The Alamo Hour

Michael Girdley has become a well-known advisor, commentator, investor, and authority on all things San Antonio business related. He has a huge Twitter following and has a lot to say about our city and what we need to keep progressing. Transcript: Justin Hill: Hello and bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique in the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Michael Girdley: How long do we go? Justin: One hour. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Michael Girdley. He's kind of all things. I'm going to hit some of the points from his website. His bio, he's currently Chairman and Co-founder of Dura Software. He's a partner at Geekdom Fund. He's been involved in co-founding and leading multiple different ventures in San Antonio and around Texas. He was Man of the Year with San Antonio Business Journal and Geek of the Year with Geekdom, right, in 2016. He's passionate about San Antonio's future. If you follow him on Twitter, you know how much San Antonio and the future of our city matters to him. He's a perfect kind of guest to have on here, so thanks for being here. Michael: Yes, excited. Thanks for having me. Justin: You've listened to a few of my really compelling episodes, so I appreciate it. Michael: Yes, four actually. [unintelligible 00:01:10] Justin: That's more than most people. I start a lot with just some general questions about San Antonio I wanted to ask you about. Michael: Yes. Justin: All right. Do you have any pets? Michael: We have two cats. Justin: Okay. What kind of cats? Michael: Four-legged ones, simple. Justin: Like alley cats? Michael: Ones we got at The Humane Society. Justin: Okay. Some people are into like Persians or these bald cats. Michael: Yes, we're not. Justin: None of that? Michael: We're not fancy. Justin: All right. Favorite hidden gems in San Antonio? Michael: Oh man. I definitely like just the normal taquerias that are like all over the place. Justin: Do you have a favorite? Michael: Man, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. They're all my favorites. Justin: I had a judge on here who wouldn't give me a single restaurant she liked because she didn't want to endorse them. Michael: I love that we have Tex-Mex. To be totally frank with you, I don't enjoy eating it that much. When my wife and I have options to go out or we go out for dinners like we're ended up at Bliss or Cured or those types of places. We lived in California for a while and we still brought that taste back with us. We want to eat that kind of food and have that kind of dining experience. Justin: Bliss and Cured do it for you. Michael: They're definitely fancy. We love going to the Pearl Food Hall as well. I will be unabashedly snobby about where I like to go. Justin: I like the Food Hall now that you can just sit at your table and order on the QR code and it comes out. I appreciate that, especially during the pandemic. Do you have any odd hobbies other than your Twitter? Michael: Twitter is definitely one. I've really gotten to pasture into plane tracking. Yes, it's a really interesting hobby. Justin: What's the goal of this? Michael: What do you mean what's the goal? Justin: I mean other than just see where planes are going. Michael: How could it not be obvious that plane-- we live in the flight path underneath San Antonio International. The runways are aligned in a way to orient towards the natural flow of air, which is either coming off the Gulf or going towards the Gulf. We get lots of planes taking off and landing all the time. Every...

Patrick Svitek is new to San Antonio but a long time political reporter covering the state of Texas. He works for The Texas Tribune and covers Texas politics and policy from a local level to how they affect national discussions and trends. We have a lively discussion about what is happening in Texas and how he is enjoying San Antonio. Transcript: Justin: Hello. Bienvenidos, San Antonio, welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique in the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Patrick Svitek. He is the primary political correspondent for the Texas Tribune. If you don't know, Texas Tribune is become a really a nationwide leader in nonprofit journalism and reworking the way the business model works. He's their primary political correspondent. He's previously worked at the Houston Chronicle. He's covered the 2016 campaign trail. He's in my estimation one or two of the biggest Twitter accounts to follow if you're interested in, especially state of Texas politics. For me, it's really cool able to have you here because I've been following you for a long time. You recently moved to San Antonio so I took the opportunity to ask you to come on my show. Thank you. Patrick: Thanks for having me. I'm excited about this. Justin: You're recent to San Antonio as of Labor Day, I think you said. Patrick: Around Labor Day weekend, me and my girlfriend moved down to San Antonio. She got a new job here. We decided to pack up and come down here and we bought a home in Beacon Hill, and we're loving it so far. Justin: You're living like real San Antonian and so many people are like, "I live in San Antonio, I live in our north or here," but they are in San Antonio. It's just a different experience. All my shows I always get some information on people, the city of San Antonio feel for you. You're new here, so it'll be interesting to get some of your takes. This is your first time to live in San Antonio, right? Patrick: That is correct. Previously only had traveled to San Antonio for work basically. I think I've made a number of trips, but only even spent the night just once is usually an afternoon day trip [unintelligible 00:02:00]. Justin: Sure. You've spent so much time in other Texas cities. What stand out to you after being here for the last few months as what sets San Antonio apart in your estimation? Patrick: I think it's more laid back in a good way than other major Texas cities, especially compared to Austin. I think the two cities are hard to compare in some ways, but one comparison I will certainly make is that it's more laid back than Austin, and in a good way. A big city with a small city culture, I think in some ways. Again, I mean that in a positive way. Absolutely. I've loved the people so far. I've loved living in Beacon Hill. My girlfriend and I wanted to live somewhere really central in this city as we were talking about that also had its own identity, it wasn't just blended into downtown or Midtown or the urban core. We're getting that with Beacon Hill, and we like it a lot. Justin: I think it's one of the oldest neighborhoods in San Antonio. I'll speak out to turn, but I remember when I was doing some research, I wanted to move by building over there and move office over there. I was doing some research, and I was surprised at how historic that neighborhood is for the City of San, which is already a historic city. Have you found any hidden gems in San Antonio that you've just been shocked by or surprised by? The first time I went to the Japanese Tea Garden, have you been there? Patrick: I don't know. Justin: You'll go and there's a waterfall coming...

Frank is fresh off a nail-biter loss in a special election for House District 118. He is running again and joins us to talk about the lessons learned and plans if he wins. He is born and bred in 118 and has a wealth of knowledge about our great city. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Frank Ramirez. Frank was recently running for election in HD 118, a special election to replace the retired or resigned Leo Pacheco. In the special, it was a super close election. He did not win. There's a chance. I think he probably already has an answer to it that he will be running in the future, but we're here really to talk to him about his time in San Antonio. His love for the city has worked in politics here. Get to know him a little bit better. Frank, thanks for being here. Frank Ramirez: Hey, thank you, Justin. Coming off of the trail has been a very sobering time. It's been about a month now since the election and I've taken time to myself to recollect myself rest and really get a better understanding of the race that we ran and how effective it was because for all intents and purposes, it was. Even though we fell short, we did a lot of really great work that brought a lot of people out that normally would not have come out. We're excited about you having me here today. Thank you so much. Justin: Rest and relaxation [laughs] is that you like the Japanese tea garden doing yoga, looking at the koi pond, or is that beers and tacos on the strip? Frank: Hey, that's me getting a mile in the morning now, but also being able to balance that with those beer and tacos. Justin: [laughs] All right. That's fair. I told Frank before we started that maybe the least amount of research today for a guest, but I'd done plenty of research when you're running for office and got to know you a little bit. We're just going to talk a little bit about San Antonio, talk a little bit about your time in politics, your hopes for the city, what you think the future San Antonio looks like because I think that's a real important discussion that's being had right now. We are on the edge of this Austin explosion and that's going to spill over so we're going to talk about that, but I always start with a top 10. It's probably might be 10, might be 20, might be 4. What are your favorite hidden gems in the city? You're a San Antonion and so you might have some places that I've never been to or never heard of so dig deep favorite hidden gems. Frank: I am a lifelong south sider. The majority of my experience in this city has been in the south side. I'm a product of the Harlandale Independent School District. That's Gillette, Kingsborough, McCollum high school go Cowboys, and go Cowboys in Dallas as well. We were a very tight-knit community, but at the same time we support businesses in the south side and we like to tout them. We like to tell people, "Hey, when you come to the south side, you got to go to these spots because they're the best." Justin: Sure. Frank: I'll give you my top five restaurants in places in the south side. If you're looking for some great Mexican food, you got-- Don't bet those Mexican restaurant. I have been in the neighborhood for over 50 years. Then you got the other one, which is one of my personal favorite south of 90 is Blue Moon Cafe off of Flores Street. That's on Mitchell and Flores, and they have the best chilaquiles tacos in the entire city, hands down. The other one taco-wise is going to be got to be Carnitas Lonja which has been featured on Forbes

Rick Hill moved to San Antonio for college and has been here since. He has worked for a variety of local sports teams and events. He currently work as the VP of communications and marketing at the Valero Alamo Bowl. Additionally, he has a few cool hobbies and likes that we discuss. Rick is a big fan and advocate of our great city. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Rick Hill: Who is the worst guest you've ever had? Justin: [chuckles] We'll talk about that in a second. I like how Rick just spoke over the intro, so in the intro, we'll have Rick in the background. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Rick Hill, no relation to me, unfortunately. He is the VP of Marketing and Communication with the Valero Alamo Bowl, and I realize you have to say Valera with the Alamo Bowl now. Rick has also spent time with the Spurs, the Missions and something called the SA Riders, which I am told is a football game. I thought it was maybe something that happens on the strip late at night, but no, a football team here in San Antonio. He has no championship rings, he likes to tell people on his internet profile. Since the Alamo Bowl is right around the corner and I'd bugged Rick for like a year, I figured it'd be a good time to bug him, and here he is. Rick, thanks for being here. Rick: My pleasure, Justin. Thank you. Justin: While we were starting, Rick said who's the worst guest I've had on here. Well, the worst guests are the ones that just no matter what you ask, they're going to answer whatever they want. Rick: Good. I have nothing prepared, so I will be the opposite. I just like to set a low benchmark so people are happy. Justin: Some people have and I feel like if I was calling out guests as the worst, I'd have a hard time finding other guests, so I better not do that. Let me just say, the least listened to episodes are some of my better friends, so I just better not tell them. You will have 10s of listeners at a minimum, I guarantee that. You could have many more than that. Rick: I'm used to people not listening to me. This is perfect. Justin: Well, it's funny. I had one guy on here who became an all-star of the fintech Twitter, the Fintwit I think they call them and his episode just went bonkers because of that. All that world wanted to hear whatever he had to say because he had the highest performing stock over the last 17 years, and even The Wall Street Journal was like, "It wasn't Tesla. It was this group out of San Antonio had the biggest stock in the last 20 years." It was interesting. All right, so let's start with a top 10. I'm going to ask you, it'll be 10-ish. Favorite Fiesta event? Rick: Coronation. Justin: We were just talking about that before and you seemed super excited about it, so I'm glad you brought that up. Something I'm probably going to talk more about, but you have some sort of weird BCycle thing. What's the number of miles you've put on a BCycle in a year, the most? Rick: The most? Probably 3,000 in a year. They have the E-bike now, but it's more pedal-assisted. I think the E-bike takes too much credit. I love jumping on Saturday, jumping out the Witte, driving through downtown, Southtown, and then heading south to Mission Reach. Justin: When you did it, it was not pedal-assist? Rick: Some of it is, and I think they're switching to all pedal-assist in the next couple of months, which should be great. I've been to Madison's [unintelligible 00:03:26] the best setup. It's all pedal-assist. I got a huge...

Mario Bravo unseated an entrenched incumbent City Councilperson to become the new District 1 representative. He has a history that includes working fishing boats out of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Now, he is dedicated to improving San Antonio for all. Transcript: Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right, welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Councilman Mario Bravo. Mario is District 1 Council Person for the city of San Antonio, recently elected. District 1 is basically everything you see on a map in the middle of San Antonio, from Southtown all the way up to about 410, a little bit on other sides, but between 281 and I-10. He ran on the issues of public safety, healthy community, and economic redevelopment. He unseated an entrenched incumbent, who, if he had won, would maybe have been the longest-serving council person in San Antonio history, is that right? Mario Bravo: I'm not sure, but yes. Justin: Something along those lines. It would have been a very long run. Mario: I think that's probably right because we had just recently gone from four years to eight years for term limits. Justin: Oh, okay. Yes, yes. Mario: He would have been at about eight and a half years. Justin: There are two four-year terms now for y'all, right? Mario: Four two-year terms now. Justin: Oh, yes, because four two-year terms would make a whole lot more sense. I remember thinking how strange it was the way we did it. Mario has been involved in activism in San Antonio for a long time. We'll talk to him about that. We asked him to come on to talk to us about his most recent election, challenges for the city, and now is a very challenging time, so this is very [unintelligible 00:01:42], I think, and a little bit about who he is. I got to know Mario, when he decided to run for this District 1 seat, I reached out to him and said, "I think it's time for a change. I'd like to get to know you." Mario is very passionate about our city and his district. Before this, we were talking that when you're passionate about something, it doesn't feel like work and he's really enjoying it. Mario, I sort of start all these with a little bit of getting to know some strange questions. What are your favorite places to eat and drink right now in town? Let's do District 1, District 1 where's your favorite place to have a bite and have a drink right now? Mario: Oh, there's quite a few, but Liberty Bar's one for sure. I'm a big fan of Curry Boys on North St. Mary's Strip. I like to get the much [unintelligible 00:02:31] tacos from Garcia's. Justin: I just heard Curry Boys BBQ, right? Mario: Right. It's barbecue, but it's like barbecue chicken and brisket, but with Curry, and it's amazing. Justin: No, it was fantastic. It was all very spicy though. Just heed the warning. I haven't been to Liberty Bar in a little while, but I used to be known to go there on occasion. Favorite hidden gems in District 1 of San Antonio, maybe places people didn't know or haven't been within your District. Mario: Hidden gems. Justin: You have a lot of stuff in your district, so this should be an easy one. Mario: Well, I'm just trying to think of what's hidden? I guess not everybody knows about Sanchos and how great their michelada and their Bloody Marys are. Justin: I was going to go with the Japanese Tea Garden, but we'll stick to the drinking thing. I'm okay with that. Sanchos is good and it's very fairly priced, which I also appreciate, and District 1 has some places that are not fairly priced. What was the

Judge Alvarez joins us to talk about her path from San Antonio, to Stanford and back to San Antonio. She was educated and worked as an engineer before going to law school. After law school she had a few jobs before running for District Judge in Bexar County. Join us to hear her talk about her unique path and the great things happening at the courthouse. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonio, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. [applause] All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is the Honorable Mary Lou Alvarez. She is a civil district judge at the 45th Civil District Court in Bexar County. She was educated as an engineer prior to being a lawyer. Born just south of here, raised in San Antonio, a graduate of Incarnate Word High School. Bean and cheese are her favorite breakfast tacos I learned. I didn't know that. Mary Lou Alvarez: Yes. Justin: If you're spicy, it sounds like bean and cheese and bacon. Mary Lou: Bacon or brisket, a little meat to add something to the mix. Justin: The beans have to be good you said, so we're going to ask some questions about that. Judge Alvarez, thank you for being on here. We asked you to come on today, talk about what's going on in the court. I want to talk about your path into elected politics because I don't know why anyone would do that to themselves but you've got a lot of thoughts on that. I've practice law in front of you. I've gotten to know you, really over the last five years, as you decided to run and it's really been very enjoyable for me to get to know you, see you on the court, see how passionate you are about it. You're not just a judge, you're actually volunteering your time to improve some of the processes of the courthouse, which I think is really invaluable because people maybe don't realize but Bexar County has been revolutionary in the way we run our courts for so long. Old Judge Casseb brought in the presiding system, which I tell everybody to this day, we have the most efficient court system in the state of Texas. You should file all your cases here because you're going to get hearings, you're going to get justice, you're going to get answers and other places don't have that benefit. I think it's good that we are still moving to improve what we have that is already a really good system. I start with everybody, top 10. It's never really 10 but I have a stick to it. Who has the best beans? Mary Lou: Real beans or fast food beans? Justin: For your bean and cheese taco, let's go there because that's where I've got this from. Mary Lou: All right. Well, it depends on how much time I've got. If I can sit down and have a bean and cheese taco and wait, then it's going to be a hole-in-the-wall taqueria. My favorite right now is the one that's off McCullough and Dewey, Taqueria Jalisco I think, or El Chapala. I forget the sign because I think it changed once while I was off Locus, but it's off McCullough and Dewey. Justin: Where's Dewey at? Mary Lou: Dewey, it becomes St. Josephine closer to 35 I think. Justin: Further down McCullough Monte Vista area? Mary Lou: No, it's St. Josephine is what it becomes. It's by Hawthorne, Hawthorne Academy right across on the backside of the Pearl. Then coming up to McCullough, it's Dewey, and taking you into Sack it's Dewey. Justin: I know exactly where you're talking about. A newish building? Mary Lou: Yes. Justin: Okay. The drive-thru menu it's like a cheesecake factory. It's huge. Mary Lou: You got a lot of options. Justin: Yes. I know exactly what you're talking about. Mary...

