includes a diverse array of writers from across the globe, as well as a wide range of voices and talents from across Texas, which comprises about a third of our full program," said Texas Book Festival Literary Director Hannah Gabel in a release. "As an organization that supports the freedom to read without restriction or censorship, we’re proud to present a festival program that includes something for everyone."

A late addition, just an hour before the news breaks, is Roxanne Gay, one of the leading voices in contemporary intersectional feminism. Known for her tweets as much as her books like Bad Feminist, Gay represents a rarity in academic writing: relatability. She will be presenting her new book, Opinions: A Decade of Arguments, Criticism, and Minding Other People's Business.

No. 1 New York Times bestselling author Ali Hazelwood – who wrote romance novels Love, Theoretically and The Love Hypothesis – will be in attendance to present her upcoming young adult romance novel Check & Mate.

2013 Pritzker Literature Award winner Tim O'Brien will debut his first book in nearly 20 years: America Fantastica. The satirical fiction novel follows a disgraced journalist's bank robbery and subsequent chase across the country.

Dork Diaries author Rachel Renée Russell will showcase her 15th book in her internationally bestselling series, Tales from a Not-So-Posh Paris Adventure.

In alphabetical order, the first 20 authors and speakers are as follows:

  1. Wendi Aarons
  2. Stacey Abrams
  3. Agatha Achindu
  4. Nana Kwame Adejei-Brenyah
  5. Sylvia Aguilar-Zéleny
  6. Nicole Albano
  7. Charles Alcorn
  8. Asale Angel-Ajani
  9. Andrea Arango
  10. John Manuel Arias
  11. Isa Arsén
  12. Roxanna Asgarian
  13. Alex Aster
  14. Ben Austen
  15. Aaron Bagley
  16. Jessixa Bagley
  17. Chandler Baker
  18. Rebecca Balcárcel
  19. Maya Baran
  20. Derrick Barnes

The Texas Book Festival will be preceded by the 28th annual First Edition Literary Gala on November 9. The event will take place at the Fairmont Austin Hotel, and will be hosted by NPR Morning Edition co-host Steve Inskeep.

More information about the 2023 festival and the full lineup of authors can be found on texasbookfestival.org.

Wildlife advocacy tour treks to San Antonio's spectacular land bridge

BRIDGE TO THE FUTURE

Like many innovations promised by Midcentury America's rush to modernity, the highway system was proposed, plotted, and built with little thought to ecological impact. For wildlife, the shift to private transport was particularly deadly. By some estimates, car collisions kill over a million vertebrate animals daily.

The solution borrows from the transportation playbook, equipping roadways with overpasses and tunnels that connect habitats and allow animals access to resources on the other side of the road. One need not drive very far to witness their impact. Hundreds of deer, possums, and rabbits use San Antonio's Robert L.B. Tobin Land Bridge each day.

The Tobin Land Bridge opened as the United States' largest wildlife crossing in December 2020. In spring of 2021, a spectacular elevated walkway called the Skywalk debuted.

The Northwest San Antonio land bridge is now getting national attention through Wildlife Crossings Across America, a promotional road trip meant to highlight the structure's invaluable role in protecting local ecosystems. The advocacy tour lands in San Antonio on September 17.

The tour is a joint initiative by the National Wildlife Federation's #SaveLACougars Campaign, Big Cat Voices, ARC Solutions, and the Wildlife Crossing Fund. Environmental advocates, photojournalists, and authors will join local officials at each stop to document wildlife crossings at work.

The visits will be blogged on the Save LA Cougars website, and via the Instagram and Facebook accounts devoted to the now-deceased P-22 Mountain Lion. The big cat became the darling of Hollywood when it was first identified in 2012 and the poster puma for the pioneering Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing in Los Angeles.

The hope is to build pressure for more wildlife-friendly infrastructure — initiatives that prevent costly crashes and make cities more adaptable to the climate crisis.

"Saving wildlife amidst a growing biodiversity crisis and rapidly changing climate demands 21st-century solutions," said environmental journalist and author Sharon Guynup, one of the tour's fellows. "Connecting habitat bisected by roadways is key: animals need to move in order to survive."

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