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in this issue
13 Repeating History
Survivors of South Texas’ World War II internment camps see terrifying parallels in Trump’s immigration crackdown Issue 25-16/// Aug 7 - 20, 2025
07 News
The Opener News in Brief
Cityscrapes
CSL’s study trumpeting San Antonio’s Project Marvel mirrors rosy reports the consultant delivers for other cities
Runaway Train
Does San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones have the courage to slow down Project Marvel?
20 Calendar
Our picks of things to do
25 Arts
Reflection and Revelation
Artists Nadia Botello, Fabiola Menchelli and Jason Willome mine meditative territory at Contemporary at Blue Star
Terrifying Tomes
Spooky new San Antonio bookshop Ghoulish Books is lifting up queer horror
31 Screens
Yin and Yang?
The Naked Gun and Together couldn’t be more different, but they’re both worth catching on the big screen
33 Food
Costlier Cup of Joe
San Antonio coffee drinkers face higher prices as Trump imposes 50% tariffs on Brazil
Unfamiliar but Delicious
There’s more than just adobo to savor at Filipino restaurant Kabayan Kusina
Cooking Up
Conversation
Purple-haired Hell’s Kitchen chef Mary Lou Davis celebrates her San Antonio homecoming
41 Music
Rockin’ Rev
Reverend Horton Heat bringing revved-up rockabilly sound to New Braunfels’ Saengerfest 2025
Critics’ Picks
On
the Cover: This week’s cover story examines alarming similarities between World War II-era internment camps in South Texas and the current proliferation of migrant detention centers. Cover design: Ana Paula Gutierrez. Image courtesy of the Holdsworth Photo Collection.
Courtesy Photo Crystal City Pilgrimage
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That Rocks/That Sucks
HLegendary San Antonio musician Flaco Jiménez died late last week, his family announced in a Facebook post. Jiménez, 86, was born into a family of accordion players and became one of the most recognizable conjunto performers and a global icon of Tex-Mex music. The artist was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Grammy and a National Medal of Arts
Pee-wee Herman’s bike is going on display at the Alamo. In conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the release of the late actor Paul Reubens’ Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, the stunt bicycle used in the movie will be displayed at the Ralston Family Collection Center behind the Alamo church beginning Aug. 9. The bike will also be part of the permanent collection at the Alamo Visitor Center and Museum when it opens in 2027.
San Antonio stands to lose a congressional district under a new map proposed by state Republicans at the behest of President Donald Trump. Under the redrawn map, the city would lose one of its five districts and likely a Democratic representative. U.S. Rep. Greg Casar’s district would no longer include Austin, complicating his path to reelection, while U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar could similarly suffer from a loss of San Antonio voters
A pair of San Antonio hotel-restaurant concepts are among the best in the country, according to a new list compiled by OpenTable and Kayak Signature, a Michelin-recognized restaurant at La Cantera Resort and Spa, has been offering Texas and French-inspired fine dining for nearly a decade under the direction of chef John Carpenter. The Study at Dean’s, meanwhile, focuses on craft cocktails with literary names — Abe Asher
Throwing a shit fit with Texas Republicans over the quorum break
Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.
Cue the melodrama and meltdowns.
In a new fit of symbolic rage, the Republican-controlled Texas House voted Monday afternoon to issue arrest warrants for 50-plus Democratic lawmakers who left the state to prevent debate on Gov. Greg Abbott’s controversial and unpopular mid-decade redistricting plan.
Following an 85-6 vote, House Speaker Dustin Burrows announced his plan to immediately sign warrants for the missing legislators and empower state troopers to drag them back to the Capitol.
Well, theoretically, anyway.
In reality, the warrants only apply within state lines, and the Democrats who left the Capitol are now hanging out in Illinois, New York and Massachusetts precisely to avoid being rounded up and returned by state law-enforcement officials.
In a statement released Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott also said he’d mobilized state troopers to help round up the errant Dems. See above for why his announcement is also symbolic, not to mention utterly redundant.
Ever eager to engage in tantrum politics, Grimacing Greg even threatened to declare the departed lawmakers’ seats vacant so he can appoint new toadies that will approve his redistricting map. Good fucking luck with that, according to legal experts.
Adding to the yawn factor, the missing Dems face neither civil nor criminal charges under the warrants.
And before anyone assumes Burrows’ action qualifies as some kind of bold and unprecedented move, remember the Texas House issued identical warrants in 2021 to try to bring back Democrats who flew out of state to shut down an elections bill designed to make it harder for disenfranchised groups to vote.
Under a state law adopted after the 2021 walkout, Democrats who break quorum do face fines of $500 for each day of the session they miss. However, top national fundraisers for the party have pledged to cover those financial penalties.
Get ready for more drama — and more assclown antics — as the summer continues. — Sanford Nowlin
YOU SAID IT!
“They’re no longer an objective opinion. We want someone who’s
going to come and lay fresh eyes — never been here and done this.”
San Antonio data centers used 463 million gallons of water between 2023 and 2024 as the area struggled with drought conditions, a new study from San Antonio Water System found. Data centers, which power AI models, don’t face the same restrictions on water usage that local residents do during droughts and they’re rapidly expanding across Texas. An analyst with the Houston Advanced Research Center estimated that Texas data centers could consume 399 billion gallons annually by 2030.
A bipartisan group of city council members have accused Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones of violating a city ordinance by changing the process by which council members can bring proposals up for debate. Councilmembers Teri Castillo, Marc Whyte and Marina Alderete Gavito argue that Jones can’t make such a change without the approval of council. They’re asking the city clerk to hold an Aug. 15 public meeting to discuss the matter.
Bexar County Jail has once again been found noncompliant during a state inspection, marking the second time this year the jail has failed such a review. During its most recent visit, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards found the jail in violation of a state law requiring that inmates have daily access to common areas, among other compliance issues. There have already been eight deaths at the facility this year. — Abe Asher
Facebook Texans for Burrows
Wikimedia Commons Senior Airman Alexus Wilcox
The
CSL’s study
trumpeting San Antonio’s Project Marvel mirrors
rosy
reports the consultant delivers for other cities
BY HEYWOOD SANDERS
Cityscrapes is a column of opinion and analysis.
The City of San Antonio has finally released an “economic impact analysis” for Project Marvel, its proposed sports-and-entertainment district.
Little surprise the study released last week by consulting firm CSL International projects that new visitors to San Antonio will spend lots of dollars once the arena, convention center expansion, dome improvements and district are done.
The biggest source of that promised upswing in visitor “direct spending” — and all its multiplied cash, jobs and city tax revenue figures — stems from CSL’s projection of more people flocking to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center. And those numbers look impressive: 213,800 annual new hotel room nights, 246,000 “non-local visitor days” and $108 million in annual new “direct spending.”
Those rosy predictions are why cities spend hundreds of millions — indeed billions — of dollars expanding their convention centers, often building impressive new hotels right next door. Last December, CSL shared a presentation with City Council showing what all of San Antonio’s competing cities are up to. And our rivals are unafraid to spend big.
Austin is spending $1.6 billion to demolish its existing center and dig a big hole for one twice the size, according to CSL. Meanwhile, Dallas is spending up to $3
billion reconstructing and expanding its Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, and Fort Worth is weighing in with a $700 million project.
Not to be outdone, Houston will dole out $2 billion in two phases over 10 years to create what city officials there are calling the “most sellable and innovative convention facility in North America.” They envision it as a “vibrant, walkable convention and entertainment district unlike anyplace else in the nation.”
Gee, an “entertainment district” — just like the city staff is talking about for good old San Antonio.
But that’s just Texas.
The CSL folks and a representative of the Populous architecture firm also shared a map with City Council in December showing new and proposed “North America Peer Facility Investments.”
That array of projects is similarly impressive, from Boston’s $400 million convention center expansion to the Orlando, Florida area’s $560 million outlay to New Orleans’ $557 million. LA plans to dish out $1.4 billion for its proposed project, and Seattle’s expansion will run $1.9 billion.
Why are all these communities busy expanding convention centers and building hotels in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which diminished downtowns across the country? One answer is that they keep hearing from consultants that an expansion will bring thousands of new convention attendees, generate thousands
ballroom spaces.
For its part, Phoenix contracted with CSL in 2019 and again in 2022. The consulting firm advised that the city needed to create a “distinctive convention and entertainment district,” including a new 800- to 1,200-room hotel along with street-level retail, restaurant and entertainment uses. Beyond that, the consultant advised the city to invest in more mixed-use development and improve “walkability” to grow its convention business. CSL also recommended a 150,000-square-foot exhibit hall expansion.
Sound familiar?
For Los Angeles, CSL recommended an expansion program including “increased and enhanced exhibit space,” more nearby hotel rooms, a large new ballroom, more meeting areas and “informal meeting/gathering spaces,” including some located outdoors.
more in hotel room nights and leave behind hundreds of millions in dollars annually.
For example, in the case of San Antonio, CSL projects we’ll continue to see those big bucks roll annually over 30 years’ time. Interestingly, a common thread runs between SA and many of those other projects.
In January 2020, Massachusetts received a study saying an expansion of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center would boost the number of annual hotel room nights from a 2014-2018 average of 509,000 to 855,000. That’s a whopping 68%, in case you don’t have your calculator handy.
The consulting firm that forecast such big growth? Why, once again it was CSL.
Orlando undertook its project armed with an analysis of the proposed expansion. The “market feasibility study” from CSL International called for more ballroom space, improved connectivity, outdoor event space, informal meeting and gathering spaces along with “enhanced walkable restaurants and nightlife” within the convention center’s vicinity.