The San Antonio Zoo has undergone an incredible transformation since Tim Morrow took over as the CEO in 2014. From their goals to the way they interact with our community, the Zoo is changing stereotypes. The mission of the San Antonio Zoo now includes much more emphasis on conservation, education and interaction. Tim could speak for days on these issues but I am glad we got one hour of his time. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello, and bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great, and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. [applause] All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Tim Morrow. Tim is the CEO of the San Antonio Zoo. He has previously worked with, and correct me if I get it wrong, but I think Fiesta, Texas, the San Antonio Spurs, and SeaWorld, basically all big hospitality groups in the city. Since 2014, he's been the CEO of the zoo. In that time, you've seen a lot of the projects that have changed at the zoo. I mean, the Kiddie Park moved over, which a lot of people know about, the Will Smith Zoo School was launched. If you've been there lately, the rhinos Africa exhibit has become a whole new expanded habitat for animals to share space. There's a Jaguar habitat going in, the list is on and on, but some of the more interesting things that I learned about recently is the work they've done to bring animals back from the brink of extinction or endangered status. There's a lot he's done here. I was recently lucky to be appointed to the San Antonio Zoological Society or the zoo board. I've gotten to meet Tim, I asked him to come on. Thanks for being here. Tim Morrow: Thanks for having me. Justin: Tim, I do this with everybody. I start with just some general questions. The idea behind my podcast was to get to talk to people of San Antonio, share their stories, so some background questions. You're running the zoo, do you have pets? Tim: I do have pets. I have two dogs and a cat. Then I live at Leon Springs area, so we have random wild animals at all times, around the house, or sometimes in the house. Justin: Nothing exotic? Tim: Nothing exotic. No. I leave that to the zoo, to the professionals. Justin: In your life have you ever had exotic animals? Tim: I have had snakes and fish, and those kinds of things, but nothing crazy that you would expect maybe some of the workers at a zoo to have at their house. Justin: Yes. I think that's fair. When I'm at the zoo, I feel like a kid, do you have a favorite animal? Tim: It really changes. It's really whatever habitat we're working on becomes my favorite animal, because you really dive so deep into learning about that animal because what we really try to do now with habitats is create natural spaces for them that are enriching, and so you need to learn as much about them as possible. Right now, we're working on jaguar, a big overhead catwalk system so jaguar has become just an animal that I'm fascinated with. I mean they're a big predator, they're strong, they're stealth, and just what they do is incredible. If you watch them hunt and grab crocodiles out of the water and pull them up in trees, it's just an amazing cat. The fact they used to be right here in south Texas, and that they're still jaguars three hours south of the border into Mexico, it's not unrealistic that someday Jaguars could make their way back in Texas. Justin: I didn't realize that, they came all the way up to South Texas? Tim: Yes, they were here. They were in Arizona, really across the whole Southwest, and actually, they're starting to spot one in Arizona that's been going back and forth across the border-...

Marcus began brewing with a cheap home brewing kit. It spawned a passion for brewing that found him in San Antonio opening Weathered Souls Brewing Co. As if that wasn't enough, he started the Black is Beautiful initiative that was joined by over 1200 breweries around the world. It raised money and awareness for social justice causes. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos San Antonio, welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passions that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, proud San Antonian and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Marcus Baskerville. Marcus is the brewer and co-founder of Weathered Souls Brewing right here in San Antonio. As if the story about all the inventive beers is not impressive enough, you spearheaded and created what turned into a international movement called the Black Is Beautiful Movement, which ended up including 1200 breweries across 22 countries and for us Texans, 122 participating breweries just here in Texas. I'm really excited to meet you and chat with you and thank you for doing this Marcus. Marcus Baskerville: Yes, no problem. Thank you for having me. Justin: You are in your yeast lab is what I think I heard you say a second ago. Marcus: No, office used to be my use lab. Now I'm in my crate office. Justin: [laughs] When you grow a business, you grow where you can grow. Marcus: Exactly. [crosstalk]. Justin: We do all these similar. I want to ask you a few questions, get to know you a little bit, talk to you about San Antonio. I know some of the answers because I did some research beforehand, but when and what brought you to San Antonio? Marcus: I moved to San Antonio almost eight years ago, I think June will be eight years. What brought me to San Antonio was actually a promotion. I used to be in fraud prevention dealing with banking. I came out here to train some new employees as they moved to corporate office from Sacramento to San Antonio. In the process of that, ended up getting a little promotion and decided to stay. Justin: Born and raised in Sacramento, right? Marcus: Yes. Justin: You moved here eight years ago. How have you liked it so far? Marcus: I've enjoyed it. I'm still here, right? Justin: I mean, the weather is very different than Sacramento. Marcus: Weather is this huge difference. That's what keeps my family from coming too often. They're like, "Oh, your guys' weather is so sporadic." Outside of that and the occasional bad drivers, I've really enjoyed San Antonio. Justin: You haven't been here all that long. Eight years is a while, but what are some of your favorite hidden places in San Antonio, hidden gems, places that when you moved here, nobody really told you about and then when you found them, you thought, "Wow, how did I not know about this?" For me the Botanical and the Japanese Tea Gardens are two of those things that when I finally went there, I thought, "Why didn't anyone tell me about this?" Do you have any places like that here? Marcus: That would definitely be one of them. I actually just went to that recently with my children a couple of months ago. That was the first time I had been. I was like, "Wow, this is a beautiful place. I wish I'd known about this years ago.| Justin: You wouldn't even know when you're hear. Marcus: Yes, exactly. Then outside of that, one of the things originally when I first moved here was the Pearl. I really enjoyed Pearl area just to be outside and that type of thing. Nobody really put me onto the Pearl back in the day and outside of that really, some of the like different trails and hiking, different things like that. I like to try to get outdoors, I'm always...

Anya Grokhovski is the CEO and Artistic Director of Musical Bridges Around the World a 501(c)(3) dedicated to sharing music through education and performances in and around San Antonio. She is a classically trained and educated musician herself. She is funny, charming and well worth your time. Transcript: [silence] [music] Justin: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chicken and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, today's guest is Anya Grokhovski. She's the artistic director and CEO of Musical Bridges Around The World. She herself is a very accomplished pianist. I think you have a PhD in music or piano? Anya Grokhovski: DMA, Doctor of Musical Arts. Justin: Similar, I've got a doctorate in jurisprudence, but nobody calls me doctor. Anya started Musical Bridges Around The World, which really sounds like just your passion project and your attempt to share your love of music, and bring a really different style and quality of music to our city. Anya: Yes. That is all. Justin: Thank you for being here. I want to talk about Musical Bridges. I want to talk about your history as a musician and also in bringing this to our city and all of the events that you've put on. It's beautiful, what you're doing from children all the way through to older people. You've got a program for everybody and we're going to talk about that. I start this little getting to know you so we're going to go through our top 10 questions that I ask a bunch of people. They change a little bit but a lot of them are the same. You mentioned it already, what kind of pets do you have? Anya: I have two large dogs. Justin: How large? Great Dane large? Anya: No, not quite as large but pretty large [chuckles]. I've got German Shepherd and I got a mutt, when we got him from the [unintelligible 00:01:58], we hoped that he will be a golden retriever, but he turned out to be made out of parts of different dogs and he's the sweetest thing you can imagine. Justin: What are their names? Anya: The mutt is Duke and the german shepherd is Lexi. Justin: I grew up and I had a golden retriever named Duchess. [laughter] Anya: They're related [laughs]. Justin: Duchess had puppies with a dog named Duke at one point in life so it comes full circle. Now, with COVID, it's a little bit different but what are some of your favorite spots to eat at, and now it's almost what are your favorite spots to get takeout out at? Anya: I'm really big fan of ethnic food. Every time I can get excuse to go to Indian restaurant, I will. I just recently ate again in Indian Palace. I love them. There is Afghani restaurants and there are all kinds of restaurants. There's no Russian restaurant, unfortunately, in San Antonio and it's crossed my mind maybe in my next life I would open one [laughs]. Justin: I don't want to be insensitive but are Russians known for their cuisine? Anya: Yes, it's a very good cuisine. In general, Russian culture was very influenced by French culture. The Russian ethnic food is based on vegetables and famous borscht, I even made video of me making borscht because people been asking me for years, "Anya, how do you make that famous borscht," so I made a video of that. Justin: I love borscht and I love beef. Anya: I'll share it with you. I'll share the video. Justin: Then, I think, caviar too for whatever reason when I think of the Russian cuisine. Anya: Caviar is a good stuff too. Justin: Indian Palace is your favorite Indian spot in town? Anya: It is, yes and I am not getting paid for this promotion [laughs]. Justin: Neither...

Judge Diaz is still in her first term as an elected district court judge, but she is already making her mark on creating new systems to address domestic violence. If you enjoyed the episode with Gary Slutkin, you will enjoy hearing about this innovative approach to domestic violence. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. [applause] All right. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, today's guest is Judge Monique Diaz, the 150th Judicial District elected judge here in Bexar County, thanks judge for being here. Monique Diaz: Hi Justin. Thank you for having me, that was quite the introduction. Justin: Well, we put a lot of work into it. Judge Diaz and I go way back long before either of us were really more than just trying to find our way in the legal, and showing up at political fundraisers for one reason or another, and the lowest of the low people on the totem pole at that point. We met a long time ago and we've stayed in touch and now you're a judge, and I kind of know how to find the courthouse now so we've grown up a little bit. Monique: We sure have. It's been quite a while and there's no need to really find the courthouse anymore because everything is on Zoom so- Justin: This is true. Monique: -you can find it at the comfort of your home, Justin. Justin: Unfortunately, some of the smaller counties though don't really like the Zoom and there are some places that are requiring people to show up. Monique: I have heard that that's the case and it's my understanding that under the Supreme Court has issued a series of orders that have helped guide our decisions, in whether we can have in-person hearings or not. It's my understanding that some counties can do that, if they have a plan that's been pre-approved and if their local county officials decide to proceed with that. Here in Bexar County, we're not quite ready for that yet. Justin: Well, there was a federal court case in Sherman, Texas that got going and last I heard, they had traced it out to 40 people that had gotten sick from just that trial. They canceled it midway and then just, it went gangbusters. Monique: I saw that Justin, and that's one of the reasons why we're being really careful here in Bexar County. We do have a plan that was approved by the Supreme Court already however, our local administrative judge and our local officials are not ready to proceed yet. They're really relying primarily on the Metro Health recommendations on when it's safe for us to all proceed. Now, we have plexiglass up in our courtrooms and we're ready to go otherwise, but I think they're looking at things like-- They have some a matrix where they look at the positivity rate, the death rate, and the amount of hospital beds, so that's part of what we're looking to. I don't see us being ready by the tentative April-1st deadline that you may have heard about. Justin: It's good that we have elected officials paying attention to science in their decision-making. We're going to get to the courthouse here in a second, I want to ask you some questions about that, but just some of the-- We go through general getting to know you, this is San Antonio podcast, San Antonio stuff. Judge, what are you doing to decompress during all this, because honestly it, at first I think we were all like, “Oh, let's make a sourdough bread,” and now we're watching an insurrection? It's taken on a life of its own, I wish I had a better way to decompress, but instead I've just put on a few pounds but I'll lose them. What have you been doing to stay sane? Monique: Well, I also put on...

Dr. Lesch was one of our earliest and most popular guests. We could not cover it all in one hour so he rejoined us for some additional discussions of what he has been working on lately. This includes local elections, hostage negotiations and upcoming publications. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello, and bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that makes San Antonio great, and unique, and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. [music] Justin: All right, welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is our first repeat guest. You may remember he had a giggle fit last time, and said that he met Bashar al-Assad on a dating website. Dr. David Lesch from Trinity University. Thank you for being here. Dr. David Lesch: I can't talk about that. [laughs] Justin: Before this, I said I was going to ask him things, because lately in our friendship, he has become very self-important in telling us things he can and cannot discuss in public settings. David: I can't talk about that either. Justin: Yes, I know. David: I'm going to be a great guest, I can't talk about anything. Why the hell you got me on here? [crosstalk] Justin: Most of this could just me being like, "Hey, tell me about," insert a thing or a person, and then having you turn red as you laugh and say you can't talk about it. David: Exactly. Justin: Like our previous conversation about your telephone, I could ask you about that, and you also would have to say, "I can't talk about that." [crosstalk] David: Well, they're listening on the telephone right now. [crosstalk] Justin: I think they are. David: Probably are. Whoever they are. [crosstalk] Justin: Probably going to advertise-- [crosstalk] I don't know. David: Here, I am talking about it, so you already got me to-- Justin: On most of my episodes, I normally go through like a top 10 list and what are you into and what do you like. I generally know that about you, but what have you been up to during the shutdown? David: Writing my next book. Justin: Yes, what's the title? [laughs] It's not ambitious at all. What was it? David: It's the history of the Middle East from the Prophet Muhammad to the present. Justin: 78,000 pages long. David: I'm through five pages, man. At this rate, in the 23rd century, I will be done. Justin: I asked you how you broke down what to include and what not to include, and you use the word triage. [crosstalk] David: It's a historical triage. Absolutely, I've done that before. You just can't go over every little thing, or else it would be 78,000 pages. This will be about 350-400 pages. Oxford University Press will be putting it out. Justin: It'll be $250. David: Only for you. Only the hard back copy. [crosstalk] Justin: You had one book that was approachable and at normal price. [crosstalk] David: That's only if I don't autograph it. If I autograph it, it's down to $2 or $3. Justin: I paid $7.80 for your Syria book on Amazon. Does that make you feel bad? David: [crosstalk] Oh, used? The thing is, you got it used. [crosstalk] It was only out for like a month. It's like, "Okay, who read it and sent it back?" or, "Who didn't read it and just sent it back?" Justin: What a jerk friend, "I'll buy your book." [crosstalk] David: Yes, exactly. I was like, "Geez, maybe I can make some money off of this," [laughs] because it's like $15. Justin: Is that the only book you're working on now? David: I think one at a time is enough, thank you very much. Justin: No, I think you said you were working on more than one. David: Sometimes I am, but this time no. This is focusing on that. I've got a lot of writing done since I'm at home more often than not, not traveling as much, obviously. I'm halfway through. It should be published in 2022. I'll...

Suzanne Taranto-Etheredge is the CEO and President of Culinaria. She has been deeply involved in the San Antonio food scene and being an advocate for improving the visibility and notoriety of it for a decade. She has a lot to say about our city and the scene. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonioan and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, today's guest is Suzanne Taranto-Etheredge. Suzanne is the president and CEO of Culinaria. Culinaria is a 501(c)(3) committed to promoting San Antonio's area food scene, making it a better food destination and wine destination. They're involved with what everybody has experienced in Restaurant Week, that's something they put together. I learned today I'll have other things like what do you all call them? Food tours. Suzanne Taranto-Etheredge: Yes. We have a lot, [unintelligible 00:01:00] food trail. Justin: I didn't know that, I thought that was super cool. I was looking into it. I learned some stuff about our food scene today and I thought I was probably pretty good. I'm the guy that like all the North-side guys who have wives and kids will call and say, "We have a date night, where do I go?" There was a time I was good at that. I'm not as good at that anymore. Suzanne, thank you for being here. Thank you for joining us. I know it's the middle of Restaurant Week, so it's probably your busiest time of the year. Suzanne: It is a little busy, but it's a different kind of busy now with COVID protocols in place. It's been very interesting to adapt and change and pivot in the middle of our world. It's never too late to eat out, that's the good news. Justin: Well, I was looking at the Restaurant Week menus, most of them have to-go options, which is the first time I've ever seen that. We're going to get into Restaurant Week here in a second, but I'm going to do what I do with all of my guests and go through some top 10 questions with you being part of the food scene and the wine scene, yours are going to be a little bit different. You're not going to hurt anybody's feelings so I'm going to ask you some questions and let's start. Suzanne: You never know, Justin. There's time, you don't know. Justin: Everybody's thin-skinned these days. Suzanne: [chuckles] Justin: I had Stefan Bowers on here and I really appreciated how he was not concerned with hurting anybody's feelings. Let's take inspiration from that today. Starting off, what brought you to San Antonio? How long have you lived here? Suzanne: Oh, my gosh, a job brought me to San Antonio. I had a choice to live in either Austin or San Antonio. Everyone was cra-- They couldn't believe I chose San Antonio, but I knew the minute that I got here because I was doing a lot of things strategically statewide for another organization, and so I had the choice where I wanted to go. The minute I got to San Antonio, I just was in love. I've been here for gosh, over 15 years now. It's flown by like crazy. I was just the child when I got here. It's been a really fun ride. San Antonio, more than any other city just, made me feel at home. People here are so welcoming and so gracious, and I just loved it. I'm a Texas girl. I'm from North Texas so it just was a really great fit. I'm from Canadian, Texas. Justin: You're from Panhandle North Texas. Suzanne: I'm from the Panhandle. Absolutely right. Justin: I'm from North Texas, you're from the Panhandle. My dad was born in the Mineral Wells area, he was raised in Borger. Suzanne: Got you. Justin: I grew up in the Wichita Falls area,...

