It should not shock you to learn that, while not as ready to use it as me, my wife does maintain her own camera close by her person for those opportunities when the documenting of a situation is needed. I say not as ready as me because, generally, she would have to dig through her purse to locate said camera, then hope to get a shot off, where I on the other hand can usually grab it, point and click and have a reasonably clear shot in just a second or two. But when she is out and about our fair village without me, she has to think fast and have the camera at the ready. And Wednesday, she did just that.
It all started with watching KENS 5 Great Day SA show and seeing these two Krazy Vatos. What caught her eye were the little Mexican sweet bread pastries displayed during the show.
Turned out, they were little wallets and key-chains made to look like real pan de huevo. And the Krazy Vatos had opened up an emporium of sorts just south of downtown.
She just had to go! With her mother and nephew in tow, she made it to South Presa and Berkshire and found the fairly new shop and decided to take a look around.
Inside, there is an interesting collection of Puro San Antonio fare; t-shirts with sayings like “Got Tortillas” or your favorite Mexican Loteria card, “El Borracho”.
They shopped around a bit and purchased the aforementioned sweet bread purses then struck up a conversation with the owners, the guys she had seen on TV, Danny De La Paz and Jesse Borrego.
I'll save you the Google-time. Danny De La Paz has been a character actor playing supporting roles, in several dozen movies and TV shows. Remember American Me? He played a Latino in that one. And Jesse Borrego is also been in a long list of movies and such - you know, Fame and all that - but what is really important is that he played The Skinner on season 3 of Dexter! Friends, that alone is worth a visit to Krazy Vatos, but suggest you not bring any sharp objects since apparently he knows how to use them!
Anyway, they chatted a bit and talked about some future film projects that are being developed on San Antonio's south side. How cool is that? So there you have it. Proof that my wife, (the old lady, the other half, the misses), doesn't need me to find something interesting to post.
I'm still sorta stuffed, what with the non-stop baskets of chips and salsa that arrived at our table as a large group of us got our drinks and had our orders taken at Tito's Mexican Restaurant on S. Alamo in the King William area downtown.
Inside the place, it is puro hole-in-the-wall with a bit of flair for the folks who love this part of town, like me. You may recall we did lunch at Madhatters not too long ago and there are just a host of other great places to eat in the area. Each of the places have started out as something else - a house or in the case of Tito's and old store, and the restaurant seems to have come in and built itself into the place. It adds character.
In the dining room we were seated in, they had old life magazine covers along the wall on one side.
Along the other side; odds and ends and a TV or two to catch up on ESPN.
The back of the room housed an interesting looking bar.
But most importantly, we sat down to the chips. I am so spoiled with the lighter, fresher chips and huge assortment of salsa's we find at ChaCho's, but admittedly, this is your standard for most Mexican places, and frankly, they were good. I really enjoyed the salsa but one of the diners with us thought it was too salty. He asked for and they brought out some green stuff and some hotter stuff that looked like ketchup but had a nice little kick to it. I was good with the regular, and certainly had my fair share before lunch arrived.
Speaking of lunch. We had a large group and most folks went the route of ordering from the express menu. I had the #6 Jalapeño Cream Enchiladas which comes with a crispy taco and of course, all the plates come with tortillas, rice & beans. The crispy taco was brilliant! I'm guessing they made the shell as the lunch was ordered and without adding any thing to it, it offered up some drip-down-my-chin greasy goodness (and I do mean that in a good way). The enchiladas were excellent and covered with white cheese and of course the jalapeños. I had small tastes of both the rice and beans and the beans were especially good. I'm sorry to report that I did not try the flour tortilla, simply because I had stuffed my face with the chips.
Another popular choice among fellow diners was the #2 (I know; I laugh just typing it). It is similar to the #6 but instead of being topped with the jalapeños, it has cilantro. A guy sitting across from me seemed to enjoy his.
The #1 is Cheese filled enchiladas topped with Texas Style chile con carne.
And check out the guacamole that came with the order of Nachos a lady next to me ordered. Good stuff.
I may have mentioned before that I am not a fan of the luncheon format that many of you are probably familiar with. It always seems like half the people have received their food and are finished eating just as the other half are beginning to eat. On top of that it takes forever to pay. I will tell you that in this case, the Tito's folks seemed to have a system down and I think we had a pretty decent pace going. You certainly can't blame the waitstaff for people arriving late or not being ready to order. Kudos to our waitress who handled the crowd quite well.
Walking along King William and looking for a bite of Mexican? I don't think you'll be disappointed with Tito's. Got a better suggestion in the area? Tell me about it or leave a comment below.