In October 2015, New Orleans got its own CSL study of market demand and economic impact from a convention facilities expansion. The consulting firm recommended the development of “unique, creative outdoor/covered space,” a large new headquarters hotel and planning for additional exhibit, meeting and
All those improvements were forecast to boost the center’s total annual hotel room nights from an average of 287,400 to more than 408,000. As a result of all those new out-of-town visitors, CSL predicted that economic impact from direct spending would grow from $223.4 million annually to more than $302.2 million.
Then there’s Seattle, which completed an expansion that effectively doubled the size of its convention center. CSL’s analysis of the Seattle venue recommended a significant increase in exhibit space, including the addition of more than 300,000 square feet, a major new ballroom, more meeting rooms, a large new headquarters hotel, outdoor space and a “walkable hotel, restaurant, retail and entertainment area.”
From city to city, year after year, the analysis, conclusions and recommendations sound remarkably the same. And those recommendations produce just the same kind of forecast — thousands of new convention attendees, more hotel room nights, hundreds of millions in new economic impact.
In 2003, CSL forecast that an expansion of Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Convention Center would boost hotel room night generation from an annual average of 503,000 to 786,000. In 2024, the expanded facility generated 411,315 hotel room nights. It’s never even come close to that 503,000 number again.
Other projections by the consulting firm have also missed the mark.
Now San Antonio can join the crowd, trust in the CSL forecasts and hope for the best.
Shutterstock / Habs Photography
Runaway Train
Does
San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones have the courage to slow down Project Marvel?
BY MICHAEL KARLIS
The following story is a piece of opinion and analysis.
New San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’ early political missteps may have put her in a tough leadership spot, and they come as Project Marvel — an ambitious $4 billion plan to develop a downtown sports-and-entertainment district, including a new Spurs arena — careens ahead at breakneck speed.
However, Jones could redeem herself by delaying negotiations with the NBA team’s ownership — if she has the courage. After all, such a move appears to have the full support of three council members with two others signaling they also may be open to tapping the brakes.
Indeed, the pace of the negotiations over the new arena, estimated to cost $1.5 billion, is historically brisk compared to those related to pro-sports facilities in other cities.
For example, it took two years to hammer out details around the Sacramento Kings’ new arena before that city approved $223 million in public financing. And discussions about a new arena for the Oklahoma City Thunder began in 2022 but didn’t result in a city-approved development agreement until May 2024.
In contrast, San Antonio city officials only started publicly discussing Project Marvel last November.
Fast forward to today. San Antonio City Manager Erik Walsh is now pushing Jones and council to sign off on public financing for a project where she wasn’t even privy to initial discussions.
Indeed, it was prior Mayor Ron Nirenberg who put Project Marvel and the new Spurs arena on a fast track, likely in a bid to cement his legacy. City Council at the time — with the exception of District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez and District 5 Councilwoman Teri Castillo — happily obliged.
But a new council was sworn in alongside Jones, nearly half of them new to the dais. And things appear to be shaping up differently.
During a special meeting Jones called
Friday on Project Marvel, District 6’s new councilman, 24-year-old Ric Galvan, expressed concerns about financing the city’s portion of the new arena via Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ). Both Galvan and economists argue the use of a TIRZ would shift existing tax revenue from the city’s general fund, which could result in long-term harm to services such as police and schools.
District 4 Councilman Edward Mungia, another first-termer, raised similar questions. He asked Walsh if funds from the proposed TIRZ could be transferred to help cover the city’s debt payments, which have exploded as it faces a $170 million-plus budget deficit.
District 9’s Misty Spears, a staunch conservative, said her constituents are “just asking for more information and time so that they can make educated decisions.”
Further, Castillo’s and McKee-Rodriguez’s skepticism remains unchanged. On Friday, the District 2 councilman pointed out that the city holds the leverage in negotiations with the Spurs, not businessman Peter Holt and rest of the team’s ownership.
“I know we’ve recently heard from the Spurs that if we don’t do this, they need to begin thinking about a long-term plan, which may be outside of San Antonio,” McKee-Rodriguez said. “The reality is, if the Spurs want to move to another city, they’re going to have to find another local government that is willing to — in this political and economic climate — view this opportunity as we do, and will be asked to make an investment of the same amount, if not more.”
McKee-Rodriguez continued: “I’d be willing to bet that they’d have better luck working out a better deal here.”
Jones didn’t disagree, telling reporters after Friday’s marathon meeting that she believes San Antonio could get a superior deal to the one now being thrown around.
“Why can’t we be a little bit bolder in our ask?” Jones said. “We don’t do this every day. This is a generational investment. Now is the time to negotiate.”
So, what is the big rush, exactly?
The San Antonio Spurs’ lease at the Frost Bank Center doesn’t end until 2032.
Although the Frost Bank Center is nearly three decades old, it’s still newer than more than half of the arenas in the NBA.
Perhaps the Spurs are trying to capitalize on Jones’ seemingly compromised public perception after her early headbutting with some on council.
Leading up to Friday’s meeting, Jones garnered negative press for her decision to singlehandedly revise how Council Consideration Requests are brought up for discussion. Coincidentally, mere hours before Friday’s special meeting, a leak suggested the Spurs are willing to cough up more than “$1 billion” toward Project Marvel, leading the Express-News Editorial Board to call the offer a “no-brainer.”
In reality, the Spurs are more or less guaranteeing $500 million to fund the arena, covering about a third of its cost.
Another $500 million would hypothetically go to unspecified, non-timeline binding “adjacent downtown development,” while $60 million would fund “community incentives.”
But, hey, don’t read too much into the details.
Jones is still catching bad headlines.
On Tuesday, the Express-News Editorial Board ran an opinion piece titled “Mayor Jones, loosen your grip on the gavel at San Antonio City Hall,” calling her out for a heavy-handed leadership approach.
Amid the negative press, would the new mayor also turn down $1 billion in free money from our beloved Spurs? The audacity!
Here’s the reality: half of City Council appears willing to return to the negotiating table and the vast majority of members from the public who testified at City Hall on Friday expressed similar sentiments.
Jones would be wise to do the “audacious” thing and turn down the Spurs’ latest offer.
After all, the public doesn’t even know specific details about what the arena would look like or how many seats it will have, and it’s being generous to call the financial details “murky.”
Jones is a sharp technocrat and expert parliamentarian, as she displayed during Friday’s meeting. Whether she has the political backbone to rise above the noise and pump the brakes on Project Marvel remains to be seen.
Public Domain Andy Morataya
Repeating History
Survivors of South Texas’ World War II internment camps see terrifying parallels in Trump’s immigration crackdown
BY DEAN ZACH
For the first four years of his life, all Hiroshi Shimizu knew was imprisonment.
After Pearl Harbor, law enforcement arrested his mother and father because they happened to be of Japanese descent, and he was born a U.S. citizen in a concentration camp in Central Utah. The family bounced from camp to camp, including California’s notorious Tule Lake, before being sent to San Antonio by train, stopping at the domed station west of downtown that now houses VIA’s headquarters. There, the Shimizus were put on a bus to the largest family concentration
camp in the U.S.
Officially called the Crystal City Enemy Detention Facility, the camp located in scrubland an hour and a half southwest of San Antonio concentrated families of Japanese, German and Italian descent from 1942 to 1948. The detention site had its own schools, sports fields and even a swimming pool.
Today, another detention site has opened in a nearby South Texas town, and like the Crystal City facility, it’s specifically designed to hold families and has been described by government officials as being humane. Like Crystal City, it’s also located on the site of a former migrant labor camp.
Officially called the Dilley Immigra-
tion Processing Facility — formerly the South Texas Family Residential Center — the new camp also is replete with schools, sports fields and a playground. It concentrates migrant families, both recent arrivals and longtime residents, in a complex of white tents and trailers in the South Texas community of Dilley, a short bus ride from Crystal City and just an hour’s drive from the Alamo City.
With the Trump administration undertaking the most severe anti-immigrant crackdown in decades and human rights advocates raising concerns about the dangers of immigrant lockups like the one in Dilley, survivors of the Crystal City camp are reliving what they thought they’d left in the past.
“The parallels are really horrifying,” said Shimizu, now 82. “It does conjure up the experience we had.”
“You can’t just walk out”
Shimizu’s memories of Crystal City are a little rosier than those from Tule Lake,
MKazumu Julio Cesar Naganuma (left) and Hiroshi Shimizu stand in front of photos at the My Story Museum showing the camp where they were imprisoned.
where he and his immediate family were forcibly and permanently separated from their grandfather, who attempted suicide after learning of their imminent departure.
“Being older, I was allowed to run around with kids my age, and so I had those kinds of rich experiences,” Shimizu said. “And then we had a swimming pool. And I actually remember going into that pool … . I really hesitate to say it was, you know, a good experience, but it was better than what I came from.”
Even so, Shimizu rejected the rosy portraits of historical revisionists such as right-wing author Lillian Baker, who compared World War II-era internment sites to summer camps.
“You can’t get out, you’re in prison,” he
Courtesy Photo Crystal City Pilgrimage Committee
said. “You can’t just walk out.”
The experience left enough of a mark on Shimizu that he serves on the board of the Crystal City Pilgrimage Committee, which organizes an annual gathering of survivors of the detention site for a weekend of remembrance, healing and activism.
“After all these decades, you can tell some of your newer friends about it, and most of them cannot imagine that it took place,” said Kazumu Julio Cesar Naganuma, 83, another Crystal City survivor who works to organize the annual pilgrimage.