Christian Archer moved to San Antonio in 2005. In 15 years, he has made his mark on local politics, bond projects, and the city's move politically to the left. He is full of stories and backgrounds of some of the biggest San Antonio stories of the past 15 years. Transcript: [music] Justin: Hello. Bienvenido San Antonio, welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonio, and a keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. [applause] All right. Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Christian Archer. Christian Archer is a man of many things, I was learning today. I think best-known to me, is you were good friends with my old boss and former mentor and former guest, Mikal Watts. You all worked on a bunch of projects together, but I knew you also ran Julian's campaign, Hardburgers campaign. You were instrumental in getting Sculley to come to the city and you're also a filmmaker and author now I read. Christian: [laughs] Yes. That's right. Justin: When's the movie coming out? Christian: We're working on it. In fact, I'm working on it today. We've got a guy who is closely associated with Bradley Cooper, who's now taking over the project and he wants to do a several part series. Back when Mikal got indicted on 95 felony counts, most people thought he was going to prison. Justin: Because most of the people when that one happens. Christian: 99.7% of them to be exact. Justin: Yes. Christian: When Mikal got indicted, a lot of people thought Mikal was done. His story was just beginning I think. Obviously, it was a terrible, terrible time but I lived it with my best friend, a mentor to me. A guy who I love dearly. I know, we both do, Mikal Watts, he's just an amazing person. I wrote a book about that experience and what it was through my eyes, to watch somebody go through 95 felony counts and watch a lot of people turn their back on him. A lot of good friends disappear. You really do learn who your friends are. I went to trial with him in Biloxi. We planned basically live there for four months and he defended himself. It was the craziest thing you've ever seen in a lifetime, and it was enough to make a movie and a book about. We're working on the book, and the movie, right now, the second part to that is we're looking at an eight-part episodic series on what happened to Mikal because during the trial, I don't know if you know this, but I filmed the whole thing. Brought in a film crew and shot the whole thing. Justin: I knew there was a crew, I didn't think you were actually the one holding the camera, though. Christian: Well, I wasn't holding the camera thing. [laughter] There is actually usable footage of this. Justin: When did you all start the film? When did you all know you all were going to start making a book or a movie about this? Christian: You know what, it was funny. What was it that big Netflix hit? Justin: Making a Murderer. Christian: What was it? Justin: Making a Murderer. Christian: Making a Murderer. Justin: Yes. Christian: Had just come out [chuckles], and Mikal and I were talking about this. Obviously, look, there was severe depression. After so many years of not knowing if you were going to get indicted, then the indictment in the trial and all of the above, and just to lighten the mood I told him, I said, "Wouldn't it be great to write a book about it or do a making of a murderer style, a Netflix doc." It's like a light bulb went off. It gave him a little bit of hope and a little bit of something to take away from his daily dose of 95 felony counts, which was a brutal, brutal thing to watch. [crosstalk] Justin: Jesus. Because people who...

Gerry Goldstein has spent his career fighting for what is right. From fighting for conscientious objectors in the Vietnam war era to fighting the Patriot Act's attack on civil liberties. Gerry is a hero to me personally and a great entertaining guest. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello, and bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Gerry Goldstein. Gerry is a criminal defense lawyer with Goldstein & Orr. I could go on and on about all of your lawyer accolades and awards, but we'd be here all day. Recently inducted into the criminal defense hall of fame. Gerry, you're a personal hero to me. I read about you in law school. I learned about you in law school, and then you randomly show up in a restaurant after I'd had way too many drinks about six years ago, and I thought it'd be a good idea to go up and introduce myself. You were so gracious and so classy, and so was your wife, and I asked you to get a beer with me at some point, and I'm a nobody fifth-year lawyer, and you agreed, and met me for a beer. I thought that was just the coolest thing. Gerry Goldstein: I learn a lot from my fellow lawyers and brothers and sisters in San Antonio. What a wonderful place to have grown up and continued my practice. Thank you so much, Justin. Justin: I agree. The San Antonio Express, I read, one of the writers was so gracious to call you a rich libertarian and druggie mouthpiece. That was something you were very proud of, and I found that to be pretty funny when I was doing some research for this. Gerry: That was Paul Thompson who had a front-page column, and he malign me weekly, and probably was the best-- I'm not a big fan of advertising, but I will tell you it was the best advertising any lawyer could ever get. Justin: [laughs] That's when the newspaper wrote a little different than it does now, it seems like. Gerry: It was, but so did the judges and lawyers. Justin: Fair enough. Okay. I do this with everybody, and it's really exciting to do it with you. A sort of top 10, who knows how many it will be. You have grown up in San Antonio. You now have a house just blocks away from where you actually grew up in the King William area. You throw a Fiesta party that is famous, that I knew about immediately when I moved here. I saw a guy pushing a shopping cart full of booze down Alamo one day. I said, "Where are you going?" He said he was going to restock your party there in Fiesta. It precedes you. Gerry: Thank you. I take that as the highest form of flattery, Justin. Justin: No, it's legendary. What are some of your favorite spots in San Antonio? Gerry: Well, years ago, in the late '60s and early '70s, we actually opened and owned the original Friendly Spot, which was at the corner of Beauregard and Alamo, which the alcoholic beverage commission shut down after the number two then dinners, played in the crowd, spilled out into the middle of the street. We own the Beauregard. My wife obviously has nixed any more bars or restaurants, but I still hang out at La Tuna. I think it's a wonderful spot, although it's been encroached upon by all these new condos and apartment buildings. I grew my long teeth, hanging out at the Escobar back in the old days. Wine 101 out in Helotes, I think is a wonderful spot. I did my time crawling back home from the local wineries and various alcohol spots in the King William area where I'd grown up. Justin: Well, so Jody Newman was the first guest on The Alamo Hour, who's now the Friendly Spot owner, and you and I went to LA Tuna. That...

One of the most consistent questions we get is about beekeeping. I am a beekeeper and always learning about it. We asked Molly Keck to come on our show and discuss beekeeping. She taught my class and is full of good information. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right, welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Molly Keck. Molly is an integrated pest management program specialist with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension. Did I get that right? Molly Keck: Did. Yes, you did. Justin: She has a master's in entomology. You and I were at A&M at the same time. I'm '04, but then I went to law school and you stuck around and got your master's in entomology. Molly: I did. Justin: She's a professor, adjunct professor. She teaches adult education courses, writes, presents on a wide variety of topics. I saw you do a YouTube video on murder hornets. You taught the beekeeping class that I took at the San Antonio botanical gardens. I wanted to get you on and talk about something that has consistently been one of the most common questions I get since people found out that I keep bees is a bunch of questions about that. I wanted to have you on to talk about it. Molly: I'm happy to be here. Justin: Thank you. We had somebody on last week talking about real in-depth media issues about San Antonio's return to work $150 million initiative. This is going to be a much more fun discussion I think. Molly: Good. Justin: I always start it with just some general background information. When and why did you end up in San Antonio? Molly: I never left San Antonio. I was born here. I'm a San Antonio native. I went to Buena Elementary, Rudder Middle School, and Clark High School. My husband is from San Antonio also. His parents are from San Antonio. My kids are a third-generation San Antonian, probably, actually, more than that because actually, my husband's grandparents were from San Antonio as well and I'm pretty sure his great grandparents. We always joke that we don't know where we came from. We're just Texan. I went off to A&M. That was the only time I left San Antonio. Then because my family and life is here, this is the best place to live. We moved back home. Justin: I've had a lot of people on the show and most people are like, "Me. I moved here 12 years ago, 13 years ago." A lot of people moving in. Molly: There are a lot of people moving in, but also if I look at the majority of the people that I went to high school with, maybe 15% left San Antonio and the rest of us came back home. When you're born here and you're from here, you don't really want to leave here. Justin: It's great, it's great cost of living, people are nice, and it's a great secret place in Texas I think. Molly: It is. It's also a really, really good family town I think. Also, you get the small-town feel in a big city. It's like everybody knows everybody or it's the Kevin Bacon thing. Eventually, you'll figure out a way that if you meet a stranger, you have some ties somehow. Justin: When we did our beekeeping class, we did fill [unintelligible 00:03:03] I think that was at your house. Molly: It was, yes. Justin: You're in the Northside of San Antonio. You also have chickens. Do you keep any other animals? Molly: Just pets. The only livestock we have really are chicken and bees. Then other than that, dogs, cats, and a parrot. Yes, dogs, cats, and a parrot. Justin: How many dogs? Molly: We have three dogs, we have two cats, and we have one parrot. My...

Stefan Bowers walks us through his career as a cook--not "chef." He discusses the struggles in the industry, the challenges of growing too fast, and his exciting new venture. Stefan is an advocate for his industry workers and a good person who tries hard to build up his colleagues. We had a fun exchange. Transcript: Justin: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right, welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Stefan Bowers of the Goodman & Bowers group in San Antonio. Stefan is first and foremost a chef, I think it'd be fair to say, right? Stefan: Yes, I call myself-- Justin: I don't want to call you an executive or one of those things. Stefan: Yes, you can call me chef, I'll call myself a cook. Justin: All right, there you go. Not only that, he's a veteran, a prolific social media poster, which we'll get into in a little bit. I think one of the more interesting things about you that set you apart from whether you like it or not, you're a celebrity chef in this city is you are less about the self-promotion than a lot of our celebrity chefs. You're very big in promoting your industry to the lowest level employee in the restaurant. I think that sets you apart in a lot of ways and that you glorify and you celebrate everybody that's back in the kitchen as opposed to people that are glorifying themselves all the time. I think that's an interesting part of your persona. I think it's an important part of your persona and I like reading about it. I know that you have a very loyal following, not only from people who love your food, but also people that work with you, it seems like. We're going to have you on to talk a little bit about the food industry. I don't want to belabor the point of what's going on with COVID. Everybody's talking about that ad infinitum, but we're going to talk a little bit about that. I'm going to blame you probably for me putting on about 15 pounds during the shutdown due to your pizza, right? I get the pizza a lot. Stefan: Right. Justin: I do this with everybody, I start and I think you're going to have insights that a lot of people would want to know. Just some general questions about who you are in San Antonio, when and why did you end up in San Antonio. Stefan: I ended up in San Antonio in 2005 via Houston. I moved to Houston in 2003 to go to culinary school, moved there blind. I was living in San Diego with my wife. Believe it or not, San Diego didn't have any culinary schools. Justin: Is that right? Stefan: That's right. They had one in, I want to say-- I don't want to say La Mesa, but there wasn't one anywhere local to where I was when I was living in Pacific Beach. All my wife's family's from Texas. She's got one of these cliched giant Texas families. She wanted to move back to be my family, so we moved to Houston. Then I did school there. My wife got in two really bad car accidents while we were in Houston. After the second one, we wanted to get the hell out of there. I was time to go to San Antonio, and that was it, we moved here in 2005. Justin: What was the school in Houston? Stefan: It's called the Alain and Marie Lenotre Culinary School. Just small French school, and that's why I picked it. It only had financial aid for GI. It didn't have government financial aid at the time, so of course, classroom size was tiny. There was around three to five people in each class. We even went down to around two people. All Expat type chefs that were there, that were recruited or brought over from France that were there, basically, almost enslaved. They were paid very little and they were...

Ron Nirenberg is committed to retraining and training San Antonio workers for higher paying jobs. To that end, in November, voters can vote on an initiative creating a fund of $150,000,000 to do just that. The campaign manager for this initiative joins us to discuss this campaign and what it can do for the city. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, a keeper of chickens, and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. [applause] All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Jorge Urby of The Glider Group in San Antonio. Jorge and I have been friends for a while. We actually took a break on The Alamo Hour, so we're getting back on. We've got Jorge on to talk about a few things. He's been tapped by our mayor, Ron Nirenberg, to run a campaign that the Express-News call Build SA, but it's actually been now changed and named to SA: Ready to Work. He is one of the most sought after political consultants and political communications guys in towns of San Antonio. Express called you a heavy hitter. Did you know that Jorge? Jorge Urby: I heard that. Somebody told me that. Justin: [laughs] You've worked on Beto O'Rourke's campaign, Julian Castro's presidential campaigns. You're very involved in our city. Thank you for being here. Jorge: Thank you, Justin. Thank you for doing what you're doing. I think it's a great thing for the community and I just appreciate you having me on your show. Justin: Yes, it's a new medium and San Antonio is just far behind on things, sometimes technologically. I wanted to be in the front end of this, and I get to interview interesting people. I had the mayor on as well. Jorge: Nice. Nice. Justin: I would start and just get a little bit of color commentary on who you are. Just a few questions, background, your thoughts on San Antonio. When and why did you move to San Antonio? Jorge: Absolutely, man. I'm from Del Rio, Texas originally. My family goes back there many, many generations and loved it, man. I loved growing up in the small town and the small community feel, but as most people when you turn 18, you start to look into wanting to go to college and what that experience is going to be like. I went to school at Texas State and I was there for some years. I always had a kinship with San Antonio, man because I loved the Spurs. I grew up not too far away. We would come up for family vacations or gatherings or something like that. I always knew that I would end up here, but I did bounce around definitely, especially in my 20s and early 30s. I got involved through the Castro brothers and other people in the community, and I just fell in love with it and the people, so I just thought, "I want to make my life here." I really moved here, I guess it would be late '04, maybe early '05, something like that, and then I did a stint in the Dallas area, Fort Worth area. I lived in DC for a while, Austin and then I came back here. Justin: What was the DFW run for? Jorge: When I moved up there the first time, I was working for the mayor of Forth Worth actually. I worked at city hall there and really came to love that city as well, but then I got an opportunity to move to Washington to pursue my master's degree. I got a master's in public administration from American, then I worked at USDA and I worked at HHS. Justin: Okay. I didn't know that. Your big city was San Antonio. My growing up, big city was Fort Worth. I grew up two hours from Fort Worth. That's where we'd go if we wanted to go to the big malls or one of those things. Jorge: There's a lot of similarities actually between the...

Nico LaHood was the Bexar County Criminal District Attorney for one term. During his time, the District Attorney's office was changed in many ways with the inclusion of new programs. Outside of his time in elected office, he is a well-known criminal defense trial attorney and now hosts a podcast called R-Rated Christianity. We had a great talk on a broad range of topics. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian and a keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right, welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Nico LaHood. Nico's the former criminal district attorney of Bexar County, criminal defense lawyer. He's got his own podcast, R-Rated Christianity. He's a public persona. he's very vocal about his faith, being a father and a husband. Nico LaHood: Thanks for having me [unintelligible 00:00:53]. How are you doing? Justin: Nico, thanks for joining us. I'm doing great man. I'm doing great. Are you hanging in there? Nico: [crosstalk] no complaints. I was shocked to hear that you're a keeper of chickens and bees. Justin: I do. I have two beehives. Well, I've got to keep my hands busy, I think. It's idle time, right? Nico: I'd like to-- we're talking about a garden, God Willing in this next season, especially with all this craziness, you can't find toilet paper or food during these last months. I'm not going to do anything about the toilet paper but the chickens has been an idea and people have suggested the bees because we have some land that it might be beneficial. Justin: The chickens are really easy, and they're funny and they're social animals and the bees are set it and forget it. Nico: We have foxes and coyotes in my area though. We have to be really thoughtful. Justin: You've to have a good coop that you close at night. That's the key. Nico, I start all these with usually about 10 questions. If there's any way you can speak up a little louder or get closer to your mic, I want to make sure that I don't sound completely overpowering. I'm going to do fewer questions with you because I want to get into some stuff. First, I always ask people, what are your favorite hidden gems of the city? You're born and raised here, so what are some of the kept secrets you think of the city? Nico: Being around my family. [chuckles] I love my kids, [unintelligible 00:02:11] my wife is too good for my stupid ass. Oh, I'm sorry, [unintelligible 00:02:15] podcast. [crosstalk]. Justin: Go for it. Nico: I married up. I'm really kind of a, it's either church, workout and I work out in my garage now. I've been doing that for years since I've been in public office. I started working out at the house to save time. I just enjoy my family now. Now that I'm not out speaking six, seven days a week in this meeting or that meeting, I have rediscovered weekends. We just have occasional dinners, invite a lot of friends and fellowship. We're just really simple. Justin: What about visitors who come in? I always tell them go check out the Japanese Tea Garden. I think that's a great [crosstalk] thing in the town. Nico: I send people to the missions. I love history, now. I think I got a D when I was in history, younger. Justin: There you go. Nico: I can't get enough of history now. I've gone back and started setting the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation, the federalist papers and Bill of Rights and all that declaration and constant. I just love it now, I can't get enough of it. I like to send them to historical places. Of course, they already know about the Riverwalk. That's it....

