You’re moving to San Antonio. Welcome! You have some time to yourself before you get on a plane and head back to wherever it is you’re coming from, to pack and close up your old lives. Think about the things you’ll miss, things that have made that place important to you. Say goodbye to each of them (in some cities that’s a lot of meals at favorite restau­rants). And take a look around your new city for a sense of the flavor of the town – places and things you may come to love and think of as part of home.

Get off the Riverwalk and out of down­town.

Do some neighborhoods:
Drive through Olmos Park – amazing mansions, twisting streets, and old trees. The view of downtown from the Hildebrand Street entrance to U.S. Hwy. 281 is a beauty (see page 6.) And the area has galleries (Pat Gavin Metalsmith, Galleria Ortiz Contemporary, Hunt Gallery, and Parchman-Stremmel), restaurants (Shiraz – a fine Persian restaurant, and Ciao Lavanderia), and the Yarn Barn, a great knitting/yarn shop. At the edges of the Olmos Park and Monte Vista neighborhoods, park and walk through Trinity University.

Drive through the Deco District. Up Fredericksburg Road, you’ll begin to see tiled signage created by the young people of Askew (a teen arts program) and sleek buildings which define the area; the H-E-B supermarket has a deco look. And stop in the Bihl Haus, one of San Antonio’s newest galleries, a lovingly restored stone building on the grounds of Primrose Apartments. And for the best in chicken fried steak, stop at DeWeese’s. A little further up Fredericksburg, out of the “district,” you’ll find Simi’s Indian Cuisine, one of San Antonio’s oldest Indian restaurants, and across the way at Crossroads Mall, the Bijou Theatre, one of the very few places to see foreign films in SA.

Walk through King William. If you’re going to eat at the Guenther House or visit the galleries of the Blue Star Arts Complex, walk back through the streets of King William. View old mansions and bungalows in this relaxed and historic neighborhood. At the edge nearer to downtown, you’ll find the San Antonio Art League Museum and El Mirador and Rosarios, both popular and always busy Mexican restaurants.

Flowers: the bush-like flowers in pinks, whites and purples you see everywhere are NOT lilacs. No smell – they’re crape myrtle and they’re everywhere for much of the late spring and through the summer. In the early spring Indian Hawthorn and Mountain Laurel (they smell like grape jelly) show up, and if you are out on the highway, that pond of blue you see nestled in the grass - those are bluebonnets – Texas wildflowers. You can thank Lady Bird Johnson for the roadsides and medians covered with wildflowers, a riot of colors – Indian Paintbrush, Mexican Blanket, Mexican Hat, Evening Primrose, and those Bluebonnets.
Yes, the pecans are fresh. See that tree.

Listen: to a Tejano music station for a few days. No, the mariachis are not enough, strolling by at your hotel’s restaurant. A Tejano station will intro­duce you to the accordion in ways you’ve never heard before (even if you like Cajun music). And most of the time you’ll bump into at least one song of Selena’s (whose career was cut short tragically, raising her icon status). But listen also for the band Intocable and the singer, Michael Salgado. It’s not a bad way to pick up a little Spanish too, “Corazon” is heart and “lagrimas” are tears – lots of both in pop songs.

Go shopping: The Quarry, The Shops at La Cantera, and North Star Mall all have great places to shop, many that you’ll find anywhere else in the country, and restaurants with fine food as well as quicker fare. But it is in the Pinata Room at Alamo Fiesta, at antique shops along Hildebrand, and in El Mercado that you’ll find San Antonio’s shopping flavor.

El Mercado is now graced with the Museo Alameda de Smithsonian, a welcome addition to San Antonio’s constellation of museums, with its focus on Latino arts and culture. Mi Tierra, open 24/7, in addition to its full service Mexican fare, has a wide selec­tion of Mexican baked goods, and a remarkable three-dimensional mural of San Antonio’s story and people. Buy a hat (you’ll need it in the sun). Buy boots and belts.