Thursday, I had need to hit the downtown office and decided to take a few pictures of the water, green as it is, now flowing through the section of new river walk I've been following for a while. The location of my interest is at the McCullough Street Bridge near North St. Marys.
This is a little video of the water in action.
And to see all the pictures from start to finish, be sure to check out the set available on the Flickr Page.
I had to make a short trip downtown today yesterday and thought, what the heck, since they claim to be coming really close to finishing our new River Walk extension, it must be worth taking a minute or two to gander over the side of the bridge. From my vantage point at the bridge on McCullough and St Mary's, here are a few pictures.
The landscaping is coming right along with several areas full of green grass, lots of small bushes going and of course, palm trees.
I'm thinking with some good rain, things will fill in nicely. I can almost see the river boats full of fancy tourists floating by while drunk people drop cell phones and beer bottles in the water in appreciation. Good times.
Interestingly enough, there have been several stories about the art going in around the bridges - lots of sculptures and such. Under this bridge, it looks like the artist has made some sort of screens. I know I could probably do a quick search and figure out what he/she was going for, but I'm not that interested, and I'm sort of lazy that way on a Friday afternoon. In spite of not knowing what it is, it looks kinda nice.
Wanna see more? Head on over to the Flickr page to get the full River Walk Construction Experience. Perhaps that can be a new ride at Fiesta Texas next year.
In case you hadn't seen the news, San Antonio has been in a record setting drought this year but in the last two days, we have gotten a wonderful, almost steady stream of the good kind of rain that fills the aquifer and makes the grass turn green.
So today, I had to do some work at my downtown office and thought I would wander over to the River Walk near McCullough and St Mary's, to see how the sudden onset of precipitation had impacted the construction.
Well! I wasn't expecting water in the river! I know, that probably sounds goofy, but if you have been following my river walk construction updates, you know that the water along this stretch of river has been diverted into two huge pipes. Apparently, all this rain was a bit more than the pipes could handle. And look how the brown grass (which I was sure had just withered and died) is totally golf course green.
And of course, other shrubs and plants and trees (except for the palm that looks like it didn't make it) are looking good. The last picture (above, right) shows the end of the water pipe feeding back into the regular river at the Lexington Avenue Bridge. It is flowing pretty darn good! We'll see how long it takes the excess river water to be drained.
Wanna see all the pictures? Of course you do. Head over to the River Walk Construction page on Flickr and see the transformation.
I had to make a short trip downtown today last week and thought, what the heck, it's probably too cold for tourists, so why not see if anything else is going on over the side of the bridge, and in fact, we have some actual progress in our new River Walk extension. From my vantage point at the bridge on McCullough and St Mary's, here are a few pictures.
At least I'm honest enough to tell you that I took the pictures last week but was too busy to upload them in a timely manner. So to save time, I cut and paste from the last time I posted a River Walk Construction Update and even used the same link to the street view. The most important thing to note is the addition of some palm trees going in.
On the other side of the bridge, more of the same - a palm tree going in and not much else.
Oh, look all the way in the center of the picture at the edge of the water. (You can click on it to see it bigger). Is this guy walking on water just for fun? Get back to work, dumbass!
It all started with watching KENS 5 Great Day SA show and seeing these two Krazy Vatos. What caught her eye were the little Mexican sweet bread pastries displayed during the show. 
Turned out, they were little wallets and key-chains made to look like real pan de huevo. And the Krazy Vatos had opened up an emporium of sorts just south of downtown.
She just had to go! With her mother and nephew in tow, she made it to South Presa and Berkshire and found the fairly new shop and decided to take a look around. 
Inside, there is an interesting collection of Puro San Antonio fare; t-shirts with sayings like “Got Tortillas” or your favorite Mexican Loteria card, “El Borracho”. 
They shopped around a bit and purchased the aforementioned sweet bread purses then struck up a conversation with the owners, the guys she had seen on TV, Danny De La Paz and Jesse Borrego.
I'll save you the Google-time. Danny De La Paz has been a character actor playing supporting roles, in several dozen movies and TV shows. Remember American Me? He played a Latino in that one. And Jesse Borrego is also been in a long list of movies and such - you know, Fame and all that - but what is really important is that he played The Skinner on season 3 of Dexter! Friends, that alone is worth a visit to Krazy Vatos, but suggest you not bring any sharp objects since apparently he knows how to use them!
Anyway, they chatted a bit and talked about some future film projects that are being developed on San Antonio's south side. How cool is that? So there you have it. Proof that my wife, (the old lady, the other half, the misses), doesn't need me to find something interesting to post.