When Sheryl Sculley was hired in San Antonio to be the new city manager, she was confronted with a variety of issues that had long been neglected. From internet usage to wages, she had huge hurdles to overcome immediately. By the time she left, she had become the face of the police and fire union's fight with the city over their contract. She joins the show to discuss her new tell-all book about her experience. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello, and Bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, keeper of chickens, and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great, unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. [applause] Justin: All right, welcome to this episode of The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Sheryl Sculley. Sheryl was the city manager of San Antonio from 2005 until 2019. Under her tenure, there are so many accomplishments that we're going to discuss a lot about today, but for most of us, who just look around The Henry B Convention Center being redone into what it is today, our Mission Trail, the Mission is becoming a world heritage site. Some of the behind the scenes things include how our government works, and our new contracts for our police, and fire unions. She discusses in her book a lot of these accomplishments, we're here to talk to her about some of those accomplishments discussed in her book, and her new book, Greedy Bastards: One Cities City's Texas-Sized Struggle to Avoid a Financial Crisis. Sheryl, thank you for joining me. Sheryl Sculley: Thank you, Justin. I'm happy to be with you. Justin: Before we got going, I made sure that we could see some of the books behind you on the shelf that people can know that this is a book tour, and I'm part of your book tour today. Sheryl: Thank you for doing that. This morning I learned that I just made the Amazon bestseller list. I'm excited. Justin: That's awesome. Now, you're going to be scrolling through, and paying attention for reviews as they come in? Sheryl: Yes. I'm sure we'll get a few of those. Justin: Okay. I start all these with a little bit of background information. Everybody knows who you were, and are, but I don't know how many people know much about you, I learned a lot about you in the book. Unfortunately, for a lot of us-- I moved here in ‘07, a lot of what we heard about you, and learned about you had to do with the public union fight. There was a lot of information put out about you, which was I think a little bit unfair obviously. Let's give a little bit of background to who you are, you came from Phoenix, Arizona. What was your experience with San Antonio prior to coming out here to work as a city manager? Sheryl: I was the assistant city manager in the number two position in the city of Phoenix, I worked there for 16 years, watched, and was a part of that city growing, doubling in size, and expanding. We worked on major initiatives for that fast-growing city. Before that, I was city manager of Kalamazoo, Michigan. I actually grew up in the Chicago area, went to school in Indiana, and my first job out of college was with the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan. My husband Mike is from Kalamazoo, and our children were born there. I worked for that city for a total of 15 years, I wasn't born a city manager although I am the oldest of seven children. My siblings accused me of trying to city manage the family. I started in a research position, joined the city manager's office as an assistant city manager, and worked there the last five years as city manager. Then I was recruited to Phoenix. We've never been there, but our kids were pre-school age, it was good timing to move across the country, take on that new challenge, so we did. I never thought I'd leave Phoenix, I was in...

Poncho Nevarez and Justin have been friends for a decade. Poncho was elected as a State Representative in 2013. Since then, he worked his way up into powerful positions. In 2019, he ran into trouble with drugs, got clean, chose not to run again, and joins us to talk about his journey into the dark and back. His honesty is refreshing. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello, and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonioan, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to the Alamo hour. Today's guest is Poncho Nevarez. Poncho is a current state rep of district 74? Poncho Nevarez: Yes. Justin: Covering Eagle Pass all the way out through Big Bend. I think it's one of, if not the biggest political district in the contiguous US. Poncho: In the world. [chuckles] Justin: Well, probably not. He's an injury attorney. He's a musician. He's a rancher. He has a Watusi or three, maybe, a father, husband, friend. Admittedly, and he just wrote a big article about it, we'll talk about some, an alcoholic and an addict. When he's not running for reelection, he is working on an album, apparently, which we're going to talk about a little bit as well. Poncho, thanks for being here. Poncho: Thank you for having me. I couldn't help but catch in the promo you were talking about, "This is about San Antonioans, for San Antonioans," and I would ask-- I spent a good part of my adult life in San Antonio for law school, and then because of my law practice, so if they'll claim me, [chuckles] I'd say I'm somewhat from San Antonio. Justin: So, you're co-opting me here. It's a show about San Antonio, but there's a lot of people that have some interaction or have lived here in the past that they have something to add about our city as well. Poncho: Well, it's like Eagle Pass, I'd say. It doesn't matter where you go. There's some connection to Eagle Pass. You could be standing outside the pyramids of Giza [chuckles] and there's somebody from Eagle Pass there. I think the same thing applies with San Antonio. It's the same thing. Justin: Well, good. You've got something to add. When I met you, you had a home here yet, an office here. I think you still practice law here on occasion. Poncho: Yes. I think that was back in maybe 2005 or 2006 a bit. Justin: Well, you went to law school here, and then you and I would have met around 2007, 2008, and then we worked on that case through '11 probably. Poncho: I graduated from law school '99 and then I was away. I was here in Eagle Pass for a few years and then I moved back and then Miguel Chapa and I were partnered up and we're in San Antonio. That was back in 2005 when Miguel and I got together. He'll deny this, but we put that firm together at a Hooters. [laughter] Justin: I'm not surprised by this. Poncho: True story. We were going to go to Vegas, that night, I think. It was me, Jason Hoelscher and Miguel, we were going to go to Vegas and we were killing some time and that's where we formed the firm. Justin: Well, I do a top 10. It's just a general number of questions. Sometimes it's 3, sometimes it's 10 with all of my guests to give some sort of flavor and background on who you are. The first one was, "Talk to us about your time in San Antonio." We've already knocked that one out. The next thing I want to ask you is what are some of your favorite places in San Antonio that people maybe don't know about? We talk about hidden gems in the city. Poncho: I liked the McNay, the museum a whole bunch. I really do. I lived in that neighborhood, different parts of Alamo Heights through my last two years of law school.

Gavin Rogers has been a pastor at Travis Park church for many years. He has been actively involved in serving immigrant communities, the homeless community and bringing attention to many other social issues in our city. He also runs the very successful Pub Theology that was once an in person meeting but has moved online. We did a joint podcast and it was great fun. Transcript: [silence] Gavin: Good evening friends on Facebook. We are having a special Pub Theology with our good friend Justin Hill with the Alamo Hour Podcast. Welcome, Justin. Justin Hill: Hey man. Thanks for having me. Gavin: If you're confused, what this is going on, Justin Hill runs a podcast called the Alamo Hour. It's a destination podcast for those who want to take an in-depth look at different people, places, events, and happenings in San Antonio, Texas. He's a local attorney and this podcast is going to dive deep into the city that we all love so much. He hosts that about every week. You can listen to his podcast on YouTube or various podcast channels like Apple and SoundCloud and all those things. Justin is a graduate of Texas A&M University graduated in 2004, we just learned that we're the same age. We have merged platforms today. The Alamo Hour and Pub Theology are of the same broadcast. Welcome, Justin. Justin: Hey man. Thanks for having me. Since we're kind of co-host, I will [inaudible 00:03:58] Gavin is associate minister at Travis park church. To me, I always like to have people on that I think a little bit more about than the resume. To me, you've always run a really good live as you speak way of life with all of your social justice stuff. I look up to you in terms of you put your money where your mouth is, but really your time where your heart is. I appreciate that. I think you do so much for people, but you're also the host of Pub Theology. Pub Theology is a dialogue group that usually meets at The Friendly Spot, but because of COVID we're meeting online, you talk about faith, the community in San Antonio, creating common good and I love the slogan, “Different brews and different views. All perspectives welcome.” Gavin: What are you drinking today, Justin? Justin: Well, I've got a sparkling water from Kirkland, but I also have a Saint Arnold's art car, IPA. Gavin: Good Texas beer. Right now-- I've never had this one, the Freetail Bat Outta Helles. Pub Theology themes, so there's a hell theme there, but it has a San Antonio scene there. Justin: [unintelligible 00:05:01] Dortch Law and I drank other people's beer the whole time and he seemed offended, but he didn't bring me any beer to drink so I did [unintelligible 00:05:11] Gavin: That's fair. It's good. Now, I really respect you, Justin, you've been serving in around town at various events and been supporting political candidates you are involved in everything I know about. You're also good friends with my good friend, Phil Walkins, who goes to our church and a great local attorneys in town. The stuff that you promote it always connects with me. I think a lot of the people who listen to Pub Theology and probably Alamo Hour. You started this Alamo Hour maybe at the start of 2020? Justin: At the start of the shutdown. I didn't want to do it, and all of a sudden I had time on my hands, so I was able to do it. I had started buying the equipment, troubleshooting, but then once the shutdown happened, I didn't have an excuse anymore. Gavin: Wow. That's great. Who has been your favorite guest so far? Now I've had maybe like 20, maybe 15, 20 episodes. Justin: This is 25. Gavin: Oh, wow. That's great. Yes. Justin: I like the meaty dense stuff. I've had some really interesting-- These epidemiologists, including Dr. Rohr-Allegrini from here in San Antonio, Dr. Lesch is a Syrian expert. Some of those things have been really interesting. A surprise one is I had a guy who was the Texas League...

Leo Gomez was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley but moved to San Antonio after finishing school. He has moved up through the city ranks through multiple Chambers of Commerce, the San Antonio Spurs, Toyota Manufacturing and various charities. Now, he runs one of San Antonio's most exciting developments. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, proud San Antonio, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to this episode of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Leo Gomez. Leo's been involved in everything currently president and CEO of Brooks City Base but been involved with the Spurs, with Toyota, with the Hispanic chamber, with the San Antonio chamber. I watched a video on you and maybe they called you Mr. South side. Did I hear that correct? Leo Gomez: I've been called a few things Justin. Justin: All right. We've had your wife on here, and she was nice enough to help us convince you to come be on the show. I met you years ago, just out having beers with Tim Maloney. It's good to see you again and thank you for doing this. Leo: Beers with Tim Maloney, huh? Justin: I feel like beers with Tim Maloney could-- that go anywhere. Leo: I sure could. Justin: A lot of people can say they've had beers with Tim Maloney too. Leo: That's terrific. Good to be on here with you. Justin: I usually start this and I told you just some general information about your interaction and thoughts on San Antonio. Let's just start when and why did you end up in San Antonio? Leo: San Antonio is always that big city to the North for me and my extended family. I'm from the Rio Grande Valley, grew up in McAllen, not far from the Rio Grande river and our neighbor to the South there. I grew up in the Valley knowing only the Valley pretty much. The closest metropolitan area, the closest thing to a city that was a real city when I was growing up was San Antonio Texas. I actually visited it once or twice while I was very young to visit an aunt and some cousins in San Antonio and spend a day at the zoo. Going back home and I got into my late teenage years, and I'd never still really been outside the Rio Grande Valley except for San Antonio. San Antonio was always that big wonderful city that had me in awe to the North of the Rio Grande Valley. Justin: Did you move up here after high school or after college or? Leo: I moved here right after graduate school. It was in the late eighties. Justin: Did you get your masters in public administration? Did I say that? Leo: Public policy? That's what we call it. Public affairs at the LBJ school of public affairs in Austin. Justin: All right, so you've been here ever since? Leo: I've been here ever since. Justin, little did I know. I thought I'd come here and learn and get a career started in a real city and then take a look at real big cities on the East Coast or the West Coast and had some opportunities, but I fell in love quickly with San Antonio, fell in love with other things in San Antonio and here I am 30 something years later. Justin: Well, that's a great city. Leo: It absolutely is. Justin: You did some time in DC, right? Leo: I did as an intern when I was in graduate school. I spent six months there. Justin: I interned there for the DCCC in 2002, and it's a great city too. It's very young, it's vibrant, it's great. Leo: Oh, Justin, to go from the Rio Grande Valley, to graduate school in Austin and then intern six months in Washington DC, I was a young man that was just soaking in everything I could soak in and the experiences of DC as well as Austin...

Dr. Gary Slutkin has provided counsel and advice to elected leaders and health leaders across the United States regarding COVID-19. He has advised Mayor Ron Nirenberg and other Texas mayors. He has proven that epidemiological methods for disease reduction work and they work on things like violence. This was a fascinating discussion with a very interesting guest. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello, in Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to today's episode of the Alamo Hour. My guest today is Dr. Slutkin. Dr. Slutkin is a medical doctor and epidemiologist. I'm stealing from your TED Talk bio a little bit. You're an innovator in violence reduction which we're going to talk about. Currently, founder and executive director of Cure Violence. Also, consigliere of sorts to some Metro health and mayors and city officials who are seeking your guidance on COVID. Dr. Slutkin previously served as a medical director for the San Francisco Health Department. He's worked for the World Health Organization. He's worked on epidemics all over Africa which we will discuss. Importantly, he is a well sought after epidemiologist on using data and science to cure issues and specifically, issues that people probably didn't think could be cured that way. Dr. Slutkin, thank you for being here. Dr. Slutkin: I'm happy to be with you, Justin. Justin: You're in Chicago, right? Dr. Slutkin: Yes. Justin: All right. You are my first non-San Antonio local or someone who's lived here for some amount of time but our show tries to have a real connection with San Antonio and Dr. Lesch, a previous guest and Mayor Nirenberg, also previously a guest have discussed COVID with you. I know you've provided some guidance and counsel. Talk to me about what you're doing right now in your role as providing some guidance to cities and leaders including our very own Mayor Ron Nirenberg. Dr. Slutkin: Well, I'm aware that the US has not really seen anything like this before, that's to say an epidemic of this nature that's so fast, so contagious, so lethal and many other parts of the world have. I had the opportunity to be helpful with World Health and some of the others. Although I myself have largely been working on reducing violence in this country and in other places recently, I had to quickly switch into a role of helping, supporting, guiding and training where there were needs, which is basically wherever you look and how to manage this because it's not clear. Besides the fact that it's new, a lot of behaviors need to be changed. People don't like to change behaviors, people don't want to change behaviors and there's so much misinformation as well. I've been talking with mayors and governors and the Mayor's Associations and the Governors Associations and trying to help understand what needs to be understood here. Which is that you can't tell who's infectious and who isn't, which is a really counter-intuitive thing that someone you know or someone who looks well, could be carrying it. That it's really that serious. That you can get it even just by talking and screaming or talking loud or it doesn't require coughing and that the results are really quite bad. For policymakers, they need to really make this so serious, and whenever we don't, we see the consequences and that has to do with the fact that the virus jumps when given a chance. Opening up, it means opening up for the virus and that's what everybody saw but not everybody knew it. Then also what the people themselves have to do. I've been guiding and training in this arena since late February, early March....