Now a U.S. citizen, Nagunuma was born in Callao, Peru, the youngest of eight children. One day in 1944, FBI agents showed up at the laundry business owned by his father, who’d lived in Peru for 20 years.
The family was swept up as part of a nameless prisoner-exchange program facilitated by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the predecessor to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The program — little known to this day — disappeared thousands of Latin American civilians of Japanese, Italian and German descent to camps in the U.S. — including Crystal City and the Enemy Alien Detention Station at Fort Sam Houston — so they could be swapped for American POWs held abroad.
Another of those disappeared to Crystal City was an El Salvadoran man named Friedrich Walter Schlösser. In another eerie parallel to current times, Schlösser in 1942 wrote in his diary that El Salvador’s then-president stated he could instead “build the best concentration camp in Central America” with money the U.S.
MPhotos show the Crystal City internment camp when it was in use during World War II.
charged for people it abducted under the prisoner-exchange program.
Naganuma’s father was given three days to pack up his life in Peru. Forced onto a ship to the U.S., the family endured filthy, sickening and crowded conditions. Before landing in New Orleans, U.S. officials confiscated the family’s Peruvian passports so they would land as “undocumented aliens” whom the government could disappear as they saw fit.
In New Orleans, the Naganumas were forced to strip naked, then sprayed with the insecticide DDT. Then they were sent to Crystal City, where they suffered bouts of tuberculosis. After the war, the family was able to avoid “deportation” to Japan, a country where Naganuma had never been, and settled in San Francisco.
Historical revisionists can whitewash the experience of being kidnapped from one’s home and taken to a camp, Naganuma said, because they never had to endure the painful experience.
“In my father’s case, you know, he made a wonderful living for a couple decades, and he had seven children. And for everything, for his whole livelihood to be taken away and to board a ship … and to do that all within three days after you lived there for decades,” Naganuma said.
“You lost so much, your job, your property, everything you’ve worked so hard
for. So, I think that part of it, these people that are talking about it being a summer camp, they need to put themselves in that position … . Only if they were taken and kidnapped that way would they kind of understand.”
Through their work with the Crystal City Pilgrimage Committee, Shimizu and Naganuma will help organize this year’s Crystal City Pilgrimage, scheduled for Oct. 9-12 alongside the city’s annual Spinach Festival.
The pilgrimage will include visits to Crystal City’s newly renovated My Story Museum along with remnants of the camp: a scattering of slabs, flagpoles and an empty swimming pool in a scrubby field behind a Crystal City ISD complex.
The weekend also will feature panel discussions on the solidarity between Crystal City’s survivors and Chicano rights activists
and on the White House’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to disappear Venezuelan nationals, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to camps in El Salvador today.
As they did during the first Trump administration, attendees also plan to protest the president’s mass-deportation agenda.
In 2019, Shimizu and Naganuma joined Crystal City survivors and Japanese American advocacy group Tsuru for Solidarity in a demonstration in front of the Dilley camp. The protest included taiko drummers, 30,000 origami cranes and a large blue banner reading “No more U.S. concentration camps.”
“For the Pilgrimage coming up in October, we’re planning some sort of rally to support families and protest against breaking up families and incarcerating
Courtesy Photo Heidi Gurcke Donald
Public Domain
Courtesy Photo Heidi Gurcke Donald
them — the kids separately from their parents,” Shimizu said. “Which is a step or two beyond what they did to us.”
Those who wish to join the pilgrimage can register on the organization’s website, crystalcitypilgrimage.org. Registration closes Aug. 9.
Business as usual in Dilley
At a late-May special meeting of the Dilley City Council inside the town’s sleek, clean city hall, a gold-fringed American flag hung behind the dais. An eagle with outstretched wings topped the flagpole.
Dilley Immigration Processing Facility administrator Jose Rodriguez Jr. sat in the front row. He wore a lanyard identifying him as an employee of CoreCivic, the private prison company that operates the camp. Recently hired assistant camp administrator Jeffrey Fikes sat beside him wearing a U.S. Army lanyard.
After council moved to discuss a memorandum of understanding between the Dilley Police Department and CoreCivic, Rodriguez took to the lectern and provided an update on camp operations.
He opened with the numbers. As of May 20, 180 people were held in the site’s only open-housing unit — “31 adult males, 53 adult females, 96 children” and “60 family units.” The company plans to open all five housing units by Nov. 5, he added, bringing the camp to its total capacity of 2,400 people.
That increase will come exactly one year after Trump’s election to a second term.
The administrator also discussed the glut of applications for job postings at the detention facility, among them mental health counselor, chaplain and various nursing positions. He went on at length about the amenities provided to imprisoned families, including the one pantry, one phone room, single fridge and two microwaves to be shared by the 480 people in each housing unit.
Then Rodriguez described the recent Cinco de Mayo and Mother’s Day activities held inside.
“The kids actually prepared Mother’s Day cards and did a little bit of finger painting,” he said. “We try to celebrate all the holidays with the residents and just try to take their minds away from the environment they’re in, even though it’s, you know, not a bad environment, their situation. So, yes, we look forward to Father’s Day coming up in June, so we’ll have some activities planned.”
Left unmentioned during Rodriguez’s
Women (above) and children (below) pass between buildings at the Dilley camp when it was in use during the first Trump administration.
address to Dilley City Council was the death of 21-month-old Mariee Juárez inside the camp.
On May 10, 2018, three days before Mother’s Day, six weeks after being packed into a room in the facility with other sick children, Juárez died of a respiratory illness. Her mother Yazmin Juárez later testified before Congress that all she had with her after she left the hospital following her daughter’s death was a piece of paper painted with Mariee’s handprints that nurses made as a Mother’s Day gift.
“If ICE’s detention center had just been safe and sanitary — and if they’d given my daughter the proper medical care she needed — Mariee might still be here today, preparing to celebrate her third birthday in August,” Yazmin Juárez told Congress in 2019, NPR reports.
After rubber-stamping an agreement letting Dilley police enter the CoreCivic camp to conduct criminal investigations, council then moved onto other business, such as awarding bids for the operation of a pool concession stand and deciding which band would play first in the city’s Fourth of July Festival.
The Current approached CoreCivic administrator Rodriguez in the parking lot after the meeting. He declined comment on the camp beyond his remarks in front of council and directed further questions to Ryan Gustin, the company’s head of public affairs.
Emailed for comment on recent reports of inhumane conditions in the Dilley lockup, Gustin deferred questions to ICE. In turn, ICE officials deferred to the Department of Homeland Security, which didn’t reply to the Current’s inquiries.
More camps coming
Following the meeting, Dilley City Administrator Henry Arredondo told the Current he expected CoreCivic’s migrant holding facility to be an economic benefit to the town.
“It employs a lot of local people,” Arredondo said. “They’re, you know, good-paying wages, up to U.S. standards with benefits and health insurance. Those are hard to come by.”
When asked whether he expects out-oftowners, including survivors of the Dilley camp, to reconvene in town 80 years from now, just as those who endured the Crystal City detention site do today, Arredondo hesitated.
“I can’t — I don’t know, because we’re over here in South Texas, and there’s
always been immigration, you know, coming and going through here,” he said.
When asked whether he’d be open to visiting the site of the Crystal City camp, Arredondo said he’d consider it.
“I like history,” he said. “It’s important to have open communication, and a lot of respect. Because at the end of the day, we’re all human beings. We all have common goals … provide safety for our families, all that kind of stuff.”
Around the time of Dilley’s reopening, Target Hospitality Services, the camp’s housing and dining provider, issued a press release projecting it would make $30 million in revenue in 2025 from what company officials described as a “seamless community reactivation” of the facility’s “open and safe environment.”
Indeed, it appears that the Dilley site’s reopening is only the beginning when it comes to the White House’s plans to set up camps to house people detailed by ICE.
The “Big, Beautiful” megabill Trump signed into law last month contains $45 billion alone for detention sites that could lock up an estimated 100,000-plus people.
Soon, the Dilley detention center may not even be the nearest family camp to Crystal City.
Documents obtained by the ACLU in April reveal that Target Hospitality submitted a bid to ICE to open a family camp with 300-plus beds outside Carrizo Springs, a 20-minute drive from Crystal City.
“Ability to expand to meet any demand,” read bullet points in Target’s pitch. “Hard-sided, non-punitive environment (like Dilley).”
“Currently awaiting utilization and activation,” the last bullet point noted.
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a frequent critic of Trump’s immigration policies, has noticed the connection between the expansion of internment sites in the 1940s and the current buildout of detention centers.
“We hold out what happened during World War II and the internment of Japanese, German Americans, Italian Americans, as a kind of horror that we would never want to see again in the United States of America,” the San Antonio Democrat said after visiting the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center two hours east of Dilley last Friday.
“But that’s exactly the direction that the Trump Administration is heading when you see ICE agents on the street with masks, with no badge, with no identification going and snatching people up. That’s exactly where we’re headed, and I think, like many
folks, I’m hoping that we don’t get there, but we’re certainly headed there.”
A World War II-era internee from Costa Rica, Heidi Gurcke Donald, 85, was imprisoned as a 3-year-old in Crystal City alongside her sister, her German father and her American-citizen mother.
Gurcke Donald now works with the German-American Internee Coalition (GAIC), an advocacy group that aids those seeking information about those of German descent who were disappeared or interned during the 1940s. To this day, Americans and Latin Americans of German and Italian descent have yet to receive any compensation or acknowledgment of wrongdoing from the U.S. government.
Gurcke Donald said she’s not optimistic about the current political climate.
“I think a new administration might close Dilley again … and stop calling every single immigrant a rapist and a gang member … but the division in the country is, I believe, humongous, and I don’t know whether it’s going to hold together,” she said.
