San Antonio Current - February 4, 2026

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in this issue

Stable Hall

07 News

The Opener News in Brief

Chaos and Arrests Activists collecting donations to cover legal fees for protesters arrested at Dilley detention site

Stuck in ‘Neutral’ Contract impasse slows Bexar County’s transition to a new voter registration system

Bad Takes

Common sense must prevail when setting Texas’ new social studies curriculum

17 Calendar

Our picks of things to do powerful

21 Arts

In and Out and Onward Seinfeld’s Michael Richards passes through darkness for tour stop in San Antonio

23 Screens

She’s with the Banned Texas librarian shares her battle over book bans in PBS documentary

24

Food

Cooking Up Conversation WingIt and SipIt co-founder Daryl Smith talks about food trucks, franchising and betting on San Antonio

Culinary Spotlight

Eight San Antonio chefs, two restaurants among latest James Beard semifinalists

Hotel Emma names new culinary vice president John Brand

29 Music Critics’ Picks

On the Cover: Our cover story this week looks at efforts to jumpstart Stable Hall, the Pearl concert venue that got off to a rough start. Design: Ana Paula Gutierrez.

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LIFE’S BETTER WITH CONFETTI WITH CONFETTI

We

That Rocks/That Sucks

Texas Department of Public Safety troopers used teargas and pepper spray last Wednesday to disperse a crowd of protesters who gathered outside the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, an hour southwest of San Antonio. The protesters were demanding the release of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old child detained by immigration officers in Minneapolis as “bait” to arrest his father last week. Ramos and his father are both being held at the Dilley facility.

A federal judge in San Antonio last week halted the deportation of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old detained by immigration agents on the streets of Minneapolis, while a court case over his and his father’s immigration status proceeds. Ramos, who was wearing a blue hat with rabbit ears when he was taken into federal custody, has become a symbol of the brutality of ICE’s occupation of the Twin Cities

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued another out-of-state healthcare provider for allegedly prescribing abortion-inducing medication to Lone Star State residents. The new lawsuit, his second filed against an out-of-state provider, claims that a Delaware nurse practitioner who operates an online clinic offering services to residents of all 50 states sent packages containing abortion medication to women in multiple Texas cities. The suit will test Delaware’s shield laws, created to protect healthcare providers from out-of-state prosecutions.

Bexar County has cleared its voter registration application backlog ahead of the deadline to participate in the upcoming March primary. With the help of roughly a dozen temporary workers, the Bexar County Elections Department processed nearly 7,000 new voter applications in just a week. Local officials have blamed persistent backlogs on the state of Texas’ TEAM voter-registration systems, which they say has slowed input times and created other hurdles as they attempt to register voters. — Abe Asher

Urging ICE to ‘recalibrate’

with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott

Assclown Alert is a column of opinion, analysis and snark.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent statement urging ICE to “recalibrate” after its deadly actions in Minneapolis is the political equivalent of Richard Nixon’s now ruthlessly mocked acknowledgement that “mistakes were made.”

In other words, it’s a bloodless cop-out by the governor — a shrug dressed up as leadership. It’s meant to sound concerned while carefully avoiding responsibility for the brutality he himself has spent years cheering on.

First, let’s be clear about what prompted the statement. The Trump administration’s immigration-enforcement binge has left civilians dead, communities furious and the streets of Minneapolis boiling over.

In response — and no doubt with an eye on the polls — Abbott offered a mild scolding and some management-consultant nonsense about “getting back to the mission.” Then he laid the lion’s share of the blame on Minnesota’s Democratic elected officials for being outraged about Trump militarizing their streets.

No accountability. No reckoning. Just another slick politico trying to sidestep a festering pile of shit while insisting he had nothing to do with the stink.

Which is rich, because Abbott hasn’t just supported Trump’s immigration agenda — he’s been one of its most eager hype men. This is the same governor who described immigration as an “invasion” and openly flirted with the idea of using lethal force to turn back migrants. Remember when he said Texas can’t shoot migrants crossing the border because “the Biden administration would charge us with murder”?

To be sure, Abbott’s crafted his political brand around framing migrants as criminals, threats and twisted abstractions instead of actual human beings. When you spend years dumping gasoline on racist panic, you don’t get to act shocked when the whole

house goes up like a fucking tinderbox.

So, when the governor now says ICE needs to “refocus” and blames Minnesota leaders for the unrest, it’s pure bullshit. It’s a cowardly attempt to launder his own record, likely under the direction of handlers such as longtime political consultant Dave Carney.

It’s a familiar move from the American right: cheer on the cruelty, deny the consequences and wash your hands if people die. Or, God forbid, polls show voters have had enough.

At a moment when actual leadership would mean demanding accountability from the White House and a serious rethinking of its brutal immigration-enforcement regime, Abbott offers the verbal equivalent of backing slowly toward the exit.