When Ina Minjarez was elected in 2015 to finish the remaining term of Senator Menendez, she only got one month in the legislative session to learn. The next year, after winning again, she was named Rookie of the Year by Texas Monthly. She has passed a lot of important legislation regarding bullying, foster care, and is a huge asset to San Antonio. Also, she loves Real Housewives and Chinese food. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello in Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right, welcome to episode 22 of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is representative Ina Minjarez. Representative Minjarez represents District 124 which is West along 90, up from 90, 1604 area. She was elected to a, partially, over term really in 2015, joined the legislature with only a month or so left, went back to her next full session, and was named rookie of the year by Texas Monthly. Even though I accidentally called her freshman of the year, it's been a huge accomplishment. You've been given some incredible appointments, I guess, you call them recess appointments as well regarding the judiciary. First, thank you for being here. Ina Minjarez: Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be on. I'm going to remember this as lucky 22. [chuckles] Justin: There you go. Repeating numbers are supposed to be a lucky thing. I didn't know this. Ina: It's a good number. Justin: I do a top 10 with everybody. I just want to get some color, some background information. When and why did you end up in San Antonio? Ina: Law school, St. Mary's University School of Law and I wanted to practice in Texas. Texas has one of the hardest bar exams and I just wanted to take it one time and be done with it. [chuckles] Justin: That's a good plan. Born and raised in El Paso? Ina: Born and raised in El Paso. Justin: College, El Paso? Ina: Excuse me? Justin: College wa in El Paso or undergrad at St. Mary's? Ina: No, college was at Notre Dame South Bend in Indiana. Justin: Okay. South Bend is not that nice of a city. Ina: When I was there it was just a different type of place to be. I tell people when I got to Notre Dame I didn't even really understand where it was located. I had no idea. I was just going to Notre Dame. I remember getting on the plane and looking down and seeing [chuckles] a lot of farm country, I'm thinking, "What the heck did I just get myself into?" We were pretty insulated. We really didn't go out into the city. They had the students really on campus. It's [crosstalk] Justin: We talked off air a little bit of Poncho Nevárez. You went to law school together. Poncho and I worked a case and we ended up in South Bend a lot and the campus is beautiful but the surrounding town is not what you expect, which, for me, was the same as when I went to Yale for some depositions, beautiful campus, not a really nice town so I was surprised about it. Ina: No, it's not. It's been a while since I've been back. It was interesting to see Mayor Pete Buttigieg. He was the mayor. I'm curious. I would love to go back to see what he did with South Bend since I [crosstalk] Justin: Yes, I would too. You have dogs. What kind of dogs and what are their names? Ina: Those are my life. I've got three. My golden retriever, I named her Fino after my favorite wine. [chuckles] I got Pepe who's a GSP, and then I got Lily who is my rescue. She's a mix of Schnauzer and I think she's part coyote. [laughter] Justin: Growing up we had a cat we were sure it was part bobcat so I get it. Ina: [laughs] Justin: Favorite hidden gems in San Antonio. The last...

Jesse Mata is born and raised in San Antonio. He has been involved in Cornyation for over a decade and was recently crowned King Anchovy LV. His reign has been disturbed by COVID and Fiesta cancellation/rescheduling issues. However, he joins us to discuss his passion for Cornyation's focus and charities supported. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right, welcome to Episode 21 of The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Jesse Mata. We had some technical difficulties, so we're back on take two. Jesse Mata: Welcome back. Justin: Jesse works at USAA and more importantly for this episode, he's King Anchovy 55 for Cornyation. Previously, he's written scripts for Cornyation. He's been involved for years. The Current said you're one of the most influential people in 2015. Jesse: Yes. I've been influential gay people, that's an important caveat. [crosstalk] Justin: Is that the thing? Jesse: A pink asterisk. Justin: I didn't see that. Jesse: Yes. Unless there's another article I don't know. Justin: Well, I just saw most influential 2015 and saw you. Jesse: Yes, that's me. Justin: You've had a lot of involvement in Cornyation, that's where I met you. Cornyation has raised over $2 million. We're going to spend some time talking about Cornyation. Jesse, so I do this with all the guests. We'll do a top 10 list. It's short. I asked one guy how he moved to San Antonio, he went on for seven minutes, so don't do that. [laughs] Jesse: No. That is not a very interesting story. It's a tragic story. You have a sorrowful version of this podcast, we can [unintelligible 00:01:33] [laughter]. Justin: Well, now I don't know if I want to ask. The first question I was going to ask is when did you move to San Antonio? Jesse: I moved back to San Antonio. I grew up in San Antonio. I'm San Antonio native. My parents grew up in San Antonio as well. I have a long history here; my family does as well. I left in '93 after I graduated from Health Careers and went off to Baylor University. Then I came back in 1997, four years later, but that doesn't necessarily mean I had a degree, and started work and started my adult life back in San Antonio. Justin: Okay, so you've lived here straight ever since? Jesse: Yes, since September of 1997. Justin: All right. What high school did you go to? Jesse: Health Careers, phoenix, I'm phoenix rising from the ashes. That's all. This's [unintelligible 00:02:24] alma mater. Justin: Next question, in your picture in The Current you had a dog, what's the dog's name? Jesse: Yes. Justin: What's his name? Jesse: I have a pug. Well, actually I have two dogs to be fair, not to give short [unintelligible 00:02:31]. The dog that was in the shoot was Gizmo, that's our pug. Gizmo [unintelligible 00:02:40] is his full name, but it tells you everything you need to know about my literary preferences. He's a great guy, curmudgeon, middle-aged. Justin: Pug and what else? Jesse: A pug and a Great Dane. Justin: Oh, geez. They get along? Jesse: I'm sorry. Justin: Did they get along? Jesse: They do get along. They're best friends. At first, whenever we got Gizmo, he was maybe about this big, maybe fit in the palm of your hand. The Great Dane wanted nothing to do with him. He was not even as big as your snout. I'm sure the part of that calculus was she figured she might destroy him, [unintelligible 00:03:13]or tail, or what have you. Ever...

Ryan Pape has spent most of his life in San Antonio. He returned to San Antonio after college and worked in the IT area of a software company which would become XPEL Inc. As XPEL changed course, it also ran into bad financial problems. Ryan came back and led an unprecedented turnaround in part by putting his own money on the table to take care of the company. He also has been involved with the Witte and other charities in town. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to Episode 20 of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Ryan Pape. Ryan serves as XPEL Inc's Chairman, President & CEO. He previously served in multiple different capacities within the organization before taking it over, which was at the time a sinking ship, fair? Ryan Pape: Yes. I would say so. Justin: We'll get into that a little bit more. You're also involved in the woody. You've got two kids. You and your wife live in San Antonio within the Loop. One of my oldest San Antonio friends actually. Ryan: We go way back now. Justin: '08, I think. Ryan: '08? Justin: Yes. Ryan: That's by my math over 10 years. That's a long time. Justin: It is and you were my neighbor's friend who I met through them. I actually went back the other day to see if one of my other neighbors who lived across from them was still alive and he was and his wife. Ryan: That's good, still there. Justin: They're very old, very poor health and very happy to see me. Ryan, you've listened to a few of these. We're going to go through a top 10 but I've decided it has to be a top 10 in 10, because I had a previous guest who went really, really long on one single question and changed- Ryan: Maybe that was the best part of the whole show. Justin: It just wasn't. [laughter] Justin: It objectively was not. When and why did you move to San Antonio? Ryan: In 1993 at the time SBC, which became AT&T relocated to San Antonio, my dad worked for them, so we moved from St. Louis. Justin: He was a pilot, right? Ryan: He was, yes. He was a pilot since retired but that brought us here. Justin: Have you lived here straight since? You went to UT? Ryan: Went to UT. Move back after that. With the exception of UT, I've been here the whole time. Justin: What parts of town have you lived in? You've lived in the 09 areas since I've known you? Ryan: Yes. Still live there now. I was up in Stone Oak from that '93 on to going to UT [crosstalk] there was nothing. Justin: I was about to say more country back then. Ryan: Yes. I remember the last stoplight was maybe like 281 in Brook Hollow and maybe there was a stop sign 281 and 1604 and then on. It's a lot different. Justin: Were you outside 1604 then? Ryan: Outside 1604. Stone Oak and Huebner. I remember there's a gas station there. I remember when that was built. Justin: Was it a gated community? Ryan: It was a gated community. Justin: Because it's only gated community [crosstalk] Ryan: I think that's your only choice, right? Justin: I don't understand it though. You're already in Stone Oak. Ryan: You need safety. I don't know. I don't live in a gated community now and I feel perfectly safe. Justin: I have a gate on my driveway, does that make me a gated community? Ryan: You're more gated than most people. Justin: All right. This is a morphus question now or changed question because of what's going on and you also have-- you're a faster? Ryan: Yes. Justin: Is there any restaurant

Dr. Carey Latimore moved to San Antonio in 2004 to take a job at the prestigious Trinity University. He teaches classes in the area of African American studies. He is leading the way to create an African American institute in San Antonio to document the past and provide a location for discourse on racial justice issues. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonionian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. [applause] All right. Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Dr. Carey Latimore. Dr. Latimore is a professor of African American Studies and other classes at Trinity University. He got his PhD from Emory. He's written extensively. He's won many awards. He was recently tapped by the city to share some of his thoughts and some of his research regarding the Alamo Plaza project and some decisions on what to do with some of the surrounding buildings. We've asked Dr. Latimore to be on here. We asked previously to all of the protests in the city and some of the issues that have arisen since then, but the timing couldn't be better. Thank you, Dr. Latimore, for being here today. Dr. Carey Latimore: Thank you, Justin. It's my honor to be here. Justin: We had a fantastic conversation before we got to start recording which we should have recorded, but we'll probably recover some of that but-- Dr. Latimore: And long time ago, too, we talked about a month or so ago [crosstalk]. Justin: Yes, for about an hour. It was a great conversation. Dr. Latimore: And all this other stuff. Justin: We were introduced through Dr. Lesh, who is your best man in your wedding, and as a friend of the show. I'm not going to kid, he's probably the biggest supporter of what I'm doing here and I can't thank him enough. Dr. Latimore: Dave is a good man. Justin: Yes, he is. Dr. Latimore: I'm sure he's listening to that too. Justin: He will be listening. It's funny, Dr. Lesh will give me opinions on what to ask and he'll-- I think with you, he was like, "Well, ask him how we met," or-- I can't remember what it was, but he has to be part of everything. You've listened to some of the shows, every show we start with a top 10. I've read some interviews you've done with a newspaper, I've read some interviews you've done with Trinity's Getting to Know a Professor. Basically, anything I could find, I've read, I've watched some videos, so I found a few things I want to talk about. Dr. Latimore: That sounds scary though. Justin: Well, the internet has a lot of things out there. Compared to some people, you're fine, you don't have anything that-- There's really not a ton out there. Dr. Latimore: That's good. Justin: You academics, y'all's researches and books that cost $10 to $50 a piece so I don't-- Dr. Latimore: You're right. This is true. Justin: I tried to buy a Lesh book and I don't get the Lesh special even though I know him, so I had to pay- I only bought the one that was $9, I'm not going to lie, I wouldn't buy any of his other books. Were you at his books--? Dr. Latimore: I was not. I had a class that night. Justin: It was interesting. It was like a book release party for two books at once or something. Dr. Latimore: That's how Lesh rolls. Justin: He did a reading of his book. It was hard to take it seriously, honestly, because I know Lesh socially, I don't know him as an academic. I didn't realize how austere and dry those events were. Dr. Latimore: Lesh has a very powerful presence too. Justin: He does? Dr. Latimore: In the classroom, he is extraordinarily, and I'm not saying anything that...

Robert Rivard is a newsman, editor, publisher and fount of knowledge regarding San Antonio's path over the past few decades. Currently, The Rivard Report is covering multiple major issues including the racial justice protests and COVID-19. We were so honored to get him on the show. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello in Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Robert Rivard. Robert needs a little introduction in San Antonio. He's the editor and publisher of The Rivard Report which I think personally is the premier news outlet in San Antonio and one of these few news outlets that isn't focused on clickbait and things like that. I really appreciate the fact that they focus on news that matters to all of us. Robert is a published author. He was previously the editor of the San Antonio Express. He's worked at Newsweek. He's won numerous awards, including editor of the year in 2000. Robert, my law firm supports The Rivard Report, I think everybody should support The Rivard Report. I personally want to thank you for what you all do and how-- Sunlight's the best disinfectant and you all are the best sunlight in the city. Thank you for being here and thank you for what you do. Robert Rivard: Thanks for the kind words, Justin, and thanks for your support. Thanks for the invitation to everyone listening today or watching to join in that support. Justin: Yes, and I'm going to encourage everybody, if you have not reached out to The Rivard Report and support it, every little bit helps. You all do what you all do, which is great for the city. I'm also messing with this video right now, because of course when you get here, one of my biggest guests, I'm going to have some technical difficulties. The audio is on though. Robert, we start every episode and we go through every episode with a little bit about caller commentary, where you're from, what do you do, what do you like, when, and why did you move to San Antonio? Robert: I moved here with my wife, Monika Maeckle and our two very young sons in 1989. I left Newsweekmagazine in New York, my wife wanted to come back to Texas and raise the boys here. My whole career, before I joined Newsweek, was in Texas starting as a sports reporter at The Brownsville Herald and moving to the news side there and then up to the Corpus Christi Caller and then the Dallas Times Herald, which sent me to Latin America to cover civil wars in the 1980s and that's where Newsweek and I connected. It became time to make some choices between the fast track of my career in New York and around the world. I was managing Newsweek's bureaus all over the world, which was a very exciting job for me, but for my wife with two young baby boys, it wasn't the ideal family situation. I was smart enough to listen to her and choose family over career and that's what brought us to San Antonio, back to Texas in 1989. Justin: Where are you from originally? Robert: Well, I was born at the top of the mitten, as we say in Michigan, in Petoskey on Lake Michigan. I'm French Canadian by heritage. Rivard, down here it could be Riveda or Rios. I spent my boyhood in Michigan. My father was a traveling salesman. I moved around, lived in a number of states; Pennsylvania, and New York, Kansas. I eventually found my way, as a young man, down to Brownsville and that's where I started my journalism career. Justin: Top of the mitten to the bottom of the state....

Chet Garner and Justin Hill attended Baylor Law School together. After law school, Chet went on to work for one of the biggest and most successful law firms in Texas. Feeling a little burned out, Chet took a swing at making a TV show highlighting all the wonderful things in Texas--including San Antonio. The rest is history. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello. Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to this episode of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Chet Garner AKA the Daytripper. Previously known as the Texas Daytripper, right? Chet Garner: Austin Daytripper, actually. Justin: Okay. That's what it was. All right. Chet: Austin Daytripper. That's OG. That's season one. Justin: Okay. All right. The six-episode season. Chet: Yes, it was. When we went to Waco, our stomping ground, because we were in Waco before Waco was cool. Justin: I know. It's so different now. Chet: Yes. Oh, man. So different. Justin: The silos used to get shanked, and now you got to stand in line to get a sandwich. Chet: [laughs] That's exactly right, man. We started off. I thought, "Man, if I can convince Austinites to want to go to Waco, I can convince them to want to go anywhere in the world". I started with the most difficult task first, so I like to take a lot of the credit for making Waco cool. Justin: I think that's fair. Chet: [crosstalk] may disagree, but I'll take 100% of the credit on that. Justin: One of my good friends just became general counsel for Magnolia there, and I was thinking, "What a great gig". Chet: You're kidding me. Really? Justin: Yes. Chet is a graduate of Baylor Law School, where we met. He went on to work for one of the biggest and best law firms in Texas. After a few years, he made a pivot, created The Austin Daytripper to become The Daytripper. The Daytripper has won eight Lone Star Emmy awards. It's one of her multiple different categories. It's on PBS. It's hosted by Chet. It highlights the culture, outdoors, food, tacos, swimming holes, barbecue, all the wonderful things about Texas. As it relates to San Antonio and South Texas, he has won Emmys for episodes covering Seguin, San Antonio twice, and New Braunfels. He's won outstanding program host. You have a brick and mortar store in Georgetown, and you just have a huge following. My old law partner one time, the coolest thing that his kids knew about me was that I knew you. They thought it was so cool that I knew who you were. Chet: Hey, man. I've been very vocal. I tell all my friends, and this applies to you, that if you can use knowing me to any benefit in your life, do it frequently because it's not going to last forever. Justin: I am right now. I have got you on my podcast. Chet: Good. There we go. Justin: I got the mayor on before you, which was probably harder to-- You're a bigger get than the mayor of San Antonio, I think at this point. Chet: Yes. You're good at brow nosing. That's a lie but okay. Justin: Okay. Chet, on all these episodes, I start with a top 10 just to get a little bit of information about people. The sort of thing we're going to go through, yours is a little bit different because you're not a San Antonian, but you have spent plenty of time here highlighting our wonderful city. So I thought it'd be great to talk to you as an outsider who has also really actually done a lot to display our city. To start, this is a hard one I think. It looks like you won outstanding program host every year except for 2017. What happened? [laughter]...