Gurcke Donald added that GAIC continues to receive requests from people looking for loved ones who disappeared under the U.S. government’s prisoner-exchange program. Sometimes the organization can help. Other times, it’s unable to find the individuals’ whereabouts.
“If the current administration has its way, a lot will be whitewashed or simply removed from history books,” she added. “The separation of families in Trump 1.0 is already just a footnote. The [old Crystal City historical marker, which neglects to mention families of German and Italian descent] is both beautiful and a lie … . The immigrants sent to Panama’s Darien Gap, those sent to Costa Rica, those in El Salvadoran prisons — who will remember them?”
“It’s always with you”
For all of the talk of facts and figures at the Dilley City Council meeting, no one voiced concern about the potential physical and psychological harm that might stem from detention in the town. Immigrant-rights advocates and pediatricians have repeatedly raised concerns about the toll the camps take on those held prisoner inside, especially children.
It seems likely that, as in the ’40s, there will be many stories left untold out of shame and “Gitterkranheit,” or fence sickness.
As Eddie Friedman — a Jewish man imprisoned alongside self-proclaimed Nazis because all of them were of Ger-
man descent — once explained, those interned during World War II began to “feel like a criminal.”
“When you finally get out, you would rather not talk about the past,” he added. As in that earlier era, some caught up in mass deportations will die without ever again calling a place home. There will be those who die unreported deaths from diseases such as tuberculosis or bacterial infections or respiratory illnesses which are easy to contract in detention camps, as writer Jack Herrera warned this March in the New Yorker.
And, now as then, there will be plenty of trauma to go around. After University of Illinois-Springfield law professor Deborah Anthony did pro-bono work at the Dilley detention site in 2019, she described the harrowing situation faced by women and children there in a gripping online post. Even though Crystal City survivor Shimizu left that South Texas camp behind 78 years ago, the camp never left him.
“It’s not like a guiding principle or anything, but it’s always, it’s never not there,” he said. “Our parents couldn’t deny that it happened to us, because, you know, we were right there. That experience was never shrouded in that way to us, and we never forgot it either.”
Fellow survivor Naganuma agreed.
“It’s always with you, because you’re reminded in different reasons in the news for their day-to-day,” he said. “There’s a saying that we have about stop repeating history, and that’s what’s going on right now. And it’s important that anyone, everyone … fight back about this and protest about it.”
Naganuma acknowledged he’s not as involved in trying to keep public awareness alive as he could be. Age has made it harder to continue that mission.
“But you know, I listen to the news and see what’s going on,” he said. “It’s a shame that not just this but so many other laws are being broken, and everything’s going to go through the courts. And by that time, hopefully the new administration will be [here] in next four years, but it’s going to take that long … and meanwhile, people are suffering.
“I feel, especially now that I’m older, rather helpless. I don’t have that kind of energy to do things that I would like to. And most of us that are still surviving from the camps, we’re all in our 80s, some even older.”
He paused. “I think our country has a short memory.”
ONGOING - WED |
08.20
VISUAL ART
READYMADE REMIX AT SAMA
Curated by Lana Meador, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Readymade Remix: New Approaches to Familiar Objects, explores how artists transform mundane materials into conceptually rich works of art. Here’s a brief Art History 101: In 1917, cheeky French artist Marcel Duchamp, under the pseudonym R. Mutt, submitted a urinal as a sculpture entitled Fountain to the Society of Independent Artists in New York. It was, of course, rejected. However, what Duchamp did succeed in doing was question the very nature — and the privilege of — what is considered an art object, forcing a shift in perception that endures to this day. Such objects are referred to as “readymades.” Meador’s exhibition draws from the museum’s collection, highlighting the skill, intelligence, humor and audacity it takes to present objects in a speculative context. Free for children 12 and under to $22 general admission, San Antonio Museum of Art, 200 West Jones Ave., (210) 978-8100, samuseum.org. — Anjali Gupta
FRI | 08.08SAT | 08.09
SPECIAL EVENT
CENTRAL LIBRARY SUMMER BOOK SALE
The Book Cellar, run since 1998 by the Friends of San Antonio Public Library on the first floor of the enchilada-red Central Library, has served as a veritable cornucopia for San Antonio readers. The retail spot offers books ranging from Virginia Woolf novels to coffee-table tomes full of desert Southwest photographs, all 100% guaranteed to be free of AI slop. Now, just in time for the start of the school year, the Book Cellar is holding its seasonal two-day sale in the Central Library’s auditorium. For just $10, browsers will receive a reusable bag which they’re free to fill with as many books as their bibliophile hearts desire. Of course, individual paperbacks or hardcovers go for a buck or two, respectively. Proceeds benefit the Friends of the San Antonio Library and the library’s many programs, all of which can be found at the events calendar on the SAPL website. $1-$10, 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Central Library, 600 Soledad St., (210) 207-2500, mysapl.org. — Dean Zach
H-E-B CINEMA SERIES: THE GOONIES
The Goonies (1985) is celebrating its 40th anniversary. And what better way to bask in glorious nostalgia than to catch the cult film favorite on the 18-by-32-foot LED video wall in the Will Naylor Smith River Walk Plaza, the Tobin Center’s outdoor venue. The H-E-B Cinema Series will transport viewers back in time as they watch a teenage cast including Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen, Corey Feldman and Kerri Green save their neighborhood via an amalgam of pirate treasure map adventures and campy coming-of-age comedy antics. No outside food or drinks are permitted, but the open-air venue offers concessions and a full bar. Moviegoers are encouraged to bring their own lawn chairs or blankets. The cinema nights take place every second Saturday of the month, rain or shine, moving indoors if necessary. Free, 7 p.m., Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, 100 Auditorium Circle, (210) 223-3333, tobincenter.org. — Rae Drady
Courtesy Photo SAMA
Courtesy Photo Central Library
Warner Bros
SUN | 08.10
SPECIAL EVENT
STICK ’N’ POKE RESIDENCY AT SON OF A SAILOR TATTOOS
Handpoke is machine-free tattooing. Also referred to as “stick ’n’ poke,” this method uses the same ink, needles, stencils and general supplies as machine tattooing, but it’s a gentle, slower method that uses pointillism to create line work. The needle is driven in by hand rather than by an electrified apparatus. The tattoos are permanent, and can be done in many styles, sizes and placements. During this pop-up, handpoke artist Annika Case of San Antonio’s Pen and Pencil tattoos will offer her talents via a one-day pop-up residency at San Antonio’s Son of a Sailor Tattoos. Free to observe, tattoos priced according to difficulty, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., 904 Nolan St., limited appointments available via hi.there@sonofasailor.co. — RD
WED | 08.15
MOZZARELLA MURALS AT THE SAN ANTONIO BOTANICAL GARDEN
Say cheese! Foodies can come together at the San Antonio Botanical Garden’s Culinary Garden for a fun, interactive workshop that looks behind the scenes of mozzarella-making. Participants will learn how cheese goes from curds to a perfectly stretched ball, then put their new skills to work by using garden-fresh ingredients to design their own edible flatbread “Mozzarella Murals” paired with a seasonal caprese. This class is open to all ages and skill levels. For safety, participants will be paired up when using tabletop burners, so bring a friend or make a new one. The class will be taught by the San Antonio Botanical Garden’s team of culinary experts. Registration closes on Wednesday, Aug. 13 at 6 p.m. $30 members-$35 non-members, 6-8 p.m., 555 Funston Place, (210) 536-1400, sabot.org. — Kat Stinson
Courtesy Photo Annika Case
SAT | 08.16
SPECIAL EVENT
WEAVING WORKSHOP AT RUBY CITY
Represented in the summer group exhibition “Synthesis & Subversion Redux” at Ruby City, Jenelle Esparza’s interdisciplinary practice covers anything from photography and printmaking installation to the fiber arts. It’s the last that guides this hands-on workshop exploring the underside of cultural memory, labor and identity by reflecting on the little-known histories of cotton production and generational labor of our region. Esparza’s relaxed, meditative workshops have proven to be wildly popular, so it might be a good idea for anyone interested to waste no time in emailing Ruby City’s Ashley Mireles at amireles@rubycity.org. All materials will be provided. Free, 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Ruby City, 150 Camp St., (210) 227-8400, rubycity.org. — AG
TUE | 08.19
TPR CINEMA TUESDAYS: LA PISCINE
The 25th edition of Texas Public Radio’s Cinema Tuesday series is winding down in parallel with summer, and programmers have picked a perfect film to distract viewers from the scorching terror of August. The 1969 French thriller La Piscine or The Swimming Pool, recently restored in full color, features the sizzling Alain Delon and Romy Schneider as Jean-Paul and Marianne, a couple vacationing on the Côte d’Azur in a friend’s well-appointed villa hugging the glittering waters of the Mediterranean. When Marianne’s ex, Harry (Maurice Ronet), and his 18-year-old daughter Penelope (Jane Birkin) unexpectedly pay a visit, all sorts of psychological warfare and seductive intrigue ensue, and the cerulean waters of the titular pool don’t stay that way for long. It’s gripping thriller, a diversion in the dog days of summer, a chance to see ridiculously beautiful faces blown up on the movie screen and a chance to provide financial support to TPR as public media comes under attack. What more could you ask for? (Besides temps under 100 degrees, of course.) Suggested donation $17 or $12 for TPR members, 7:30 p.m., Santikos Northwest, 7600 I-10 West, (210) 614-8977, tpr.org. — DZ WED | 08.20
VETERAN’S WRITING COLLECTIVE AT GEMINI INK
The Veteran’s Writing Collective (VWC) invites active-duty service members, veterans, retirees and their immediate family members to join a workshop dedicated to the craft of writing. Participants of all skill levels and genres are encouraged to share their work and receive constructive, encouraging feedback from peers and mentors. Whether you’re just getting started or already deep into a manuscript, this supportive community is here to help you express yourself and grow as a writer. The class is led by Sara Colby, who holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Sierra Nevada College in Reno, Nevada. A mother to a son in the Navy and wife to an Army chaplain, Colby is working on a manuscript of poetry about her experiences as a military family member. Those interested in joining the next virtual session can email veteranscollective@geminiink.org. Free, 6:30-8:30 p.m. via Zoom, Gemini Ink, 1111 Navarro St., (210) 734-9673, geminiink.org. — KS
Courtesy Photo Ruby City
Shutterstock / Olena Yakobchuk
Reflection and Revelation
Artists Nadia Botello, Fabiola Menchelli and Jason Willome mine meditative territory at Contemporary at Blue Star
There’s a slightly ominous sense of mystery to the trio of solo exhibitions that recently opened at Contemporary at Blue Star.