History remembers Tricky Dick’s “mistakes were made” line for the pathetic dodge it was. Abbott’s version deserves the same contempt. Texans don’t need more gutless rhetoric from the governor. We need fewer dead civilians, fewer terrified immigrant families — and fewer sanctimonious assclowns pretending they had no hand in the carnage.

— Sanford Nowlin

YOU SAID IT!

“We’ve got to clip the wings of this administration. These pseudo-dictators, these pseudoemperors — they think they run things. We need to show them what we’re capable of.”

—BexarCountySheriffJavierSalazar,speaking atananti-ICErallyinSanAntoniolastweek.

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro called for the abolition of ICE at a press conference outside San Antonio City Hall last Wednesday. The Alamo City Democrat also pledged his support for an effort to impeach Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Castro spoke alongside other local and state elected officials, including U.S. Reps. Greg Casar and Jasmine Crockett, both of whom lambasted ICE’s conduct in Minneapolis and across Texas in recent weeks.

SpaceX is campaigning for a hefty tax break from Texas for creating jobs along the U.S.-Mexico border. The move raises questions about the company’s influence and the value of the tax breaks to the communities they are ostensibly designed to serve. Last year, the Starbase City Commission,

which includes two SpaceX employees, nominated a pair of SpaceX projects for tax relief under the Texas Enterprise Zone Program — relief that, if granted, will largely go to benefit multibillionaire Elon Musk

Yet another member of San Antonio City Council has received a minor penalty for allegations of drunk driving. Councilwoman Ivalis Meza Gonzalez, who was pulled over on I-10 last July, pleaded no contest to obstruction of a highway, a Class B misdemeanor, in exchange for which prosecutors dropped a charge of driving while intoxicated. Meza Gonzalez was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and complete nine months of probation, after which the charge will be dropped. — Abe Asher

Chaos and Arrests

Activists collecting donations to cover legal fees for protesters arrested at Dilley detention site

BY STEPHANIE KOITHAN

Texas state troopers arrested two protesters Wednesday as 300 people gathered outside Dilley’s South Texas Family Residential Center to call for the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was arrested along with his father in Minneapolis. The protesters taken into custody, Gavin Pope and Robert David Padgett Jr., have both been released from a Frio County jail as of Thursday afternoon.

Department of Public Safety personnel arrested Pope and Padgett Wednesday afternoon after the troopers deployed a chemical agent to disperse the protest. Eyewitnesses the Current spoke to said they didn’t see either man do anything that warranted arrest. Video of their arrest, captured by News 12, seems to verify their claims.

Padgett received three Class B misdemeanor charges for resisting arrest, interfering with public duty and refusal to be searched, according to organizers trying to cover the two activists’ legal bills. Meanwhile, Pope was charged with a Class B misdemeanor for interfering with public duty.

As of press time, fellow activists have raised more than $5,000 to cover the pair’s legal expenses. However, organizers of the fundraising campaign said they’re still seeking donations because they’re unsure how high the legal fees ultimately will run.

Groups behind the fundraising effort include Mootual Aid (SATX), Texas Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry and other local organizations.

The groups are still accepting contributions via a PayPal donation page benefitting the Texas Unitarian Universalist Jus-

tice Ministry. The activist groups specified that contributions toward the activists’ legal fees should be accompanied with the note “Release Funds.”

Pope got out of pre-trial detention Wednesday night, after a lawyer pressured a judge for his release. State Rep. Erin Zwiener, a Democrat representing Hays County, also assisted in finding an attorney, according to a source familiar with the situation who asked not to be named for personal protection.

Bail was posted for Padgett Thursday afternoon, according to an organizer involved with their release, who also asked to not to be named for safety reasons.

Padgett’s release had been delayed because he was initially sent to a hospital, according to organizers, who said that his altercation with DPS personnel opened a stitched-up wound that he’d received from a work injury.

Chaos on the ground

Most of the protesters had already left around 3 p.m. Wednesday when a school bus full of Texas Department of Public Safety troopers arrived at the scene. Their presence escalated tension outside the detention center, the Current reported from the scene.

ers and members of the press. The chemical irritant was later determined to be LIVE MAXX PAVA Projectiles (or PepperBalls), thanks to a photo of one of the spent canisters provided to the Current by an activist.

One PepperBall struck a News 4 SA cameraman in the face, causing him to drop his camera, according to footage shared from the scene by the TV station.

Rev. Erin Walter, who spoke to the Current in a phone interview, said she was loading her parishioners into a bus when the chemical agent was deployed.

“We basically turned our bus into a triage bus for a couple of hours,” said Walter, who leads the Texas Unitarian Universalist Church Justice Ministry in Austin.

‘Community effort’

Walter and other faith leaders led a procession of protesters from a nearby park to what she calls “the concentration camp.” She added that some of the faith leaders had recently returned from Minneapolis, where they assisted in resisting ICE escalations in communities.

Troopers wearing riot gear suddenly fired tear gas into the crowd of approximately 70, which included both protesters and journalists.

“They just decided at some point, on public land, to disperse this crowd,” one of organizers, who wishes to remain anonymous, told the Current via Signal. That organizer was an eyewitness at the scene.