Eric Cooper moved to San Antonio in 2001 to take over the San Antonio Food Bank and get it on the right path. In his time at the SA Food Bank, the non-profit has raise a lot of money, added many programs, and has made it their mission to provide food for today, food for tomorrow and food for a lifetime. Eric Cooper is heartwarming, loving, and genuinely cares about his mission and the San Antonio Food Bank's success. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Eric Cooper. Eric is the executive director of the San Antonio Food Bank and currently serving in somewhat of a role as a little bit of a national spokesperson for food and security as a result of the crisis and as a result of some press that San Antonio got. He joined the San Antonio Food Bank in 2001 and has since taken it from really being on somewhat of a tenuous footing to really a robust, important, and surprisingly, oddly, well-funded nonprofit in the city. I was doing some research on you. Before this crisis, 58,000 people a week got help. 77 million meals a year, to me, kind of a nerd about things. 2% overhead for y'alls budget. That's something that unless people really pay attention, you don't realize how important that is and how really a compliment to your management skills. Thank you for being here. I want to get into some of these things, but thank you for being here. I can't imagine your time commitment, so I'm glad we got a little bit of it. Eric Cooper: Hey, super excited to be on the show. It's a great city and we're just so privileged to be a part of it. Justin: I think that's a great city. That's why I started this whole thing. You and I were sort of joking how you got these San Antonio stories. I moved here and I've met a weird, fascinating array of characters and I was hoping to share that through this show. We haven't met before, but you're in such a big spotlight right now. I knew about the San Antonio Food Bank. I've learned so much more about it, so I want to talk to you about it. First, I'm going to put you through sort of our top 10 list we go through to get some color commentary on who you are as a person. I've read a bunch of your interviews before you got here today. I want to-- Eric: Sorry about that. [chuckles] Justin: Well, a lot of it, I don't want to retrace steps. Some of it, I want to get some new information. When and why did you move to San Antonio? Eric: Well, I've been in food banking for about eight years. I actually got my start in Salt Lake City at the Utah Food Bank and then made my way back home to North Texas. I grew up in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. There was an opportunity to serve with the North Texas Food Bank which, at that time, they had their facility in South Oak Cliff. I was there a couple of years and had watched as the San Antonio Food Bank somewhat struggled. We went through about four CEOs in a two-year period. Two of them had gotten fired and the other two had quit. The board was struggling. The food bank was struggling. I figured I couldn't screw it up any worse and they offered me the job at that point. I became their youngest executive director. I love an opportunity and I just saw such an opportunity to serve people in need. I knew I was going to dedicate my life towards putting food on the table for families. As I had traveled South Texas and seeing some of our border communities, it's some of the most extreme poverty in the United States. I knew I wanted to serve an area that had that need. When the opportunity arose, the board...

After attending the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, Drew Galloway moved to San Antonio furthering his career in the wine industry working with large wine retailers. While in San Antonio, he was bit by the public policy bug and went back to school. Since then, he has immersed himself in voter registration and voter engagement issues through MOVE Texas. He shares successes and discusses his passion for bagpipes. Transcript: Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right, welcome to this episode of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Drew Galloway. Drew is the executive director of MOVE Texas, and also a bagpipe player. We'll talk to him about that in a little bit. MOVE Texas was started in 2013 by some students at UTSA right here in San Antonio. The goal was to increase participation in local elections. Really I think it's largely been doing that by way of voter registration and we're going to talk to Drew about that. Drew, thanks for being here. Drew Galloway: Thanks, Justin. Awesome to be here with you today. Justin: I got to know about y'all through a mutual friend Stephen Lopez when he was doing some fundraiser. Drew: Stephen's been with us for a couple years now and he's now serving as the board chair. Justin: I didn't know that. Well, I won't hold that against you. Stephen will listen to this and he'll give me his critiques on how I did. He always does. I started all these with a top 10 give a little color to who I'm talking to. I'm just going to walk you through some. They change every time. Drew: Let's go. Justin: All right. When and why did you move to San Antonio? Drew: I got a job with Spec's Family Partners. I was working in the wine business. They reached out. They wanted me to do a new market development for them and I came to San Antonio. Justin: What year was that? Drew: That was 2011. Justin: New market. Did that mean they were just starting to move in here? Drew: They had the store that was in the north part of the city. I helped work at that store and then open the days of all a store and a couple of others. Justin: The one close to me is the one about the airport and it's pretty sad. Drew: It's tucked away under that bridge. Justin: You go to the Spec's in Houston and they've got all the bells and whistles and cheeses and meats and you go to that one by the airport and it's sad. Drew: If you go to the flagship store in Houston, you get spoiled. Justin: All right. Well, we'll take that up with specs. We're all doing our best to support right now. Things are strange. You were talking to me off the record about how you're doing some cooking but are you doing any of the to-gos or the takeouts, the places that are trying to survive and we're all trying to help. Are there any that you've found, "Hey, they've got a great deal like supporting them?" We did Play Lane yesterday and it was fantastic. Any other the places you've been frequenting? Drew: No. There's a little wine shop called Little Death. That is right on the St. Mary's strip. I've been frequenting them just walk in pick up a bottle of wine just because- Justin: You live over there? Drew: No. I live on the south west side. That's one my favorite wine bar in the city. If you've never been at the Little Death you should go. Justin: Were you there when Stephen was cooking his Italian tripe? Drew: No. Justin: Did you see it? Drew: No. I did not. Justin: I was there. Drew: What? Justin: Not only do I support. I went to their, and it

Ron Nirenberg is serving his second term as San Antonio's mayor. During his second term, he is leading the city through the COVID-19 pandemic and related damage. Ron joins us to discuss the state of the city, moving forward, and some of the things he loves about San Antonio. He also discusses how he had a short affair with electronica music. Transcript: Justin Hill: Hello and bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to this episode of The Alamo Hour. Today's guest needs little introduction Mayor Nirenberg joins us. He was District 8 city councilman. He's been elected to two terms in office as our mayor. He's currently guiding our city through what has to be unprecedented strain economically and just generally for all the citizenry. I met Ron in 2015 when he was a city councilman, his mutual friend introduced us, I asked him to come on to the show whenever we started then the pandemic happened. I've pestered him for a while to come on so, Ron, thank you so much for coming on and doing this. Ron Nirenberg: Thanks for having me, Justin, I'm excited to be here. Justin: The goal of our show is to give a little bit of color to the people that are making decisions and doing fun things and have passions about our city. I don't think you can be much more passionate about the city than being serving as the mayor. Everybody has to go through a top 10 I'm going to go through that with you just some general questions about who you are, bounce around when and why did you end up moving to San Antonio? Ron: Yes, sure. Well, so thank you for having me, it's been a while since I saw you so- Justin: I know, Ron: -this will have to suffice for now. Now I grew up just north of here in Austin, Texas. I was actually born on the East Coast in Boston. We moved to Austin, Texas in 1980, my dad's job moved us down there. I loved Austin in the '80s growing up there a residential neighborhood-friendly type of community. I was about to go back to the East Coast for school and my dad convinced me to come down to San Antonio to check out some schools and I went down to Trinity and I fell in love with it. I decided to enroll at Trinity and after four years at Trinity, I fell in love with San Antonio. It was in the mid-90s. San Antonio was coming into its own at that point. I remember that Mayor Peak was in office towards the end, and he had a great vision for the city, embracing green spaces, building an urban environment, and embracing all the cultural assets of the city. That's the San Antonio that I grew up with, for lack of a better phrase and I went away for graduate school and met my wife and we decided we're going to plant our roots in San Antonio we've been here ever since. Justin: We're happy to have you. I'm happy to have you. Ron: Thanks. Justin: You're very prominent on social media so I follow everything you're doing and this is a tough time to have a light-hearted conversation, but I want to ask about some things you're not covering. In our house, we are trying to support a bunch of our local restaurants and do things that probably is not the most economical thing to do at this time, but we know our friends need it. Any places you're frequenting eating out are you trying to spread the love or ya'll cooking at home? What are y'all doing? Ron: All of the above. Erika, my wife bears the brunt of the burden. When it comes to my son during the days at school, he's at home in school, he's in sixth grade. We try to eat together. It's amazing this pandemic has brought us closer together in many ways, the community. Certainly, we have...

Javier Espinoza moved to San Antonio in 2007 and quickly established himself as one of the best trial lawyers in the city. In addition to that, he has taken up the admirable role of giving a voice to many of our city's forgotten workers. He joins us to discuss his passion and his plan to start a program to mentor youth that need advice and mentorship to better their lives. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to this episode of The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Javier Espinoza. Javier is a trial lawyer. He's an advocate for workers. He's a singer. I've seen him do a backflip, I think, or a front flip, I can't remember, maybe a handspring. Was it a herky? It was one of those things. Javier Espinoza: Backflip. [laughter] Justin: Javier has handled all types of cases all over the state of Texas, but he's really settled into a focus on workers rights, not only in the courtroom, but he's an advocate for workers outside of the courtroom as well. He's handled some really high-profile cases here. If you Google him, you'll see that there's been a bunch of stuff that's going on in the last year or so that we're going to talk about involving him advocating for the rights of workers, not just laborers, but also people that work in government. Javier, thank you for being here. Javier: Thank you for having me. Justin: Yes. We did a small, little episode for my law firm earlier, so we're ready. We're warmed up. I'm going to start with some color commentary, a Top 10 list I do with other people. Javier: We're good. How are you doing, Justin? Justin: I'm doing great. Other than you just told me I look old before we started. What are you going to do? I need to drink more water, I think. Javier: You look refined. [laughter] Justin: Yes. Is that because there's a distiller on next, I look fermented? All right. Top 10 list with Javier Espinoza. Javier, when and why did you move to San Antonio, Texas? Javier: We moved to San Antonio, Texas in July 2007. I had been practicing in El Paso for five years prior to that. The main, main reason is because my wife wanted to go to law school and that's the deal we had made was I went to law school then she went to law school. When I moved to El Paso with the family, there was no law school in El Paso, so we had to pick a landing place. There was few options and San Antonio was definitely at the top of my list because I knew the next move was probably going to be permanent. Justin: It wasn't where you went to law school which is in a terrible town. I'm not saying terrible law school but Lubbock is- it's not much punkin'. I was out there recently. We're all doing our part right now. Eat local, help local, support local. Are you doing any restaurants? Are you doing take out from or trying to help out or just any of that you've generally realized, "Oh, I'm frequenting this one a lot"? Javier: We've actually been cooking at home a lot. Well, I say we, and my wife would kill me if she heard me say we. She has been cooking a lot at the house, and [crosstalk]- Justin: You've been eating. Javier: - cooking. Yes. I've been eating a lot. It's been tough on me. Justin: We did Soluna to-go last night. I know that's one of her favorite restaurants. Javier: Oh my God. We've done that. We did actually Fruteria where we did the to-go Pepino margaritas. Oh my God, that's delicious. Justin: I've seen you there. I've seen you there having those and you've never invited me to have one with you. It's such a

Boyan Kalusevic grew up spending summers in Serbia and Croatia where he learned the family tradition and process for making apricot brandy or "rakia." When he was able, he opened Dorćol Distilling + Brewing Co. with the goal to make the best fruit distillate in the United States and great beer as well. The brewery has become an anchor for the revitalization of an entire part of San Antonio. Join us to hear his stories and learn more about his products. Their current awards include: 2018 Top 100 - Best Distillery - San Antonio Express-News  2017 Best of San Antonio - SA Current 2016 Gold Medal, Best of Category - LA International Spirits Competition - 92 pts - World's highest rated brandy 2015, 2017 Best of the City - San Antonio Magazine 2014 Critics' Choice Award - Best Local Spirit or Beer - San Antonio Express-News 2014 Gold Medal - Chicago's World Spirits Championships - 90 pts; Exceptional. Highest rated American brandy of 2014. Transcript: Justin Hill: Hello, and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. [applause] All right, welcome to this episode of The Alamo Hour. As promised, it's going to be a good one. Boyan Kalusevic is with us. He is-- I was going to say head distiller and brewer but I don't think that's true. You're one of the distillers at Dorćol Distilling & Brewing. Boyan Kalusevic: Correct. I'm one of the co-founders and one of the distillers. Justin: Thank you for being here. Boyan: Thank you for having me. Justin: I wanted to get you on. I've met you a while back from one of your-- I feel like it would be overstretching to say a business partner, but a business partner and a friend of ours introduced us a while back. What you all do, I think is a work of passion, and I'm a sucker for that. Also, what you all have done for the part of town that you all are involved in, has really been transformational. I wanted to get you on here to talk about a whole part of town that a lot of people probably don't even know what's going on. A whole project and a passion that you're involved in that probably a lot of people don't know about as well. To start, I do a top 10 list, so I'm going to walk you through this. I did not warn you or tell you what I'm going to ask you, but it's all fun. Boyan: Let's do it. Justin: As we're doing this, we're enjoying some of your fruit of your loins. Boyan: How about that? Justin: Your Kinsman Rakia gold medal-winning-- Boyan: Multiple gold medal winners. Just let me talk about it. [laughs] Justin: You need to update the website because I only saw one gold medal on the website. Boyan: That was the world's highest-rated. We left America's highest-rated from a year before. Justin: Okay, all right. You all have even been in Playboy, I think, right? Boyan: Can you believe that? Justin: Yes, [chuckles] well-- Boyan: It's impressive. Justin: [chuckles] I've seen some of the things in Playboy, but you all is the best of the things I've seen in Playboy. [crosstalk] Okay, Boyan, when and why did you move to San Antonio? We're on our top 10 list now. This is a little color commentary, and then we'll get into some stuff you all are doing. Boyan: Let's do it. Mom and dad moved me down. I was in high school and dad's job got him relocated to San Antonio. Justin: Where'd you move from? Boyan: Seattle. Justin: What year did you move down? Boyan: '98. Justin: You've been here a while. Boyan: A little bit. Justin: We are currently in the time of COVID,...

On the 10th Anniversary of the BP Blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, Mikal Watts joins us to discuss a disaster that changed his life. He discusses his path working on some of the biggest cases in American history to becoming the target of a massive federal indictment. Against all advice, Mikal defended himself and beat the charges. Listen to his incredible stories. Transcript: Justin Hill: [unintelligible 00:00:02] Welcome to the Alamo Hour. This is Episode 11 and I've got Mikal Watts on the podcast today. Mikal is a trial lawyer over the past 25 or so years, I'm guessing now, Mikal. Mikal: More like 30. Justin Hill: 30. Well, you got out early. Mikal's been at the forefront in many areas of litigation on a national stage for Firestone. All the stuff you see on TV. Have you been hurt by this drug? He's been involved in a lot of those. He's really been one of the few players on a national level for a long time regarding a lot of national torts. For our city, that means a lot of things. We've got one of the biggest lawyers in America here, officing here with us protecting our rights and I wanted to get him on here to talk about a few things. It's really important timing and I bugged him about the important timing. Atlantic monthly just did an article on Mikal. It's a 10-year anniversary of the BP blow out, which we're going to get into this, but that had so many implications on you as a human, you as a lawyer and everything else. We're going to talk about that but I wanted to get you on here to talk about being a lawyer on some of the biggest stages, to talk about being indicted by the feds, talk about what you learned in those scenarios and then what you're doing now. I always start these, a little color commentary. I didn't prompt you on this, but it's a little top 10 list I like to go through and get some of your feelings and views on San Antonio. Okay? Mikal: All right. Justin Hill: Thank you for being here. Mikal: Sure. Justin Hill: I also want to throw in, the reason I live in San Antonio is Mikal Watts. I cold called him coming out of law school and said I want a job and he gave me a job and said which city? He had six offices and I said, "You pick." He picks San Antonio so you're the reason I live here. Mikal: Well, with a haircut like mine where you're completely bald, I needed some lawyers without here and you had a pretty good resume but man, what a great lawyer. Justin Hill: You have matching hair now though. Mikal: Exactly. Justin Hill: You used to have a little. Mikal: All I can do is just grew up the beard now and be Justin. Justin Hill: All right. How long have you lived in San Antonio? Mikal: Moved here in 2006 so I'm going on 15 years, 14 years. Justin Hill: All right. I moved here in '07 and you had just moved here, you and your wife and kids and set up shop. Right now, we're in sort of COVID-19 shutdown, so it's a funny question but at our house right now, we're doing our best to support local and help some of our small businesses and help some of our small restaurants. What restaurants are you reaching out to try to help? Mikal: It's really not restaurants. It's an epic joke in my law firm that we go to Papa Nacho's in Leon Springs four times a week because I like the margaritas and so I'm just terrified that they're going to shut down. I have lunch there every day. Justin Hill: Are they open? Mikal: They are open for takeout and we go in there and I ordered the same Chicken Diablo and [unintelligible 00:03:03] and soda and Frank orders some Papa Nacho's salad and a [unintelligible 00:03:09]. Justin Hill: They have margaritas to go. Mikal: They do. Justin Hill: Well, thanks for not bringing a jug of them down here. Mikal: I've got many political differences with Greg Abbott, but the most brilliant thing he's ever done is when he said, "We're going to shut...