While a symbolic piece of firewood conjures the Log Lady of Twin Peaks fame in Jason Willome’s “When a Mind Wanders,” a dimly lit room with curious acoustics sets the stage for Nadia Botello’s “Theophany” and nearly total darkness evokes an isolation tank in Fabiola Mechelli’s “ombré.”
Taken out of context, all three shows could be misunderstood as conceptual pursuits devoid of narrative. But digging into the themes and processes behind each reveals a wealth of highly personal, even poignant meaning.
During a walkthrough of the exhibitions, Contemporary at Blue Star Executive Director Mary Heathcott explained that the surface-level darkness was purely coincidental but that connections to nature and the senses emerged as intentional themes for the institution’s programming this year.
“We thought it would be good to ground people,” Healthcott said, citing the tumultuous political climate. “That’s something that [Curator and Exhibitions Director] Jacqueline Saragoza McGilvray shepherds and develops … so that there’s a conversation between the exhibitions.”
Allowing artists to experiment with the overall design of the gallery spaces is also a theme — one that Heathcott hopes contributes to the experiences of repeat visitors.
“It’s something we’re always thinking about,” she said. “We want the best presentation for the artwork, but we’re also thinking about visitors returning and having the space reveal itself anew.”
Jason Willome
Raised in the rural town of Mico, Texas, Willome works between painting, drawing and sculpture while fostering local talent as a professor in the Art and Art History Department at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
“My recent works depict disaster and wreckage — other-worldly, flooded or snow-filled landscapes, with only traces of human presence — created by pours of house paint, ridiculous
faux painting techniques and other surface artifacts,” he explains in a statement about his latest projects.
Created in 2024 as part of the Contemporary’s Berlin Residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Willome’s “When a Mind Wanders,” arose from a reflective moment in 2022 when he was helping his father Tom Willome — a longtime San Antonio artist and educator who’s battling Parkinson’s disease — move out of the home he built.
Determined to preserve a keepsake from his parents’ home, Willome grabbed a single log from a pile of firewood. Presented in the gallery as a family heirloom or artifact, the log translates into drawings, paintings and sculpture in the gallery, including an entire woodpile cast from expanding foam.
Below the synthetic woodpile, three hexagonal cyanotypes of images created by the James Webb Space Telescope are attached to the wall in an unexpected way that exemplifies the
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Jorge Villareal
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creative use of space encouraged at the Contemporary.
“This is [curator McGilvray] proposing how to present these on the wall … so that the viewer is encouraged to view them from all angles,” Heathcott said.
Addressing loss, consciousness and transformation, “When a Mind Wanders” also evidences Willome’s keen interest in astronomy, not to mention his fascination with trepanation — an ancient surgical procedure that involves boring a hole in the human skull.
These seemingly disparate topics converge in First Light (Antenna), which invites viewers to peer through a hole in a sculpture of trepanned skull to gaze at a seemingly endless image of the cosmos.
Nadia Botello
“We have wanted to work with Nadia Botello for a while,” Heathcott said as we entered the dim confines of “Theophany,” the title of which references a classical Greek term for the “appearance of a deity.” A ninth-generation Texan known primarily as a sound artist and composer, Botello feels a strong connection to waterways and presents the San Antonio River as her exhibition’s protagonist.
“What might a river have to say for itself if we knew how to listen?” Botello ponders in her artist statement. In response to that line of inquiry, Botello gave the San Antonio River a chance to “speak” for itself in her 16mm film What the River Says. Opting for an organic, analog process, Botello submerged unexposed film stock directly into the San Antonio River, inviting it to use its own natural elements to create a narrative from abstract imagery.
“The river is sort of the author, the filmmaker, the cinematographer,” Heathcott said of the piece, which was selected by famed director Richard Linklater as a finalist for this year’s Water, Texas Film Festival.
Swaying gently on the opposite wall, Botello’s Phainein comprises three silk banners she printed with images of waterway microplastics and then attached to the wall with fly fishing lures. Bookending the space, the sculptural water tanks Bodies of Water I and II are outfitted with amplifiers that play long-form compositions created from San Antonio River hydrophone recordings. Like Willome’s First Light (Antenna), Botello’s sound pieces invite interaction.
“This sound sculpture uses your own
‘THEOPHANY,’ ‘OMBRÉ’ & ‘WHEN A MIND WANDERS’
Free, noon-5 p.m. Wednesday, noon-8 p.m. Thursday-Friday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday through Oct. 5, Contemporary at Blue Star, 116 Blue Star, (210) 227-6960, contemporarysa.org.
body as a resonating chamber,” Botello explains in the exhibition notes. “By placing your body in contact with the sculpture, you enter into a dialogue with the river’s sounds, historical data and human breath.” As Heathcott pointed out, the experimental recordings draw an interesting parallel with the muffled acoustics associated with Botello’s former role as a competitive synchronized swimmer.
Fabiola Menchelli
In 2024, Heathcott and a group from Contemporary at Blue Star traveled to Mexico City to attend art fairs and visit with artists including Fabiola Menchelli. At that time, the Mexico City-based artist was showing richly colored photograms mounted on stainless steel.
The jewel-like reds, pinks and purples from that body of work are nowhere to be found in “ombré,” a suite of nine dark photograms presented in an even darker room. Experimenting with a technique that flourished at the hands of Man Ray during the Surrealist and Dada movements, Menchelli takes photo paper into an analog darkroom and strategically exposes it to light, albeit without a negative.
“Because I work with color photographic paper, I must work in complete darkness — with no safelight,” Menchelli told the Current. “So I navigate and create the pieces entirely by touch, folding the paper by hand. … For exposing the paper, I use an enlarger, much like in conventional darkroom practices, but instead of projecting images from negatives, I introduce color by using gels to modify the light.”
Not unlike walking into a photographic darkroom, entering Menchelli’s “ombré” is disorienting and requires slowing down to allow one’s eyes to adjust to the intense darkness of the space. Conjuring the meditative mystery of floating in a sensory deprivation chamber, the space opens up ever so slightly to reveal the geometric folds and layered details of Menchelli’s “camera-less” photographs.
“‘Ombré challenges notions that the qualities and experiences of darkness and emptiness are solely ominous or belonging to negative analogies,” curator McGilvray said in her statement about the exhibition. “[Menchelli] is interested in the paradox of darkness being nothingness and everything, and the potential of the unknown that resides there.”
Jorge Villareal
arts
Terrifying Tomes
Spooky
new San Antonio bookshop Ghoulish Books is lifting up queer horror
BY STEPHANIE KOITHAN
Selma horror bookshop and small press Ghoulish Books has moved into a new haunt in downtown San Antonio, where it specializes all things spooky.
And luckily for co-owner Max Booth III, the Alamo City can’t seem to get enough ghoulishness.
“We just got to realize that San Antonio loves spooky stuff,” said Booth, who has a forearm tattoo reading “GHOULISH” in large, creepster font. “This is a spooky person’s paradise.”
In addition to serving as a horror book shop, the location — 628 S. St. Mary’s St., Suite 102 — is the base of operations for the small press run by Booth and partner Lori. The imprint publishes horror and dark fiction from authors around the world and also releases a quarterly magazine called Ghoulish Tales, which focuses on short horror stories.
The Booths are also behind the literary horror convention Ghoulish Book Fest, which has been held every spring at Hermann Sons for the past four years. In the interest of full disclosure, Booth occasionally contributes to the Current as a writer.
Although small, the Ghoulish shopfront stocks a collection of novels ranging from the occult to true crime and even includes young adult and kids sections. It also sells hard-to-find rarities such as a special edition of the late Jack Ketchum’s Off Season, which retails for $200. Only a few days out from a soft open last week, some of the shop’s shelves have already been picked clean by horror fans while it awaits a restock shipment.
Queering horror
The shop also has an extensive collection of queer horror. This includes titles
published in-house, such as queer tragic horror anthology Bury Your Gays and Bound in Flesh, a collection of trans body horror. The latter is one of the press’s best selling titles, Booth added.
By the end of the year, Booth also plans to put out the first volume of an annual anthology series titled The Best Trans Horror of the Year, collecting top horror stories by trans authors. Indeed, queer and trans horror are so celebrated at the shop that the entire middle table is devoted to LGBTQ+ authors and includes titles such as It Came from the Closet
One title, The Only Safe Place Left Is the Dark — which features the AIDS activist group Act Up’s “Silence = Death” logo on its cover — is a novel by Warren Wagner about a man with HIV whose life-saving medication is stolen from his cabin by marauders during a zombie apocalypse.