Gov. Greg Abbott claimed Thursday that one or several activists may have spit on the DPS troopers, prompting the escalation. However, the organizer who spoke to the Current questions that allegation, and adding that the reports may be referring to an activist who was recorded blowing bubbles at the troopers moments before the escalation.

“There was no provocation, they were provoked by bubbles,” the organizer added. “I didn’t see any spitting.”

The KSAT 12 video of the violent clash does not show any protesters spitting either, though it does show troopers suddenly forming a line and pushing back the crowd before grabbing the front-line protesters and forcing them to the ground.

As the troopers began firing canisters of a chemical agent into the crowd, those affected included both protest-

“So, we were feeling very deeply the connection to people across the country who are crying out for our government to stop attacking us, and for our government to take care of the people instead of incarcerating them,” Walter said. “And I feel very emotional about it, and people are rightfully furious and grieving, but we are also determined, and we will not stop until they close these facilities and ICE is defunded.”

After the arrest of Pope and Padgett, a group of witnesses affiliated with various organizations assembled a group chat to coordinate legal aid. The day before, Walter offered up the church’s PayPal as a fundraising platform, in the event of any arrests.

Though the organizer who asked not to be named said Padgett had come to the protest with a group, the members ended up leaving him in Dilley shortly before his arrest, adding that he didn’t have a car nearby to drive back to San Antonio.

As a result, activists are also coordinating to pick up Padgett at the Dilley jail and transport him to San Antonio, the source added.

Together, the rag-tag group also worked to find attorneys and pressure the judge to set a bond.

“It’s been a real community effort to respond in an emergency fashion,” the organizer said.

Stuck in ‘Neutral’ Contract

impasse slows Bexar County’s transition to a new voter registration system

BY STEPHANIE KOITHAN

With the clock ticking down to the midterm elections, Bexar County Commissioners Court met last week to discuss a contract for a new third-party voter registration system.

But rather than approving a finalized contract, commissioners came to an impasse during executive session, further delaying implementation of a new system called Voter Focus from proposed vendor VR Systems.

That chasm appears as Bexar County seeks to jump from the State of Texas’ TEAM system, which county officials blame for backlogs that caused thousands of voter registrations to pile up ahead of the fall and spring elections. The delay also leaves a narrowing timeline to finalize the contract and implement the new system before the November elections.

Last Tuesday’s court session and the situation leading up to it are highly unusual, one of VR Systems’ top executives told the Current in a sit-down interview.

First, it’s unusual how long the District Attorney’s Office has taken to draft the contract — a process that’s run from September until January — VR Systems Chief Operations Officer Ben Martin said. County commissioners initially approved entering into an agreement with VR Systems at a Sept. 2 meeting.

“Inside 30 to 60 days, we usually have a contract,” Martin added.

Martin said it’s also unusual that he hopped on a last-minute flight from Tallahassee, Florida, to speak out against the contract finally proposed by the DA’s office.

But what’s most unusual is the contract itself, Martin said, arguing that it appeared clear from the beginning of the meeting that the document on the table

was a nonstarter. He alleges the paperwork mischaracterizes what VR Systems does and includes alleged penalties to which the company simply won’t agree.

Officials with the Bexar County DA’s Office declined to be interviewed about the process. However, in an emailed response, Larry L. Roberson, chief of the office’s Civil Division, disagreed on all counts.

“Your premise that the contract addresses cloud-based services of the vendor is patently incorrect,” Roberson said in the email.

“The timeline was driven by appropriate due diligence, an intervening election, the Court schedule and required cybersecurity and technical compatibility review, including a Bexar County security assessment completed on January 8, 2026,” he continued.

As it has done with the 14 other Texas counties with which it’s secured contracts, VR Systems supplied a standard contract to Bexar County in July. That contract was approved by the Texas BuyBoard, a cooperative that streamlines the purchasing process for municipalities. Though the contract might get tweaked in what’s called a “red-lining process,” those changes are usually minor, he explained.

“In the end, the contract in all 14 of those counties resembles the baseline contract with some changes that are appropriate for each county,” Martin said.

Instead, the contract the DA’s office worked up and presented last Tuesday had no resemblance to the original document, according to Martin, who said it

“seems to be written from the ground up.”

‘Poison Pills’?

In a January 20 email to the Current and other recipients, Precinct 4 Commissioner Tommy Calvert said the revamped contract contains “poison pills,” or provisions that threaten its finalization.

“The contract has been substantially convoluted by the county, without vendor agreement, and has gotten so far off track it no longer aligns with the product VR Systems is selling to Bexar County,” Calvert said in the email. “As a result, VR Systems has made objections that must be corrected in order to execute the agreement.”

Martin says one of the contract’s provisions would hold the vendor liable for the timeliness of migrating data to and from the State of Texas’ registration system, called TEAM — something Martin said VR Systems doesn’t have control over.