Tom Kayser was the president of the Texas League for 25 years. The San Antonio Missions were members of the Texas League during that time. He has authored books on the Texas League and baseball's Texas history. He is revered for his success as the president and his love of the game. Listen to him share his stories and thoughts on the game that defined his life. Transcript: Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right, welcome to episode 10 of The Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Tom Kayser. Tom is a baseball man. He was the president of the Texas League for 25 years. It's one of three double-A minor leagues. That's a yes, I got a head nod. Tom Kayser: Sorry. [laughter] Justin: He wrote Baseball in The Lone Star State, the Texas Leagues greatest hits. He wrote The Texas League Almanac. In 2016, he was inducted into the Texas League Hall of Fame. We've asked him on here today to talk about Texas, Texas baseball, the Missions. The Missions were part of the Texas League and I think, Tom's got a lot to add on. Anybody who's interested in baseball, anybody who's followed the city's quest to get a baseball team and sort of the considerations there. Tom, thank you for being here. Tom: I'm happy to do it. Justin: I always start these with kind of a top 10 list. Get to know a little bit more about you, get to know sort of your connection to our city. You do live in San Antonio, right? Tom: Absolutely. Justin: How long have you lived here and sort of what part of town have you lived in? Tom: Bought a house inside of 1604, in the East of 281 back in October of '93 and I still live in that house. Justin: Is that right? Tom: Yes. Justin: A lot's changed there. Tom: Yes. There wasn't anything on the other side of 1604. As a matter of fact, Gold Canyon wasn't even there back then. You could go across 281 on a bridge, on the Henderson Pass, it used to cross over there and can't do that anymore, but too many people. Justin: You've been here a long time. Tom: I have. Justin: Straight the whole time, '93 on. Tom: Absolutely. Justin: We're in COVID shutdown. This is kind of a strange question, but I think it works. Any favorite place to eat right now? We're doing a bunch of takeout. We're trying to support our old favorites, but is there any spot you're going to or are you shut down? Tom: I'm a pretty good cook, HEB basically. I buy my supplies, but we're coming out of the soup season. I'm just finishing a barley mushroom soup which is fabulous. Having had my office in my house, it's really what I tended to do is eat at home a lot. I wish I could come up with a top. Justin: I need to learn. Tom: Pericos on Saturday morning on 1604 because we've had a group, go on a breakfast on Saturday for tacos forever. Justin: That's great. Tom: It's down to a very slimmed-down group of four. Justin: Right now? Tom: No. We really miss it too, boy. Justin: We'll be there again soon. I had Commissioner [unintelligible 00:03:13] here and I said, we'll get back to normal soon and he was not very encouraging to my optimism. I'm hoping he's wrong because I think we all need to. You've lived here long enough and you have been involved in baseball on the side of town that I really haven't spent much time where the Missions play in that part of town. Are there any things in San Antonio that you think are hidden gems, is what I call them? You've got somebody coming into town and you go, ''Yes, but this isn't in the guidebook, you really need to go see this or do this thing.'' Tom: I tend to take people to the Pearl for sure, but there are so many things that are on the top 10 that it's like, if...

Dr. Curtis Crane is a fellowship trained reconstructive urologist, Board-certified plastic surgeon and one of the most sought after surgeons and experts in the area of gender confirmation surgeries. With offices in Austin and San Francisco, his wait-list is a testament to his skill. He joins The Alamo Hour to talk about his time in San Antonio and the misconceptions and misinformation surrounding his practice area. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Welcome to this episode of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Dr. Curtis Crane of Crane Center in Austin and San Francisco, right? Dr. Curtis Crane: Correct. Justin: Dr. Crane is a board certified plastic surgeon, he's fellowship-trained in reconstructive urology, as well as transgender surgery. Did I get that correct? Dr. Curtis: That seems absolutely, correct. Justin: All right. He's one of the most sought after experts in the United States, and likely the world on issues regarding transgender surgery and transgender issues. He has a really robust practice in Austin. He's got a long wait list for people to get his services. How many doctors do you have working under you, Dr. Crane? Dr. Curtis: Let's see, at this point, five and then October it'll be six. Justin: Where are you all located in Austin? Dr. Curtis: We're at 5656 Bee Cave Rd, right next to Bee Cave in 360. Justin: Pretty far out there off Bee Cave? Dr. Curtis: Yes, it's probably. I live downtown, it takes me a little less than 15 minutes to go from downtown to here. It's always reverse traffic from downtown out, so it's not too bad. Justin: Not a lot of people have that, live downtown, drive out and then come back when you come back. It's good. Dr. Curtis: Everyone should, it's a lot of fun. Justin: It's good life. We got Dr. Crane on here today to talk about a few things, mostly it's fascinating what you do in the realms of transgender surgery. You and I met probably, I can think back by a few-- Probably seven years ago, eight years ago probably? Dr. Curtis: I think it was like 2010, 2011. Justin: Yes, it had to be. We met and became good friends. It's always been fascinating hanging out with you because you're real passionate about what you do, but you also do something that is very out of the norm for everybody. Dr. Curtis: Well, thank you. Yes, it definitely keeps life interesting. Justin: I'm sure. You have a San Antonio connection, our show is San Antonio based. You were here for three years? Dr. Curtis: I was from '09 to '12. Justin: All right. With all my guests, I do a top 10 list. I'm going to walk through, it's just a little color commentary on who you are and your relationship to our city. You've answered the first one, how long you lived here? Three years. From here you went off to San Francisco though, right? Dr. Curtis: Let's see. Actually, I went to Europe for a fellowship and lived in Belgium, Amsterdam and Belgrade, Serbia. Then I moved to Alaska for three months, and then I moved to San Francisco. Justin: That's right, you were in Alaska, I remember, that [chuckles] is a strange part of life. Okay. You were here for three years, the city has changed so much in the time that you've been here, but when you were here, what were your favorite spots in town? Bars, restaurants, whatever. Dr. Curtis: Well, I'll tell you, I lived downtown at the Vistana and I lived in that tower at the top with two other guys, and my favorite place was our place and our parties. [chuckles] Were...

San Antonio's born and bred Precinct 4 County Commissioner Tommy Calvert discusses a lot of issues related to Bexar County's pandemic response, how we got here and how things look moving forward. He is candid, honest and open about our successes and failures. Great episode and a must listen if you live in San Antonio or the greater Bexar County. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello in Bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion and a keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. [applause] Welcome. Today's guest on The Alamo Hour for Episode 8 is Precinct 4, Commissioner Tommy Calvert. Tommy, thank you for being here. Tommy Calvert: Super to be on with you. Congratulations on your show. Justin: Thank you. This is our first Zoom. Hopefully, it goes well. Tommy: We're trying to move everybody into the new century here. [laughter] Justin: All right. Tommy has been representing Precinct 4 since 2014. He's in his second term. He's been involved in lots of stuff including international policy, antislavery issues. He was recently named top 40 under 40 by the San Antonio Business Journal. In my opinion, I think the most impressive thing about you, Tommy, is your retail politics, what you're doing for your actual constituents is something you don't see political leaders do enough of. Hats off to you, man. Seriously, kudos. You do such a good job. I just want you to know that a lot of people notice that. Tommy: Oh my God, thank you. I couldn't have done it without my father's teachings. He deserves the credit. Justin: Well, hopefully, he'll listen to this. Tommy: I'm sure he will. Justin: [laughs] We have Tommy on here today to talk about a few things. These are one of the things that I don't know how to do. Are you hearing that, Tommy? Tommy: I do hear that. Justin: I don't know-- Tommy: It was like a light bulb. It's probably my father saying thank you. Justin: [laughs] We might just be dealing with that some today since this is Zoom and I don't know how to turn off that stuff. We have Tommy on here today to talk about a few things. The elephant in the room is your work and the County's work as it relates to this pandemic response. I want to talk to you a little bit about a few things. We are going to talk about the response, the science, the expectations of people in San Antonio, what resources are available and then not gloom and doom, I want to talk to you a little bit about what's next for the County and San Antonio moving forward because this isn't a forever thing but this is a really tragic, heavy, bad thing right now. All right? Tommy: Sure. I'm ready whenever you're ready. Justin: All right. We've been doing this with everybody who comes on the show so far is talking a little bit about a top 10, a little color commentary and I've changed it for you a little bit because I realize you're in a different position. How are you spending your time decompressing right now? Tommy: There's not a lot of time to decompress because we have an emergency. I'm like a general in a war zone and it's a seven-day a week and it's first thing 5:00 AM to midnight hours for us right now. I will get to work out maybe two or three times a week. I'll decompress that way. We have just family. We might have a couple tequila shots and some beer on Friday and Saturday night and just decompress as best as you can. That's not a lot. I've been to a park and walked. I've got a five-mile walk in one day but that's about it. Everything's closed. A decompression might be a drive to the store out of the house because you're in the house so much. Maybe a drive to the courthouse office or...

Brian Steward had to come back on the show due to the changing nature of the litigation and rulings coming out of the courts about Planned Parenthood's fight with the State of Texas. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Okay, welcome to The Alamo Hour. This is our first attempt at a bonus episode. We have Brian Steward with us. He's rejoined us today. He will be the guest on tomorrow, which will be today's episode of The Alamo Hour, discussing Planned Parenthood's lawsuit and ongoing issues in the fight with Texas over reproductive rights and what COVID-19 means for people who are trying to exercise what has been determined to be a constitutional right to access the reproductive freedom or rights. When he was last on the show, we discussed the course of a legal fight between the State of Texas and Planned Parenthood that centered around, as you just heard, whether or not access to abortion, abortion procedures would be outlawed during Abbott's ruling that non-essential medical procedures are put on hold during the pendency of the emergency order related to COVID-19. After his order, the next day, the Attorney General said that it includes abortion and abortion procedures. The Texas Medical Board weighed in. A lawsuit was filed. Austin Federal Judge Lee Yeakel basically said, "We're going to put that ruling on hold and allow access to reproductive rights and abortion procedures to continue until I get some evidence from you all, and we'll have a hearing--" April 13th was that, right? Brian Steward: April 13th. Justin Hill: Then in the meantime, that got appealed to the Fifth Circuit. As we sit here today, about 35 hours ago, I think if I'm right, somewhere around that, the Fifth Circuit weighed in. As we sit here right now, Brian, what is the status of reproductive rights in the State of Texas? What is the next step forward for Planned Parenthood or the State of Texas in this fight? Brian Steward: I'm going to answer your question and back up a little bit. As of 2:30 this afternoon, it's Thursday, April 9th, 2020, Judge Yeakel, who's in the Austin Western District, requested a hearing with the various parties to this litigation. In that hearing, he requested information about the pending lawsuit, the pending litigation, and evidence. You did a great job of walking us through this procedure- Justin Hill: Thank you. Brian Steward: -and walking us through these last 30 plus days, but I want to go back through it because there are certain things that are going to be really important. There are certain things that have been clarified since the last time we met. Thank you for allowing me to come back again. Justin Hill: It's always good to see you. We're actually just so- we're supporting local. We're drinking some local beer from a Boerne Texas Brewery. We're trying to support local as we also try to give people something to listen to that's not COVID-19. It's a heavy, heavy deal. Let's have a conversation that is not focused on that necessarily. I mean, there's hinges on that, but it's a real legal issue going on. So walk us back through and fill in the gaps that I missed. Brian Steward: All right, so let's back up. COVID-19, we're all aware of it now. We may not have taken it as seriously as some, but certainly we're on this path, and we can walk back to March the 22nd, 2020. That's when the governor, Greg Abbott, issued Executive Order GA-09, which postponed non-essential surgeries until April the 21st, 2020 at 11:59. What is that mean? It meant that surgeries which were not considered...

Brian Steward joins and walks us through the fight between the State of Texas and Planned Parenthood regarding the state's attempt to ban all abortions and non-essential medical procedures during the COVID-19 shutdown. He also discusses growing up in San Antonio and his involvement with the zoo. Great discussion on some very specific COVID-19 related legal issues. Transcript: Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo hour discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonio and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Hello, and welcome. Today's guest is Brian Steward. Brian is a board member of the San Antonio zoo formal board member of the San Antonio public library foundation or system. A board member of Planned Parenthood of Texas. He's a dad, he's a husband. He's a local injury lawyer and I won't hold it against him, but at one point he was a defense lawyer. For those who don't know, that means he's the guy that tries to keep people from getting justice in the courthouse, not criminal defense those guys are still good. We've asked Brian on here today to talk about a few things, but one thing he's going to talk about is the fight with the state, between the state and Planned Parenthood. This is not a political show and it's not going to be, but it is something that's happening in the state of Texas right now where Planned Parenthood in the state of Texas are in a fight regarding medical procedures that can be performed during the coronavirus COVID-19 shutdowns. We're going to talk to him a little bit about that. We're going to talk to him a little bit about the zoo and what's going on there. One thing he wishes I would talk to him about is Duke, he's a blue devil, but I refuse to talk about Duke, for a variety of reasons. Mostly, I could not even tell you what state they were in if I was forced to on jeopardy because I choose to not know that kind of information because Duke has no bearing on me. Another fun fact, Brian Steward has a vanity license plate. Everybody should know about it. I think it's San Antonio, blue devil or something like that. I mean, I'm not going to give it any credit. We'll get to you, Brian. He's itching to talk. Brian, we're going to start like we started with everybody. A few questions to start top 10 questions to give some color to who you are. Do you have any pets? Brian Steward: I have two dogs currently. Justin: Are those your mother's dogs? Brian: No, my mother has two puppies. She's got two chocolate labs, but we have two dogs. My wife's child and I have two dogs. Justin: Do you also have two puppies at your house right now? Brian: I do. Justin: You've got two dogs and you are-- I don't know waystation for two black labs right now. Brian: Chocolate labs, I feel like I'm a foster with benefits. I think that's how I would characterize it. Justin: Your daughter Grace clearly thinks there's benefits involved. I saw the pictures. Brian: My daughter, Grace, knows that those are her dogs. That's why she was able to name them. Colby, that's right. Not Colby, Colby Bryant, Steward, and Hunter Bush Steward. Good looking dog. Justin: Is your mom going to stick to those names? Brian: I think the dogs may have alternative names and that's okay. Like [unintelligible 00:03:06]. Justin: Well, I hope your daughter still calls them these random names years down the road as she sees them. Brian: She will. She really doesn't care what other people think. Justin: All right. What is your-- I hate when people ask me I've got friends that'll call and say you eat out a lot, which I don't know if it's a compliment or not, but they'll say, what's your favorite restaurant in town? That's a terrible question, but what is your favorite restaurant right now?...