“But then he has to go out into this
zombie universe and find medication before he dies,” Booth said.
For Booth, who uses they/them pronouns, lifting up queer and trans stories is a no-brainer (and not in the zombie way).
“I’m non-binary, but beyond that, it just seems like something you should do,” Booth said. “There’s no real thought into ‘OK, now we have to stop and decide how to be inclusive.’ It’s just a natural thing, and I think that’s how it should be for everybody.”
Booth acknowledged that the horror genre hasn’t always been the most progressive, which is why Ghoulish Books is carving its own niche.
Turning the page
The Booths launched their Selma bookstore in 2023 but decided to move
the shop into the city due to ongoing construction around the original location, which was also in an industrial zone devoid of fellow retailers.
Now, the shop’s new location is practically under the long shadow of the Tower of the Americas, just across the street from the King William route of the Krampus Parade. In fact, Ghoulish Books is the newest krewe to join the devilish December festivities.
To officially unveil its new digs, the bookshop is hosting a grand re-opening celebration Saturday, Aug. 9, from noon to 8 p.m. with prizes and flash tattoos by neighboring business Calaveras Tattoos. Ghoulish Books will also host author book signings as well as spooky readings on First Fridays called First Friday Frights. Additionally, the shop is launching a bookclub, though it’s yet to announce details.
Stephanie Koithan
Yin and Yang?
The Naked Gun and Together couldn’t be more different, but they’re both worth catching on the big screen
BY JARED RASIC
If you want to watch a double feature of films so insanely polar opposite from each other that it factory resets your brain, look no further than the mind-melting combination of The Naked Gun and Together.
One is a gruesome, body-horror deconstruction of toxic relationships and codependency, while the other is a goofball comedy that’s so stupid you’ll find yourself caught between belly laughs and eye-rolling the entire time. Across these two movies, almost every emotion gets covered in one way or another, and by the time they’re both over, it feels like you’ve had a bit of a spiritual cleanse.
Together is heavenly for those of us missing the dark hilarity of The Substance and how it simultaneously worked as a grody horror movie and a critique of modern American culture. Together is not only a cringe-inducing thriller with two or three of the scariest shots I’ve seen in a film all year, it’s a razor-sharp and hilarious metaphor for relationship anxiety and codependency that builds to such dizzying and disgusting heights as to be almost unbearable.
All I’ll say about the plot is this: Tim and Millie — played by real-life married couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie, both never better — are a longterm couple, still unmarried, who move upstate and out of the city so she can take a teaching job. After settling down in their house in the woods, they go for a hike and fall into a mysterious cave that causes them to become much closer than they have ever been before.
Go in as blind as you can, as I did, so you can be constantly shocked and blown away by the insanely violent and depraved shenanigans that ensue. While Together might not be an instant horror classic like The Substance, it’s easily the next big cult horror classic and the perfect date night movie for couples who feel a little something is missing from their relationship.
My brain was a little broken and disturbed after Together, so going directly into The Naked Gun, starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson, is probably what it needed to bounce back to normal. The number of puns in this movie is legendary, and when people say, “they don’t make them like this anymore,” they’re talking about comedies that are so ridiculous and gleefully stupid that they’re ultimately impossible to write about.
Everyone’s sense of humor is so subjective that each person who watches Liam Neeson growl
his way through 90 minutes of poop jokes, puns, pratfalls, sight gags and wordplay will find completely different bits to love. There’s a five-minute section of the film where, via a musical montage, Neeson and Anderson go on vacation together and accidentally bring a snowman to life. It had me laughing so hard I might have developed a snot bubble. Yet I’m pretty sure I was the only person laughing in the sold-out theater. And there were sections that had the entire auditorium rolling that elicited only a groan from me. In other words, your mileage may vary.
I grew up watching the original Naked Gun movies with my grandpa Bud, so seeing a new movie set in this cartoonish world hit all my nostalgia buttons and kept a grin on my face even when my eyes rolled toward my cranium. Some people will think this is the funniest movie they’ve ever seen, while others will think it’s the dumbest movie ever made and a death knell for
the intelligence of America. Neither is correct. Still, I want to thank director and co-writer Akiva Schaffer for making the movie anyway. Schaffer is one of the minds behind The Lonely Island, Hot Rod and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, and he’s had a hand in giving me some huge laughs across the past 20 years. A whole new generation will watch this new Naked Gun with someone they love and have nothing but good memories of profound ridiculousness and the sharing of belly laughs.
In a time where everything feels so fraught and serious, there’s something beautifully cathartic about a film so purposefully stupid and hilarious that you can shut your brain off with no negative consequences. It’s so important to have an outlet like that, and art is one of the last places where we can let go of our ego and just exist in someone else’s experience for a few hours. We all need it from time to time.
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Wellness
Restorative
Reiki
Labwork
Costlier Cup of Joe
San Antonio coffee drinkers face higher prices as Trump imposes 50% tariffs on Brazil
BY KAT STINSON
With President Donald Trump’s 50% tariff on Brazilian goods now in effect, San Antonio coffee connoisseurs may want to brace themselves for a costlier cup.
Brazil is the world’s biggest coffee exporter, and the South American country supplies about a third of the total unroasted beans imported into the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“My dad always had a saying — when Brazil coughs, the whole world catches a cold,” said Sami Chbeir, head roaster for What’s Brewing Coffee Roasters, San Antonio’s oldest coffee shop and roaster.
Chbeir, who now co-owns the business his father founded in 1979, said he expects to feel the sting from Trump’s new tax on Brazilian goods.
Chbeir’s devoted customer base regularly returns to the business to play its pinball machines and sip its specialty roasts, many of which are sourced from Brazil and roasted in-house. But the impact doesn’t end there — a large share of other local coffee shops directly source their beans from What’s Brewing, meaning it’s not the only business facing the prospect of higher prices.
“No customer wants to see coffee go from $10 a pound to $13 a pound,” Chbeir said.
But that may be what’s in store.
What’s Brewing has already absorbed $75,000 in other tariff-related costs, and Chbeir warned that Trump’s punitive new tariffs on Brazil are likely to upend pricing and supply chains, affecting coffee roasters and shops nationwide.
“It’s market manipulation at its most misguided,” he said. “We threw tea in the harbor to protest unjust taxes and began drinking coffee instead. Americans may have to go back to tea now!”
Politically motivated
Trump proposed the 50% tariff on Brazil in a July Truth Social post, demanding that country end its “witch hunt” against former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who faces trial for allegations he engineered a coup attempt. Trump framed the tariff as punishment for the current Brazilian administration’s actions.
It went into effect last Friday, along with a host of other tariffs on U.S. trading partners. However, the tax increase may not damage
Brazil as much as the president hopes, especially when it comes to coffee, Chbeir said. Given the demand for its beans, the South American nation could easily find trade partners elsewhere.
“It’s shortsighted,” he said. “The U.S. isn’t the only coffee-drinking company in the world. Brazil will find a market.”
Indeed, Chbeir points out the U.S. has a trade surplus with Brazil. His claim is backed by a study from the United States Trade Representative, which calculates our nation’s current trade surplus with Brazil at $7.4 billion.
New sources
The team at What’s Brewing has already found ways to mitigate rising coffee costs as Trump plays havoc with global trade.
“What we’ve been doing is finding coffee from Mexico,” Chbeir explained. “We’ve purchased two containers of coffee from a contact there, all to offset the price of coffee from Brazil.”
Even so, Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs are taking their toll.
“We’ve already lost around $375,000 in projected profit, and now we’re compounding this with the … Brazil tariff,” Chbeir said.
He predicts larger chains such as Dutch Bros. and Dunkin will suffer the worst damage from the Brazil tariffs. Dutch Bros. blends beans from Brazil, Colombia and El Salvador to produce its signature roast, according to the company’s website.
Coffee purveyors both large and small will likely have little choice but to pass on costs to consumers. Some will probably do that more aggressively than others, Chbeir said.
“If coffee prices rise, honest shops will adjust fairly,” he added. “Others might exploit the media frenzy to hike prices more than necessary.”
At the end of the day, Chbeir said his primary concern is on shielding customers from Trump’s trade tiff.
“We’ve got a large, loyal following and we want to keep doing the best we can for them,” he said.
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Kat Stinson
Unfamiliar but Delicious
There’s more than just adobo to savor at Filipino restaurant Kabayan Kusina
BY RON BECHTOL
Acouple of eyebrows went up when I ordered the ampalaya con carne at Kabayan Kusina, an intimate Filipino restaurant in a Northwest San Antonio strip mall.
It was the kind of look that said, “Are you sure this is what you want?”
Another pair rose with the server delivering the one-handled aluminum pot the dish comes in. This time the message was, “I’m not sure I have the right table.”
Turns out that not that many non-Filipino customers — who were definitely in the minority this Sunday afternoon — are fans of bitter melon, ampalaya’s namesake and primary ingredient.
I learned that afterward as I chatted with the first server while paying the bill. She related having grown up with it, and pointed to another bitter melon dish, pinkabet, she was especially fond of. She also confirmed my suspicion that the sharp-flavored gourd must surely be healthy.
“Lots of iron,” she told me.
Yes, a vanishing touch of bitterness remains in the dish. That’s apparently tempered by soaking the grassy green slices in salty water. But the end result of their sautéing with onion, garlic, a few strips of pork, a little tomato and stirred-in egg is one of an almost cheery brightness.
The ingredients are simple, the whole is not.