“It holds us accountable when the operability between the TEAM system and our system, Voter Focus, is broken,” Martin said. “It doesn’t take into account that it may be broken because TEAM made a change to their software, or TEAM is down, or something at the state that could be causing it. But there are penalties in the software that could be levied on us, all for things that are outside of our control. So, from a legal standpoint, we cannot accept that.”

In his email, Calvert cautioned that the pact, as written, also makes the company responsible for issues that may arise at the

county level.

“The draft makes VR Systems responsible for data handling, security incidents, backups, and operational failures that depend entirely on County employees, County infrastructure, and County policies — in effect asking the vendor to assume legal responsibility for how the County runs its own computers,” Calvert added.

Democratic DA candidate Shannon Locke — who spoke at last Tuesday’s meeting to urge the process along — distilled it even further for the casual tech user.

“That’s like holding Microsoft accountable for how fast you type,” Locke told the Current.

‘Apples and oranges’

Further, the contract appears to describe a different product than the one VR Systems is offering, according to both Martin and Calvert.

“VR Systems provides on-premises software installed on County-owned computers, servers and operated by County staff, yet the contract treats the system as if it were a cloud-hosted, vendor-controlled service,” Calvert maintains in his email.

Martin said the inclusion of language about cloud-based storage was likely based on the cloud-based vendor Bexar County formerly contracted with, VOTEC. That company abruptly went out of business in August, causing the county to lose access to the voter data the vendor stored in the cloud, according to Bexar County

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Elections Administrator Michele Carew.

“It could be that they were writing the contract to guard against the pitfalls of the previous system, and that doesn’t reflect our product,” Martin said. “It’s apples and oranges.”

Martin said it’s possible that the DA’s office simply has a fundamental misunderstanding of how voter registration systems work.

“It could be mostly that,” he added. Whatever the reason, the contractual impasse threatens to delay the process further.

“Because the draft strays so far from the BuyBoard framework and lacks vendor approval, advancing it would almost certainly result in immediate rejection or renegotiation after the vote, delaying implementation rather than advancing it,” Calvert said in his email.

In his email to the Current, Roberson from the DA’s office rejected any suggestion that he tried to slow the process, stating “any assertion that I caused or intentionally delayed this matter is demonstrably inaccurate.”

Martin said he’s still hopeful a finalized contract can be signed at the February Commissioners Court meeting — assuming the county works off the standardized contract. The other key, he added, is “open communication.”

According to Martin, the county hasn’t shared an official version of the contract with him since November. However, he got a glimpse of the new document days before the meeting, prompting him to book a last-minute flight.

“I became aware on Friday that there’s another version of the contract that we haven’t seen officially,” he said. “It’s not been sent to us, so we’ve not had an opportunity to respond to it. But in looking at it — because it was provided to us by a commissioner — it’s even more distasteful than the one that we couldn’t sign last time.”

Still on the TEAM (for now)

Meanwhile, Bexar County is left to contend with a lagging statewide voter registration system supplied by the Texas Secretary of State’s office. County Elections officials said the state’s software isn’t intended for use by a municipality of Bexar’s size. This resulted in yet another voter registration backlog ahead of the March primary.

Leading up to February’s deadline for the March primary, Bexar had a backlog of nearly 7,000 unprocessed voter regis-

trations, which it reportedly cleared this Tuesday. In the fall, the county amassed a backlog of more than 70,000 and cleared it days before the November election. Both times, county officials blamed the Secretary of State’s system.

VR Systems’ product would interact with the state’s revamped system, called Team 2.0, but the vendor said its onsite storage and system access would allow Bexar County to remain operational in event the state system goes down.

Martin said he’s not sure why the process to switch over has taken so long in Bexar County. If Bexar had finalized the contract in August or September after VR Systems sent the standard contract in July, the county could have already gone live in time for the March primary, he asserted.

Indeed, since previous Bexar contractor VOTEC went belly up in August, several other counties previously relying on VOTEC have been able to sign contracts and get VR Systems implemented — those being Collin, Grayson, Hidalgo and Nueces.

A total of 14 other Texas counties have already contracted with VR Systems, including Tarrant, El Paso and Denton. In his remarks at Commissioners Court, DA candidate Shannon Locke argued that Bexar County should adopt Tarrant County’s contract, as it’s a county of similar size.

Legislative pressure

Third-party vendors are nothing new when it comes to Texas counties’ voter

of the state’s voter rolls tied up in a single system, given the risk of cyber attacks or a major outage.

“If something catastrophic were to happen — ransomware, software failure — at least 75% of the voters in Texas would be fine [thanks to third-party systems],” Phillips told VoteBeat at the time.

Ultimately, SB 2382 was left pending in committee. But VOTEC’s sudden shutdown forced many onto the statewide system anyway.

Counties using TEAM have reported problems with the system since it was first launched in 2004, records show. In a 2007 state audit, nearly half of Texas’ 254 counties reported the system was slow and didn’t allow them to “perform their jobs effectively.”

registration systems. Actually, they’ve long been the norm. As of April 2025, 75% of Texas voters’ data was handled by third-party systems, according to a report by media outlet VoteBeat.