Men, try a guayabara. Even if not flashy with lots of stitching, it is just a cool, casual cotton or linen shirt that you can wear just about anywhere in town.

Eat: As a vegetarian, it is hard for me to recommend restaurants to you, except to tell you what my wife and I like, the places where we eat, what our favorites are. And ask co-workers about their favorites. Everyone has a favorite Mexican restaurant in town, or a few, and they’ll tell you why – what specific dishes they like best there. We eat at Adelante (Health-Mex) with great food, fresh and tasty and homey atmosphere; Los Barrios (classic Tex-Mex), where we love their chimichurri sauce; the salsa and the mole at El Mirador, also known for their soups, and an eclectic menu at El Jarro de Arturo.

Don’t ask anyone about the heat index of the food, whether it’s Mexican or Indian or Thai – it’s too subjective. If you order enchiladas mexicanas at Los Barrios they will ask you if you’ve had them before, and bring a taste out for you to see if you’ll really want the spicy dish.

In recent years many more Thai, Middle Eastern, and Indian restaurants have opened in San Antonio. We have our favorites. And for Italian food, if you’re moving from the Northeast or a city with a large old Italian American population, go to Sorrento’s; the owner came from New Haven. And I’ll pit the onion rings at the 410 Diner against any anywhere.

Learn your cacti and your chiles.
Eat a Mexican breakfast – a breakfast taco or an order of migas or chilaquiles (both essentially Mexican-style scram­bled eggs, plus).

Tamales at Christmas.

Midnight Mass at San Fernando Cathedral.

The luminarias on the Riverwalk.

Sports!
Go to Nelson Wolff Stadium and see the Double A San Antonio Missions play baseball in the Texas League. A San Diego Padres farm club, they play in a park that really is the “jewel of the Texas league.”

Though we’ve never gone to the Stock Show and Rodeo, we have gone up to Bandera, TX, to a small rodeo under the stars. A real Texas experience with a cold Shiner Bock (my regional beer recommendation.)

Go to a high school football game on a Friday night under the lights, and forget about the TV version.

And yes, we have NBA and WNBA teams, too. You may have heard of them.

Read about the city in fiction and non-fiction: Char Miller, John Dos Santos, Naomi Nye, Rick Riordan, Henry Guerra, and Sandra Cisneros.

Try a paletta, especially in the summer. A Mexican popsicle.

Learn about water – drought, flood, aquifers and acequias. It is critical knowledge for life in San Antonio. And don’t drive past the barriers at a low water crossing. They’re serious about the road signs “Turn Around, Don’t Drown.”

Wander through the H-E-B Central Market if you’re missing your own favorite high end grocery store. Once you’ve lived here a while you’ll almost always bump into someone you know shopping there as well.

My focus has stayed mostly inside loop 410. There has been so much growth north of the loop in the last few years that there are people living up there who never make it downtown. Both Sorrentos and Los Barrios have opened branches north of town.

How much you find San Antonio to be the South, how much the West, and how much the Southwest, will have something to do with the flavors you sample. Also there is San Antonio that is Texas, that is Mexico, and that is borderland. When you come to live here you will see it through each of those lenses. You will extend your SA northward and explore the Hill Country and Austin, southward to the Gulf Coast or Laredo and Mexico, East toward Houston, and West out to Del Rio and beyond. We go out to Big Bend National Park . If you’re used to New England or Northeast scale – five states in less than a day – adjust. It is a mighty long way from Port Arthur to El Paso, E-W, and another long stretch from the Panhandle to Harlingen, N-S.

It was hard to chop this down to a readable length, there are so many things of interest here. I’m always finding new ones. Find them your­self. Ask others. People are genuinely friendly here. Explore. Enjoy!

Jim LaVilla-Havelin is a poet, critic and Director of the Young Artist Programs at the Southwest School of Art & Craft.

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