Other dishes on the diverse menu may seem less challenging. Adobo might be familiar to anyone who’s ever dipped a tongue into the composite culture’s Asian-Spanish cuisine. But oxtail in peanut sauce, anyone?
But the oxtails are a red herring in the dish: I never got around to tasting them. Nor did I do more than cast a longing glance at a neighbor’s plate of crispy belly roll with lemon grass. Another time. What I did taste was fine enough for now — starting with a simple-sounding tortang talon. The dish came to the table as a flat omelette on a rectangular plate. It looks unassuming. Major components, apart from egg, are “ground meat” and eggplant, and of the two,
roasted eggplant scraped into stringy shreds is by far the most important. Cups of fruity banana ketchup — you can buy it from the shelf of Filipino products that also includes Spam — are served on the side, along with a zesty condiment of papaya, carrot and vinegar. Use them both to add some snap to the mellow, homey eggs.
I also sampled sisig, a Filipino classic, which I chose because it was of the very few dishes labeled on the menu with a chile for heat — not a dominant characteristic of the cuisine. The dish is served, fajita-like, on a sizzling platter. It’s chewy chopped pork belly topped with a fried egg and lashes of mayonnaise. The fatty pork is balanced by the sharp juice of calamansi, sometimes called Filipino lime. The Thai chili I was told it contained was nowhere in evidence, but there was a lingering heat. This may not be a life-changing dish, but it’s more complex than I first imagined and well worth trying.
However, the classic of filipino cuisine is surely adobo. At its heart, the preparation is simple: sear bone-in chicken thighs (pork is also available), add cane vinegar, soy sauce, water, a few bay leaves, sliced onion and simmer until done. That these unassuming ingredients can result in such a rewarding dish — permeated with vinegar but no means dominated by it — is a cooking marvel. Steamed white rice is the perfect accompaniment.
And an amusing partner to it all is the drink called sago gulaman — a Sancho Panza sidekick to the austere Quixote-like adobo. It’s basically diluted brown-sugar syrup mixed with cubes of bitter melon-green gelatin and a few pearls of tapioca. Better than bubble tea, if you ask me.
I don’t know who’s in the kitchen, but the front of the house at Kabayan is definitely distaff run. The charming owner schooled us on the subtleties of Ube Halaya. Who knew a shockingly purple tuber could be so complex?
The dish is billed as yam slowly cooked in coconut and cream. It arrives at the table looking like a cold, purple
blob, no more. But the gentle urgings of the owner revealed to be just the beginning. Her first question was, “Heated or not heated?” Followed by, “Cheese or no cheese?” Just try them all.
Cold, the yam is defiantly springy in texture, and the coconut flavor comes through assertively. Warmed, the texture loosens up a little, and the yam flavor moves to the fore. Shredded salty cheese adds just the right, tangy touch. Never mind that your teeth will temporarily turn purple.
Think of this as a Purple Badge of Courage. Especially if you also braved bitter melon.
KABAYAN
5238 De Zavala Road, Suite 124 (210) 900-7145
Hours: 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday-Tuesday, closed Wednesday and Thursday
Entrée prices: $12.99-$35.99
Best bets: Eggplant omelette, bitter melon with tomato and egg, pork belly with calamansi, chicken or pork adobo, purple yam with coconut milk
The lowdown: Kabayan Kusina, is a small, strip-center Filipino restaurant with an intimate feel bolstered by crowds of native speakers. Unfamiliar dishes abound, but don’t worry — even the seemingly challenging bitter melon with egg and onion will turn out to be friendly. By all means order the classic, vinegary adobo of chicken or pork, but don’t pass up plates such as the eggplant omelette and chopped pork belly with Filipino lime. And, yes, brave the daunting purple yam in whatever form.
KUSINA
Ron Bechtol
Cooking Up Conversation
Purple-haired Hell’s Kitchen chef Mary Lou Davis celebrates her San Antonio homecoming
BY KAT STINSON
Name: Mary Lou Davis
Job: Chef, Ida Claire
Birthplace: Logansport, Indiana
Years in food service: 16
Big impact: Beloved for her outgoing personality, anime-inspired cooking reels and a near-win on Gordon Ramsay’s cooking competition show Hell’s Kitchen, Davis is back in San Antonio as Ida Claire’s head chef after spending three years in the Bay Area. Davis also served as head chef of Whiskey Cake. Money quote: “I want to show that there are no rules and no boundaries when it comes to food. Whether it’s culture or an anime I love, I want to bring it into what I create. It’s easy to get caught up in one bad review, but I stay focused on making food that excites me and represents who I am.”
Where did your culinary journey begin?
I’m originally from Logansport, Indiana, but I’ve been in San Antonio for about 25 years. I grew up here, really — this is home. I always say, if you’ve been in San Antonio for at least 10 years or more, that’s home.
What inspired you to pursue cooking as a career?
I always joke that my chef origin story is more of a villain story. My mom never hindered me from doing anything, though. When I was younger, I wanted to be a vampire — and instead of shutting it down, she said, “You’re going to be the best vampire you can be.” That support stuck with me. I bring that same energy she always gave me into my kitchen.
I did study at the Culinary Institute of America, San Antonio, but that doesn’t sound as exciting as a villain origin story, does it? Ha!
Tell us about your YouTube series, Geeks and Grubs.
I started Geeks and Grubs during the pandemic. I wanted to eat the food I saw in anime — especially Japanese staples — and recreate it in my own way. I even made a Black Panther-inspired curry once. I’m not sure anyone else has done that.
You did a lot of pop-up dinners after your time on Hell’s Kitchen. Do you plan to keep doing pop-ups while working at Ida Claire?
Definitely. I want to partner up with local chefs for “Eat the Scene” movie nights — with food inspired by the films. I also want to partner up with local chefs
for collaborations. I need to keep up my side projects so I can give 100% to each experience. I love indulging my creative side.
What brought you back to San Antonio?
I was actually torn between LA and the Bay Area. The Bay was amazing — the culture, the music, the vibe. I worked with Chef Kevin Tang out there, who really changed how I looked at food. He helped me break things down piece by piece, especially with Southeast Asian cuisine. I still call him sometimes to help me refine my menu ideas.
So he’s like an editor for you in a way? Exactly!
What makes you a good leader in the kitchen?
I’m good at motivating people — not just to work for me, but with me. It’s a team, and I bring that energy every day.
What are your favorite local spots that you think deserve more love?
I love The Hoppy Monk, La Frite, and Cullum’s Attagirl. I will always get a fried bologna and egg sandwich at Cullum’s Attagirl when I can.
What can people expect from you next? You’ll see. I’ve got ideas — and a lot of them are coming to life soon. But I’ve got some anime to catch up on too!
When it comes to exploring the 1950s roots of rock ’n’ roll, music fans can do a lot worse than delving into the catalog of Dallas’ Reverend Horton Heat.
Singer-guitarist Jim “the Rev” Heath has been preaching the gospel of that era of music since the mid-1980s via a slew of albums of original material released by labels both indie and major.
Fans and critics have labeled Heath’s music psychobilly, alt-rock and latter-wave rockabilly, and he’s well-versed not just in the kind of revival rock the Stray Cats specialized in but also in old-school country and blues.
No stranger to San Antonio-area fans, the Reverend Horton Heat will perform for free Saturday, Aug. 9, as part of the day-long Saengerfest 2025 music festival in New Braunfels.
The 2023 release, Roots of The Rev, Heath’s 12th studio outing fronting the Reverend Horton Heat features the Texas native alongside longtime friend and stand-up bass player Jimbo Wallace creatively flexing on a dozen covers.
Recorded on an array of vintage studio equipment that constituted a mic for each player, the album includes Heath occasionally dropping in drums for each song after the fact. The collection draws on the catalogs of classic performers ranging from Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent and Carl Perkins to Conway Twitty, Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash.
Aside from being a pandemic project when musicians everywhere had a ton of time on their hands, Heath looked at it as a nod to artists he admired and knew personally or otherwise.
“Especially during the early days of our group, there weren’t many rockabilly bands out there,” Heath said in a recent interview. “The older rockabilly artists were constantly looking for guys that could play that style because a lot of the older [sidemen] were gone or didn’t want to do it. I backed up a lot of pretty cool people and then Jimbo backed up some cool people on our own, separately and together. And then we have had some run-ins with some notable people, opening for them or getting to meet them and doing shows or recordings. I thought we should do a cover song from each one of those people, and it would be kind of fun to do. Plus, having worked with all those people, I really wanted the stories to get out there.”
As a result, Roots of The Rev reads as a musical travelogue of roots music with Heath and Wallace serving as tour guides. With the former’s twangy vocal phrasing and the latter providing a rock-solid bottom, listeners are treated to an irresistible reading of Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock” accentuated by Jordanaires-flavored harmonies along
with a snappy reading of the Nelson perennial “Three Days.”
“Rockin’ Bones,” originally cut by rockabilly cult artist Ronnie Dawson, provides a stomping opener. Elsewhere, Heath tips his cap to fellow Texan Gene Summers with the Jerry Lee Lewis-kissed “School of Rock ‘n Roll” and kicks it into overdrive with fleet-fingered
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Courtesy Photo Reverend Horton Heat
riffing on Crescent City rocker Jerry Byrne’s “Lights Out.”
Expect this frenetic energy to translate on stage when the good Rev and his bandmates plug in.