Bexar County also already has the money set aside for a third-party vendor — more than $1 million — due to its prior contract with VOTEC.

During last year’s regular session of the Texas Legislature, lawmakers introduced a bill that proposed requiring all 254 of the state’s counties to join the Texas Secretary of State’s TEAM system, which the office provides to counties free of charge.

State Elections Director Christina Adkins argued during a 2024 House Elections Committee hearing that requiring all Texas counties to move over to TEAM would enable the state to keep a better eye on how local elections officials purge ineligible voters from the rolls, VoteBeat reported.

Republicans, both in Texas and nationwide, have also long sought to prove the existence of widespread voter fraud. However, Brookings Institute analysis demonstrates that, over the past 25 years, voter fraud nationally has represented “a minuscule .0000845%, and no election outcome was altered by ballot fraud throughout that time period.”

Despite the state’s efforts to bring every county onto TEAM, Denton County Elections Administrator Frank Phillips said it would be a grave mistake having all

More than a decade later, counties still report TEAM can take anywhere from minutes to hours to produce a standard report using election data within the system, according to the Texas Tribune. Those reports could be something as mundane as producing a list of county voters who have requested an absentee ballot.

Other users have complained that they sometimes input a voter’s registration information only for it to disappear, forcing them to waste time reentering it, the Tribune also reports. This month, officials with the Bexar County Elections Department said they were once able to process 24 applications an hour, but that number has dropped to eight.

Despite other counties’ willingness to go with VR Systems as an alternative to TEAM, it appears Bexar is stuck with the state system — for now, anyway.

Once Bexar County finalizes its contract with VR Systems, Martin says it still could take up to two months for implementation, which includes installation and training — and that could be pushed back if the number of Texas counties signing onto its system continues to swell.

Martin added that during a meeting earlier this month of the Texas Association of County Elections Officials, representatives from several other counties spoke to him about wanting to switch to VR Systems.

“We were approached by a lot of existing TEAM counties that are very unhappy with TEAM,” Martin said, adding that the company only takes one county live at a time to minimize risk.

“So, if they approach us looking to sign a contract, Bexar pushes back.”

BAD TAKES

Common sense must prevail when setting Texas’ new social studies curriculum

BY KEVIN SANCHEZ BadTakesisacolumnofopinionand analysis.

“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.” — Thomas Jefferson

If we had listened to the law-andorder crowd two and a half centuries ago, it’s doubtful we would have become an independent nation.

Americans, then as now, can be an unruly lot. And the build-up to the Revolutionary War, which included rioting, arson and general mayhem, make last year’s No Kings marches look like placid knitting circles. Send today’s apologists for ICE back in time, and they’d likely be arguing that British atrocities were not atrocities at all, but wholly justified reactions to a sinister domestic terror threat.

Ken Burns’ latest PBS documentary, The American Revolution, sent the point home. Nine years in the making, the six-part series

prides itself on offering a less-than-rosy account of a guerrilla insurgency.

“The Loyalists are essentially the conservatives,” Alan Taylor, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, explains early on.

“They don’t like mobs. They don’t see King George III as a tyrant.”

“We’ve forgotten much of the street warfare, of the anarchy, of the provocations that took place,” biographer Stacy Schiff remarks in kind. “Part of our revolution, I think, we have largely sanitized.”

Notwithstanding the recent defunding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, every episode is currently available to stream online.

Right-wing critics wasted no time in flagging the program as “a woke mockery of America’s founding,” to quote an example headline run by the New York Post. One hopes that merely highlighting the noble sacrifices of Native American and Black volunteers would not of itself be enough to draw the ire of Christian nationalists and their coddlers.

Another incessantly “anti-woke” pundit, to his credit, took a different tack.

“The documentary teaches us that the American militia facing the British around Boston in 1775 was the most integrated one in this country until after World War II. Nearly one in 10 of the soldiers at Valley Forge were Black,” linguist John McWhorter wrote in a review for the New York Times.

“Burns regularly reminds us of the contradiction between the founders’ insistence on their liberty and their comfort in keeping Black people in bondage. But anyone who concludes that he does it to shame the nation or perform his own moral superiority came in spoiling to see it that way.”

Ironically or predictably, this same message — the glaring contradiction between highfalutin egalitarian ideals and the institution of slavery — was omitted from the life of Thomas Jefferson in the content advisors’ recommendations to the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) for its massive revamp of the social studies curriculum that’s currently unfolding.

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Asked by District 4 Boardmember Staci Childs at the Jan. 28 meeting whether kindergarten-through-8th grade students would chiefly learn about Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence, Andrea Hutchison, a curricular coordinator with extensive classroom experience, replied that the panel decided to gloss over his ownership of other human beings.

”One of the many drafts I wrote was about the juxtaposition of him being a slave owner and writing about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” she said. “We didn’t go with that draft.”

Upon Childs’ request, Hutchison promised to “relook at and address” that lesson plan for 5th graders. Fingers crossed that such essential knowledge manages to make the cut in the new Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards for public educators.