Dr. David Lesch has published over 16 books with a particular focus on Syria, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Middle East and the current regional issues. He talks about how he became to befriend the leader of Syria and worked to counsel restraint in the Middle East. He has been sought after by many NGO's to help broker peace and he joins us to discuss it all. Transcript: [music] Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Today's guest is Dr. David Lesch. Dr. Lesch is a San Antonio local, former professional athlete. I think Harvard PhD, right? David Lesch: Harvard PhD. Justin: I want to say Yale just to mess with you. He's a Middle East expert. He's a professor at Trinity. He's one of my good friends. We have him on here today to talk about a few things which the plan was always to have you on to talk about Middle East but now we get to talk about the international effect of this. I still want to talk Middle East, I still want to talk Syria, but first, thank you for being here. David: Pleasure to be here. Justin: I've started with everybody the same way. I want to just go through some general information. First, important to me, do you have any pets? David: No. I used to have two, one good one, one bad one. Justin: What were they? David: Dogs. [laughs] Justin: All right. Why not now? David: Because I've been there. I've done that. We have actually good furniture now. We don't want to get these things bitten or feed on or anything else. Justin: This is exactly what I expect your response to be. I know what your favorite restaurant is right now. That one's marked off the list. What's your-- David: What do you know about that restaurant? Justin: That it has good food. David: There's one other thing. [laughs] Justin: I don't know right now. David: That's okay. You just need to look at the menu next time. Yes. Justin: Oh, they have a to go? David: Yes, yes. Justin: I forgot. I will let you do that. Dr. Lesch has a-- David: Oh, no, no. It's not for me. It's for you to mention it so I look humble. Justin: A dish named after him- David: A dish named after me- Justin: -at J-Prime. David: -at J-Prime. Justin: I can't imagine what [crosstalk] David: It's called the Lesch Lobster or Lesch [unintelligible 00:02:00] Justin: Okay. David: It's a dish I found at a restaurant in Toronto. I brought it to the manager there. He loved it and he honored me, because I spent a lot of money there, [chuckles] to name the dish after me. Justin: Very manly dish. David: It is a very manly dish, especially when you dip it. Justin: Other than J-Prime, what's your favorite place to eat in town? David: J-Prime. [laughs] Did you mention J-Prime? Justin: Do you ever eat like the locals eat? Maybe a taqueria or a burger joint? David: What are those? I don't know. Justin: Yes, okay. David: Perry's maybe, The Perry's-- [laughter] Downtown maybe Bohanan's. Justin: Okay. This is going about where you should go. I asked everybody this. I'm going to because I think everybody's got this- if you come to San Antonio, you have to do this one thing. What is your hidden gem in San Antonio that you told visitors they've got to go see? David: Oh, J-Prime. [laughter] It's going nowhere. You regret having me on. Now, hidden gem? It used to be the Liberty Bar when it was at its other location. Before I brought anybody anywhere from out of town it used to be on where the Pearl is now, that house...

San Antonio's own, Tim Maloney, a son of personal injury lawyer legend Pat Maloney and personal injury attorney himself joins us to talk about his other interest. Tim is one of the producers of Southern Charm: New Orleans which is on Bravo. He has also produced movies, documentaries and is here to talk about that path and upcoming projects. Transcript: Justin Hill: Hello in Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. All right. Today's guest is a movie producer, television reality show producer, former Riverwalk restaurant tour/bar owner, local injury attorney and one of my very best friends Tim Maloney. Tim, thank you for being here. Tim Maloney: I appreciate the opportunity, sir. Justin: Tim, we're not going to talk about the things- you and I like to talk about at bars, which is usually law and other high-minded things. I want to talk to you a little bit about some of your passions outside of the law. How did you get into television producing? Tim: Seventh grade Maria Fleming, I wanted to make out with her. The reason I got into it was I produced Charlie Brown Christmas show and I cast her. I injected a controversial scene to the seventh grade production, which of course got me suspended, and that was she actually kissed Snoopy. That's absolute true story. That's how I got started in production. Justin: It turns species love scene? Tim: Pretty much. By the way, very controversial, not only the kiss with the beagle, but the beagle was also a female in a costume. I was actually, shall we say, ahead of my time. Justin: You were definitely ahead of your time. For everybody to know, I have warned at Tim and let him know that this is a family friendly podcast, and we're only going to talk about family friendly things today. Tim: They were very friendly. Justin: Okay, well, Snoopy. Tim: They were lovable. You all love Snoopy. Justin: Tim, I want to talk to you more about the TV and stuff like that. We're probably not going to talk much about the law. I'm going to start with a top 10 for everybody because I think it's important to just get a little bit of a slice of who you are. You're never going to know what they but they're going to be pretty simple, okay. Tim: I'll give it my best shot. Justin: All right. I know the answers to a lot of these, but some I don't. First, do you have any pets? Tim: Yes, I do. Justin: Cats? Tim: Yes. Justin: Feral? Tim: Very feral. Justin: You got feral cats you feed, but you name them? Tim: They like Will Ferrell, but they're also like some of the other SNL characters do. Justin: All right. Cheri Oteri? Tim: Actually, they were more old school, Eddie Murphy in the day. Justin: What's your favorite restaurant right now? Tim: Boy, I would say the Palace at lunch. Justin: What's the buffet special there? Tim: Sushi. [laughs] Cut. You have to edit that out. Justin: What were going to try it again. What is your favorite restaurant eat-out right now? Tim: A signature I think right now is on top of their game. Justin: The [unintelligible 00:02:46] ridiculous? Tim: It's really good. I did not want to like it, and it's now my new go-to. Justin: I'm embarrassed that I know what that is, but it's pretty good. Tim: It's really tasty. Justin: I think I know the answer to this. What is your favorite go-to hidden gem in San Antonio? Tim: Boy, hidden gym. Justin: Doesn't have to be a bar, doesn't have to be restaurant, can be just anything in the city that you think, man if you want your PhD and know in San Antonio, you've got to know this place. Tim: I would say the library then in my street. Justin: I was going to say the Japanese tea garden for you because

Join us for a discuss with Dr. Kasi Howard. We dive into how to distract, cope and be mindful with the financial, health, and personal stressors associated with the coronavirus pandemic and ensuring shutdown. We also discusses with us some of the non-profits she is most passionate about and why. Transcript: Recording: Hello and bienvenidos, San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonion, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Justin Hill: All right. Welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Dr. Kasi Howard. Dr. Howard's one of my close friends and has been for a long time. She's a clinical psychologist who owns and runs the Nova Recovery Center. She's an author of Strength for the Journey: Helping you bulk up emotionally, mentally and spiritually for the journey of life. She's a mom, she's a volunteer, she raises money, blah blah. She's everything. She's joining us today. I think no time is better than now to talk about handling the mental stress and strain of what's going on now. Thank you for being here, Dr. Howard. Kasi Howard: Thank you. Justin: We're going to start, give a little background to who you are, a little color on who you are. Do you have any pets? Kasi: I do. I have a three-legged dog named Lucy. Justin: Okay. I'm going to leave that there, but did you name it Lucy? Kasi: I did. She's Lucy Lihua. Lihua is a flower in the garden. [laughter] Justin: Okay. Kasi: I could tell you about the little flower, it's okay, yes-- Justin: I like that you didn't name her something calling out her issue. Kasi: No. We're all about acceptance in our household. Justin: All right. Favorite restaurant to eat at right now, currently? Kasi: Oh. I've actually been cooking a lot. I stocked up on food and now I feel like I need to eat a lot. Justin: You have your food handlers license? Kasi: [laughs] No. Justin: You don't run a restaurant. What's your favorite place in town currently? Kasi: Oh my gosh. I love sushi, so I'm a big fan of Sushima [crosstalk]. They have half-price sushi Monday through Wednesday 4:00 to 6:00. Their entire menu half off, including sake and wine. Justin: It's a little far for me, but I have been, it's great. Kasi: Yes, worth the drive. Justin: Hidden gem in San Antonio? I always say that you got your visitor who's never been here, Alamo and all those things, but you've got the guy and they're like, tell me what the PhD visitor tour is? What is your hidden gem in San Antonio that you tell your friends, "You all got to go see this." Kasi: I actually love the mission trail, biking the mission trial, in the Blue Star, have a beer. Super fun [crosstalk]. Justin: Have you done a kayak version of it? Kasi: I have not. Justin: I haven't either, so it's embarrassing. We're going to get into it more but quick one-o-one on your job and what you're most involved with outside of your professional career. Kasi: I am a psychologist. I own a trauma and PTSD treatment center. I'm most involved with the Alzheimer's Association, and I recently started my own charity as well. Justin: Currently are you the chair? Kasi: I'm the chair of-- Well, the chair of the 2020 Alzheimer's Gala which sadly COVID 19 has cancelled out, so we're currently regrouping. Justin: Well, that doesn't take away from your commitment. Kasi: It does not, no, definitely still devoted to the cause. Justin: Any odd hobbies? The one thing I think is most odd about you is you like to go take a seven-mile run when it's 110 degrees outside and you find that refreshing. Kasi: I love running in the heat. I'm

Art Pruneda and his wife were some of the earliest disciples of Crossfit in San Antonio. They have owned and operated Crossfit Unchained in the Eastside of San Antonio for over seven years. He joined us to talk about how to stay health when the gyms are closed, how to find information for at home workouts, and some general thoughts on staying healthy and sane. Transcript: Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido, San Antonio. Welcome to The Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonioan, and keeper of chickens and bees. On The Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique, and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Welcome to today's episode of The Alamo Hour. My guest today is Art Pruneda. Did I say that right? Art Pruneda: Pruneda, but close enough. Justin: Close enough. Art is one of my good friends. Art is also one of the original CrossFit aficionados in this city. He has owned CrossFit Unchained since when? Seven years. Art: Seven years. Yes. Well, we got our affiliate with CrossFit in December of 2012. Justin: Also, a small business owner who had the guts to be one of the first early movers into the Eastside, I think it would be fair to say. Art: Yes, fair to say. When we first started looking in that area to open our gym, there was one CrossFit downtown, and then by the time we did get our lease and get open, we were the third one there. Justin: The city has had a hard time getting people to move into the Eastside, so it's great that you did. You're still in the Eastside. You're in the near Eastside, I guess, would be the best way to put it but pretty close to Sunset Station. Art: Yes, very close. About half a mile from Sunset Station, so not too far. Justin: Art is one of my good friends, and Art helped me right the ship when I had let health issues go the wrong direction. I didn't have any diagnosis at that point, but I just knew I was eating and drinking and being a slob. Art helped me get everything righted, and I was pretty consistent for about three years, and then took about six to nine months off, and now I'm back dipping my toe in the water. I've got Art on here today to talk about a few things. One of the more important things is staying fit, staying sane, staying calm during our impending shutdown which starts tomorrow. We're going to talk a little bit about that. Before we get started, I want to run through some things with Art. I'm doing top 10 lists with everybody. That's going to change a little bit, but a few things stand the test of time. For one, I have my dog in here right now as we're doing this, so it's really two guests and a dog which was the lesser-known canceled NBC show. Art, do you have any pets? Art: Yes. We have a dog. Her name is Aspen. She is a golden retriever. She is five years old. We recently got her less than six months ago from a breeder. Our 18-year-old daughter has pretty much coined that we saved her from sex slavery, so she had four litters, and now she's ours. She's an awesome dog. Before her, we did have Abner who was a Basset hound. We had him for 14 years. We got him when he was about six or eight months old and had him for his entire life, and we miss him a lot. Aspen has been really good. She's a really good dog. Justin: A golden retriever named Aspen. I feel like the picture needs to be like an American flag flying in the background. I tried a case against a defense lawyer and he got up and he started and he goes, "I have two dogs, a golden retriever and a black lab, General and Scout." I just knew it was all bullshit. None of that was true. He was just trying to like paint this picture. Next question. What's your favorite spot to eat at in town right now? Art: Favorite spot to eat at in town right now? Gosh. Right now, at the moment, I...

San Antonio's own Dr. Rohr-Allegrini whom headed up San Antonio's flu pandemic response for the H1N1 pandemic joins The Alamo Hour to discuss what is going on locally and globally. She gives us her insight into the virus, San Antonio's response and the unknowns, currently. Transcript: Justin Hill: Hello and bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Okay, welcome to the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Dr. Cherise Rohr-Allegrini. Did I say that right? Dr. Cherise Rohr-Allegrini: You got it. Justin: All right. I'm joined with her and my dog Winston, in case you hear him bark, I apologize. Our guest is an infectious disease epidemiologist and consultant, has a long list, a long resume. I think one of the more important things or what I thought was interesting was you were the pandemic flu coordinator for San Antonio Metro Health District, which I think probably has a lot of overlap to what's going on right now. Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Yes, that's right. Justin: We're going to get to Covid, we're going to get to how people are responding and reacting, what San Antonians should be doing to make sure they're looking out for their neighbors. First, I want to go through just a few general questions with you and get to know you. This is the first time we've met. Jody Newman told me I should reach out to you and you were gracious enough to give me a little bit of your time. Do you have any pets? Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: I do. I have a dog, Chico, and three cats. Justin: All right. One thing I did notice, you and I both have been where I live for Rivard Report. Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Right. I actually did a lot of writing for Rivard Report. Justin: I saw that too. [laughs] Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: It's a great series. Justin: Favorite place to eat right now? Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Right now? Thai Lucky. Or there's a Chinese place on the west side, whose name I always forget. It's on Ingram Road and we go there for takeout quite often. Justin: Is it the one behind the mall? Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Yes. Justin: Okay. Kind of a younger lady who runs the show? Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Yes, probably. Justin: I think Jody and her husband took me there. Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: They go there a lot. Yes. Justin: It's fantastic. Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Awesome. Yes, it's our favorite place. My kids keep asking when we can go get takeout again. Justin: Okay, so I think you'll probably have a good answer to this. Everybody that comes to San Antonio, I always say, "Okay, you've done that but you've got to go do this." What is your sort of hidden gem you tell everybody about? Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Usually, it's a friendly spot. Justin: Okay, fair. Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: It's not really hidden but it's one of my favorite places to hang out. I often just say, "Just take a stroll along the river, it's absolutely wonderful." I love walking downtown super early in the morning, 5:00 AM, 6:00 AM when nobody's out, it's really quiet and beautiful. Justin: Japanese Tea Gardens is one of them. Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: That's gorgeous. Yes. Justin: I've had a guest say Esquire Downstairs. There are some hidden gems. Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: Right. Justin: Other than your job or your professional involvement, which we're going to talk about, are you involved in any outside nonprofits charities that you're all passionate about? Dr. Rohr-Allegrini: I'm involved in a lot of things, I wear a lot of hats. For a long time, I was the president, I'm not anymore but friends of Bonham Academy which is our public...

One of the most successful and influential business leaders, restauranteurs, entrepreneurs and female mentors in San Antonio discusses a myriad of topics. From Fiesta to the very tough economics of COVID-19, we get into it. Transcript: Justin: Hello and Bienvenidos San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour, discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonio and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best-kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here. Okay, welcome to the Alamo Hour, today's guest is Jody Newman. Jody is the chief friend of The Friendly Spot. Soon enough to be hopefully Two Friendly Spots. She mentors small businesses through Cafe Commerce. She was the first-ever Queen Anchovy, which is how we met and became great friends to this day, a random Fiesta event, which is one of the reasons I love San Antonio, honestly, is Fiestas. This weird thing where you make lifelong friends. That's where we met. Jody: It happened. Justin: We asked Jody on here today. We're going to talk about small business, small business mentorship, and honestly, what's going on today, the biggest thing, the gorilla in the room, the elephant in the room is Coronavirus and how small businesses have been affected. Thank you for being here. Jody: Thanks for having me, Justin. I'm happy to be here. Justin: All right, so we're going to start with one of my start with everybody, with a little bit of just random background about you. Do you have any pets? Jody: I do not have any pets. Justin: Do you have human pets? Jody: Yes. I have two wonderful kids. I have a 14-year-old son named Wilson who is a freshman at Holy Cross on the Westside, and then I have a daughter named Simone who is in the fourth grade. Justin: Okay, what is your favorite place to eat in town right now? I know there's a million, but right now what is it? Jody: My super favorite place to hang out without a shadow of a doubt is The Dakota East Side Ice House on Hackberry and if you have not had their pork casserole, you have not lived. Justin: All right. I've seen you and Steve post from there quite a bit. Jody: It's so good. Justin: I still haven't been there. I've got to. Jody: You got to. You have to. Justin: Another thing. Everybody's got this weird hidden gem thing in San Antonio. When you tell people, "Okay, you visit San Antonio, but to be a PhD tourist, you've got to go to this or do this thing." What is your hidden gem? Jody: For you to experience San Antonio fully, I think you must go to the Esquire Tavern. Justin: For me, it's the Downstairs. Jody: Yes. For sure. Justin: Such a great hidden gem. Okay, we're going to get into this more in a second, but you're very involved outside of your job, which everybody in town knows what The Friendly Spot is unless they've lived under a rock. What are some of your biggest involvement outside projects? Jody: Interestingly enough, several years ago I was spread so thin. I had The Friendly Spot Ice House. I had interests in other ice houses. I joke that when I see an ice house, the more dilapidated it is, the more I want it. I'm super into ice houses. I started spreading myself thin and several years ago my husband said, "Pick a lane sweetie." I decided to choose Launch SA, which is San Antonio's small business incubator. We also have the first culinary accelerator in the country called Break Fast & Launch. I sit on the advisory board. I'm also a mentor at Launch SA. Oddly enough, I think it's been the greatest school of my life as well. A lot of my weekly, monthly, yearly efforts goes to Launch SA. I'm also active in Fiesta Cornyation, which I was the invented royalty and several years ago, the queen anchovy....