“While we never had a big hit song, we’ve had some that got a lot of airplay — but never one that was a big enough song that we had to play it,” Heath said. “But at the same time, with our fans, there are certain songs that we almost have to play because that’s what our fans want to hear. Among them are ‘400 Bucks,’ ‘Baddest of the Bad,’ ‘Big Little Baby,’ ‘In Your Wildest Dreams,’ ‘Galaxy 500’ and ‘Bales of Cocaine.’ People get upset when we don’t play one of the Rev’s ‘hits.’ We’re adding in quite a bit more cover songs right now because of the new album. We recorded ‘Ace of Spades,’ and that’s not even on the new album.”
Heath received his stage name from an overzealous club owner in Dallas’ Deep Ellum area who was trying to
pump up publicity for his venue while Heath headlined.
The Stray Cats enjoyed enough success in the 1980s to bring predictions of a rockabilly revival that never came to pass. Even so, Heath’s “Rev” persona and the band’s live show attracted enough attention to land him a record deal with Sub Pop.
The band’s debut album, Smoke ‘Em If You Got ‘Em, dropped in November 1990, right before grunge blew up. In the decade that followed, Heath signed to major label Interscope Records, where he put out a number of solid releases including 1994’s Liquor In the Front and 1996’s Space Heater before the likes of file-sharing, changing musical tastes and streaming landed him back with the indies.
guarantees you were given that allowed you to record your album started going down, down and down.”
Faced with the funding cut, Heath invested in a ProTools rig and began recording his own band using a collection of microphones he’d amassed.
“That was one of the most fun decisions I ever made,” he said. “I love it, and there are some good things [that came out of that]. I don’t have to worry about anybody questioning the songs and what I’m doing.”
Heath is just fine with that development.
“We worked at some really great studios with some of the top people ever in the world producing and recording,” he said. “With the rise of digital and things like Napster and iTunes, the
Beyond roots music, Heath is inspired by what he calls mid-20th century music that runs the gamut from Henry Mancini and Ennio Morricone to surf instrumentals and movie musicals (The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady are favorites). He’ll also be the first to tell you his passions still run deep and wide — a big part of the reason the 65-year-old rocker is four decades into leading the Reverend Horton Heat.
“I found that if you can draw a big crowd playing your own original music in your hometown, then the only thing that’s keeping you from rock stardom is the will to get in a van and drive,” Heath said. “I tell young musicians to get themselves a really good running van, and if one guy can fix it, that’s even better. You’ve got to get out there.”
Over the years, he’s learned that touring is the hardest part of having a musical career, but it’s something worth the reward.
“You’re in a hotel room by yourself. You’re alone and eating truck stop food. You’re getting sick and you don’t know where to go to the doctor,” Heath said. “It’s a hard thing. You want to be a rock star? I guarantee you’ll be a rock star. You’ve just gotta be ready to wash your hair at Burger King and do stuff like that.”
Free, noon-10 p.m., 500 Main Plaza, New Braunfels, (830) 221-4350.
Shutterstock / J.A. Dunbar
critics’ picks
Wednesday, Aug. 7
Chris Travis
Memphis-based rapper Chris Travis has released dozens of mixtapes and Soundcloud tracks — an impressive output that explains his slow-burn success. Even for those unfamiliar with hip-hop, this DIY approach should resound, because the dude gets out and hustles. Travis is best experienced live, replete with body-shaking bass and clouds of illicit smoke wafting from the crowd. He’s in town promoting his latest mixtape, Turnt Not Burnt. The show’s already sold out, but with a little luck and some extra cash, tickets may still be found online. Sold out, 8 p.m., Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary’s St., papertigersatx.com. — Bill Baird
Friday, Aug. 8
Regina Spektor
Moscow-born, New York-based singer, songwriter and pianist Regina Spektor’s off-kilter style has been propelled into hearts and minds via pop culture. Her 2006 single “Fidelity” was featured in the early seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, while her collaboration with Ben Folds on “Dear Theodosia” for the Hamilton Mixtape is a treasure. She also penned and performed theme song “You’ve Got Time” for Orange Is The New Black. TV connections or no, Spektor continues to blow audiences away with a style unique to herself. $56.50-$125.50, 8 p.m., Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, 100 Auditorium Circle, (210) 223-8624, tobincenter. org. — Danny Cervantes
Saturday, Aug. 9
AJJ, Pacing
AJJ play folk-punk, which essentially means exactly what you think it means. No, not punk music for your grandma, but an evolved punk that packs big attitude into a small sound made with acoustic guitar. There’s an emo element to the vocal delivery plus an angry edge, and the musicianship is good enough for this whole thing to transcend its tag. AJJ used to be known as Andrew Jackson Jihad, a name showing the act isn’t afraid to provoke. $29, 8 p.m., Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary’s St., papertigersatx.com. — BB
Pink Fuzz, The Wizard, Drugula Denver’s Pink Fuzz, a trio led by a brother and sister, is bringing its scuzzy psych-rock to San Antonio with a swagger and an abundance of heavy riffage. Some of the band’s older material has vocal delivery that may remind folks of late Alice in Chains vocalist Layne Staley. Awesome locals The Wizard are charmingly nonchalant in their total ability to thrash. Drugula, meanwhile, has a fried late-’60s vibe. $18, 8 p.m., Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary’s St., papertigersatx.com. — BB
Lisa Lisa, Expose, Color Me Badd, Rob Base, Montell Jordan
Eighties hitmaker Lisa Lisa is bringing her Take Me Home 40th anniversary tour to the house that Tim built for a night of R&B-tinged nostalgia. As one third of the group Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, the singer is best known for hits including “Head to Toe” and “Lost In Emotion.” The bill also features Expose (“Point Of No Return”), Color Me Badd (“I Wanna Sex You Up”), Rob Base (“It Takes Two”) and Montell Jordan (“This Is How We Do It”) along with other radio stars of the era. $58.15-$95.50, 8 p.m., Frost Bank Center, One Frost Bank Center Drive, (210) 4445140, frostbankcenter.com. — DC
Saturday, Aug. 16
Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Milestne, Morning In May
St. Mary’s Street haunt Paper Tiger offers a
great opportunity to catch the blazing emo-rock of the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus in an intimate venue. The Florida-based band rose to prominence in the early aughts, and its major label debut Don’t Fake It remains the band’s apex thanks to a strong collection of songs including the single “Face Down.” Not content to rest on laurels, RJA released a new single, “Slipping Through (No Kings),” that will be on a forthcoming sixth studio album, NOW. $23.51, 7 p.m., Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary’s St., papertigersatx.com. — DC
Monte Montgomery
Alabama-born and San Antonio-raised Monte Montgomery has gained famed not just as a singer-songwriter but also for his ability to shred on an acoustic guitar. Guitar World magazine even named named Montgomery one of the top 50 all-time six-string greats.
Montgomery is a dozen album deep into a career that’s blurred the lines between acoustic rock, blues and pop while penning tunes for TV. $26, 8 p.m., Sam’s Burger Joint, 330 E. Grayson St., (210) 223-2830, samsburgerjoint.com. — BB
Tuesday, Aug. 19
Mothé, Farmer’s Wife
Mothé makes reasonably catchy synth-y pop, but it’s the artist’s high-energy, over-the-top live performances where the songs truly come to life. The LA-based performer is in town for the Total Popstar tour, and regardless of whether the name is intended in jest, it tells us to expect pop and fun. Farmer’s Wife, one of the most buzzed-about new Austin bands, specializes in heavy, fuzzy and damned good rock. $22, 8 p.m., Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary’s St., papertigersatx.com. — BB
Director, Credit Management wanted by Vizrt to work in San Antonio, Texas. Lead a credit risk management and cash collection international team of three Credit Management Specialists. Establish a Group Credit Management Policy and ensure it is followed in all the Regions. Drive the work with updating credit management procedures; Carry out credit assessments during the initial negotiation phase and advise on credit risks. Participate in the development, maintenance and documentation of the customer risk matrix and its methodology. Lead the cash optimization, support subsidiaries in setting up monitoring and control of overdues. Oversee the preparation of monthly dashboards with Aging Balance, DSO and action plans by Region/ Subsidiary/ Business. Coordinate efforts from all internal stakeholders (Finance, Sales, Logistics, Customer Success), in order to optimize cash collection timeline. Requires: Master’s degree in finance, business administration, or closely related and 2 years of experience in the job offered or in Credit Management implementing global credit operations procedures and cash optimization processes in the IT industry; or Bachelor’s degree (or foreign equivalent) in the same fields and 5 years of post-baccalaureate progressive experience, which includes 2 years in the job offered or in Credit Management implementing global credit operations procedures and cash optimization processes in the IT industry; or any suitable combination of education, experience, and/or training. Interested candidates should Apply online at: https://apply.workable.com/vizrt/
As part of B. Braun expansion program, our company is looking for part-time employees. Work from home, it pays $1,800 monthly plus benefits and takes only a little of your time. Please contact us for more details. RequirementsShould be computer-literate. 2-3 hours of access to the internet weekly. Must be Efficient and Dedicated. If you are interested and need more information contact: jason.bbraun@usa.com for more details.
Lancer Corporation seeks in San Antonio TX a Jr. Embedded Software Engineer (Job Code LSA-3446) to design, develop, and test embedded software and hardware systems. Enable the integration of software and hardware components. Apply at: https://www.lancerworldwide.com/careers/. EOE No recruiters.
EMPLOYMENT NOTICE
Application has been made with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission for a Wine and Malt Beverage Permit by The Brown Bag Sandwich Shop, Inc. dba The Brown Bag Sandwich Shop to be located at 11035 Wetmore Rd, San Antonio, Bexar County Texas, (78216). Officers of corp are: Jaynee Escobedo, owner.
“Spoiler: Free”--another themeless for what ails you. by Matt Jones