Imbibers of Burns’ “woke Kool-Aid” will already know that dozens of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson’s slaves escaped during the war to join the ranks of the British army on the promise of their postbellum emancipation. Many stayed free after the end of hostilities by fleeing the country, even as Washington and Jefferson tried to hunt them down and reclaim their so-called property.

What percentage of U.S. high school grads would you estimate know that fact today?

Despite the alleged reign of the “woke-ocracy” over all facets of education, how many students could recount the events of Sullivan’s Expedition, also detailed in Burns’ film? This was a scorchedearth assault in 1779 against the Native American Seneca nation, and Washington’s orders, voiced with gravitas by actor Josh Brolin, were unambiguous.

“The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more,” Washginton wrote to Major Gen. John Sullivan. “You will not by any means listen to any overture for peace before the total ruin of their settlements is affected.”

By campaign’s end, some 40 prosperous villages were leveled by fire, re-earning Washington his Iroquois nickname, “Town Destroyer.”

“One of the foundational truths of American history is that this is a nation built on Indian land, and Washington would not dispute that, I think, for a minute,” Dartmouth College historian Colin Calloway states in Episode 4.

Who would dispute that? Well, although Washington was perhaps the nation’s wealthiest landowner at the time, the world’s richest man today, soon-to-be trillionaire Elon Musk, would surely beg to differ. Musk is on record suggesting that simply teaching that the U.S. is built on stolen land “should be viewed as treason and those who do it imprisoned.”

And yet, Kate Rogers remains a free woman. The former president of Alamo Trust was compelled to resign her stewardship of the San Antonio historical site last year after a right-wing backlash to a tweet officially honoring — gasp! — “indigenous peoples.”

A subsequent rooting around in Rogers’ doctoral dissertation raised the exceptionalist eyebrows of Texas GOP officials and led to her removal.

In a conversation with Texas Public Radio last month, Rogers likened her situation to the McCarthy era.

“If you get labelled as ‘woke,’ that means you need to be banished. And there are people out there, like [Texas Land Commissioner, Dawn Buckingham], who are just looking. And there is a list — I know for a fact there’s a list — of people that they’re after for being ‘woke,’” Rogers stated. “Anyone out there — whether you’re in public radio, a public university, the public sector in any way — should be very concerned that an elected official could go find something that you wrote, however long ago, and use that as a weapon to label you a certain way and call for your termination. These are people’s livelihoods we’re talking about.”

Rogers has since sued Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick

beholden to “American exceptionalism.”

Even Donald Frazier, director of the Texas Center at Schreiner University in Kerrville, who typically excels at putting lipstick on the pig of this Byzantine backroom process, was circumspect.

“What stood out to me was this was a pretty comprehensive overhaul ... . And I think we’re living in times now that point out the consequences of not taking social studies seriously,” he said.

and his cronies for violating her First Amendment rights.

MDespite all that, Rogers also still sits on the content advisory panel for Texas’ new social studies curriculum as a valued expert.

“As it relates to the TEKS,” she told TPR, “whatever comes out of the process, those standards would go into effect and be written into the curriculum and textbooks in 2030. Maybe it takes another decade to make any significant changes after that. So you’re talking about a very long tail to the changes that are underway now.”

To her point, 2040 is a while to wait before we can fix the mistakes of the past.

Fellow content advisor, Yolanda Leyva, director of the Institute of Oral History at the University of El Paso, lamented at the Jan. 28 meeting that the advisors had dropped 54 pages of fact-heavy guidance on the working groups who are now charged with writing up required expectations.

“It’s going to set up teachers to fail, and it’s going to set up students to fail as well. It’s just too much,” she said. “I think this is being rushed too much, and it’s something that’s going to affect Texas students for many years to come.”

And Leyva’s not alone in raising the alarm. The American Historical Association, the nation’s oldest and largest membership group for historians isn’t usually given to strident rhetoric. Yet, last September, the organization alleged the radical changes afoot in Texas’ social studies curriculum had been “promoted aggressively by the overtly ideological Texas Public Policy Foundation,” scrapping “research-tested practices and familiar courses in favor of an unbalanced approach”

To his point, recent SBOE meetings — although creative fodder for at-home drinking games — echo some of the chaos-stoking ignorance we have been forced to bear witness to across the country of late. Twice during time allotted for public comments, for example, a board member tried to silence a Muslim speaker by arguing she was part of a foreign terrorist network — as per Gov. Greg Abbott’s crusade against the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an anti-discrimination advocacy group. So much for Texas’ ethic of welcome and gallantry.

The proceedings haven’t been entirely bleak though. On Jan. 29, the board voted 8 to 5 to expand the description of slavery recommended for 2nd graders, over the objections of those who complained the topic was “too heavy” for kids that age and that “white Europeans were enslaved as indentured servants” too — a racist myth.

The sparse original text read: “Slavery denied liberty and was the main cause of the Civil War.”

“I understand how precious our children are, and how they should be protected, but ‘slavery denied liberty’ is almost insulting to the descendants of people who had to endure this,” Boardmember Childs explained as she proposed amended language that elaborated on just how horrific slavery was for those whose liberty was denied.

The majority of the SBOE, lopsidedly composed of 10 Republicans and just five Democrats, agreed with her. It was a small but fitting victory in a building named after Barbara Jordan, the first Black woman elected to the Texas Senate, circa 1966.

“Every quiet method for peace hath been ineffectual,” Thomas Paine would write 190 years prior to rouse beaten-down patriots to action in his epoch-defining pamphlet “Common Sense,” a document cited over and over in Ken Burns’ history.

Perhaps, facing the onslaught of the forces of Reaction from the committee rooms of Austin to the unforgiving streets of Minneapolis, it’s time for us, in the words of the late Civil Rights icon John Lewis, “to make a little noise.”

ONGOING -

VISUAL

‘THORNS & LIVING SYSTEMS: JAYNE LAWRENCE, LEIGH ANNE LESTER’

Curated by Scott A. Sherer and Lizzy Hayman, this exhibition brings together works by San Antonio-based Jayne Lawrence and Leigh Anne Lester that reference their influential art spaces cactusBRA and cactusBARN. While Lester’s work revolves around considerations of the natural world, its fragility and potential defensive mutations, Lawrence’s work relies on whimsy and unspoken fantastical narratives — subjective but as equally invested in the destabilization of hierarchical modes of interpretation as Lester’s work. Their two- and three-dimensional mixed media works and installations are complimentary — even pendant — which further elucidates their long-standing successful creative partnership. The pair will present an artist talk from 1-3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28. Free,noon-5p.m.Thursday-Saturday and by appointment, Russell Hill Rogers Galleries, 1201 Navarro St., (210) 458-4011, colfa.utsa.edu. — Anjali

Gupta

WED | 02.04

SPORTS

SPURS VS. THUNDER

The budding rivalry between the Spurs and the Thunder resumes on Wednesday night as San Antonio looks for its fourth win against Oklahoma City this season. The Thunder prevailed when the teams met last month in OKC, with league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scorching 34 points in a resounding 98-119 win. After a surprising home loss to Indiana, the Thunder are no longer on pace to break the league’s single-season wins record yet remain confidently atop the standings. San Antonio has faced its own struggles recently, with head coach Mitch Johnson addressing the team’s lack of physicality. Spurs swingman Devin Vassell echoed the sentiments after a listless loss to the Pelicans at home. “We just gotta be better,” Vassell told reporters. “We gotta be more physical. We gotta rebound, and if we want to be a team with high aspirations, we can’t trick off a game like that.” The dog days of the NBA calendar continue for the Spurs with games against the Mavericks Lakers, and Warriors before the All-Star break. $66andup,8:30 p.m.,FrostBankCenter,1FrostBankCenterDrive,(210)444-5140,frostbankcenter.com,FanduelSports Network-Southwest.— M. Solis

THU | 02.05 - SAT | 02.28

VISUAL ART

HEIMO WALLNER: ‘DESESPERADO’

Un Grito Gallery is presenting “desesperado,” a solo exhibition of new drawings by Heimo Wallner. Born in Tamsweg, Austria, Wallner attended the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna and now divides his time between teaching studio art in Vermont and running the artist-in-residence program hotelpupik in Scheifling, Austria. However, the artist is no stranger to San Antonio. He spent an extended period of time at the University of Texas San Antonio as an official visiting artist, a program that culminated in a solo exhibition at UTSA Satellite Space in 2007. Wallner characterizes his work as rooted in stupidity mined from the endless font that surrounds humankind, which generates a push and pull between the banal and indispensable epiphanies. Free, 7-10 p.m., Thursday-Friday, Feb. 5-6 and by appointment, Un Grito Gallery at Blue Star Arts Complex, 1420 S. Alamo St., (210) 992-0585, instagram.com/ungritogallery. — AG

Courtesy Image Heimo Wallner

WED | 02.04

INHERITTHEWIND

Americans United for Separation of Church & State and San Antonio’s First Unitarian Universalist Church’s Social Justice Committee will present the third and final installment in their film series exploring the overarching question, “Faith, Freedom, and Democracy: Where Should the Boundaries Lie?” Inherit the Wind (1960), a cinematic classic starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, fictionalizes the infamous 1925 “Scopes Monkey Trial” as a vehicle for probing McCarthyism, fundamentalism and the suppression of free thought. First Unitarian Director of Lifespan Religious Education Tim Versteeg will moderate a discussion after the film. Free, 7 p.m., Fellowship Hall at First Unitarian Universalist Church, 7150 I-10 West, (210) 344–4695, uusat.org — AG

| 02.06 - SUN | 05.03

MARK MENJÍVAR: ‘MURMURATIONS’

San Antonio-based Mark Menjívar interrogates models of art as social practice and participatory education, creating multiple frameworks for critical discourse. Harnessing oral histories, archives and producing publications on a variety of subjects including the effects of state-sanctioned violence, his work endures long after physical installations come to an end. “Murmurations” functions like a mid-career survey, sampling the past 20 years of various long-term projects. Menjívar has presented his work at El Museo del Barrio (New York), Rothko Chapel (Houston), Eastern State Penitentiary (Philadelphia), the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (Ithaca), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha), Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Puerto Rican Museum of Art and Culture (Chicago) and Sala Diaz (San Antonio), among other venues. Free, opening reception 6-9 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6, noon-5 p.m. Wednesday, noon-8 p.m. Thursday-Friday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, Contemporary at Blue Star, 116 Blue Star, (210) 227-6960, contemporarysa.org. — AG

MON | 02.09

SPECIAL EVENT

DANCING OFF OUR TONGUES: A FICTION READING AND MUSICAL PERFORMANCE

2025 San Antonio Individual Artist Grant recipient Reggie Scott Young will present a poetry reading at the Latino Collection & Resource Center at San Antonio’s Central Library. Young is the author of the poetry collection Yardbirds Squawking at the Moon (Louisiana Literature Press). The collection is a journey from the Cold War to the new millennium and traverses the American landscape from downtown Chicago to the swamps of Louisiana. Special guests author Natalia Trevino and musical act Chavela will read and perform as well against a backdrop of original art currently on display at the Resource Center. Books by Young and Trevino will be available for purchase, as well as Chavela’s new self-titled album. Free,6-7:30p.m.,SanAntonioCentralLibrary,LatinoCollection&Resource Center,600SoledadSt.,(210)207-2519,mysapl.org.— AG

TUE | 02.10

SPECIAL EVENT

JOHNNY COMPTON IN CONVERSATION WITH JOHN PICACIO

If it seems like you just read about San Antonio horror author Johnny Compton holding an event to celebrate the release of a new book, well, that’s probably because you did. The prolific Bram Stoker Award-nominated scribe released his first short story collection back in December, and now he’s back to introduce the world to his latest novel, Dead First, a chilling cocktail of supernatural terror, detective fiction and Texas history. The book follows a private investigator hired by an enigmatic billionaire to discover why he’s incapable of dying. Compton will discuss Dead First with San Antonio artist and author John Picacio (The Invisible Parade), and a book signing will follow. Free, 6-7:30 p.m., Nowhere Bookshop, 5154 Broadway, (210) 640-7260, nowherebookshop.com.

— Sanford Nowlin

In and Out and Onward

Seinfeld’s Michael Richards

passes through darkness for tour stop in San Antonio

BY KIKO MARTINEZ

Actor and comedian Michael Richards, best known for playing the whiplike and fiercely loyal hustler Cosmo Kramer in the classic 1990s sitcom Seinfeld, has spent the last 20 years reckoning with the consequences of a public controversy.

In 2006, during a performance at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles, Richards hurled racial slurs at Black members of the audience who were heckling him. The incident was captured on video, and the three-time Emmy Award-winning actor’s career was immediately derailed.

It’s been a difficult journey since then, but Richards, who is bringing his Entrances and Exits tour to the Empire Theatre on Friday, Feb. 13, finally feels like he’s done the self-reflective work that may allow him to step out of the shadows.

During a recent interview with the Current, Richards, 76, talked about the philosophy behind his new tour, the power of performing live, and the lessons he’s learned from his past mistakes.

What is the meaning behind the title of your tour, Entrances and Exits?

We come into things, and then we go out of things. I’ve always liked that title. This performance on stage is not about my memoir, [also titled] Entrances and Exits. Although there are some stories I retell, I’m actually on my feet acting them out. I prefer to do that. I feel I’m more powerful on stage than with words on paper. I’m certainly more animated. So, I’ve always been fascinated with coming into things and then passing through them. I will be in San Antonio — and then I will leave.

There’s also the “final exit,” which could be interpreted as something darker, yes?

That’s universal – coming into life and then taking an exit and dying. But I don’t mean it to be dark. Every day, we come in, and we go out. Then, we attend to the next situation — the next passage or act in my life. That’s built into time and being a human being on this planet — this coming and going. All moments are passing.

This definitely doesn’t sound like a traditional stand-up comedy set. I’ve done [stand-up] before, but I was very experimental. It was like taking a leash off. I was fast and to the point. I liked that format, but I never regarded myself as a stand-up in the traditional sense. [The tour] is very loose. I’m not tied down word-for-word

like, I’ll say, an accomplished stand-up comic like Jerry Seinfeld. I know Jerry would never go on the stage unless he had every single word in place. That was essential in keeping the nature of Seinfeld together. Interestingly enough, Kramer is loose and lives in the imagination.

Kramer — speaking of memorable entrances and exits.

Yeah, I had to stay very focused on the positioning and psychology of that character. There was a lot of order to the chaos Kramer would express in all circumstances — the way he came in, and the way he went out. I came in strong, usually to gain more intention. [Kramer] always had something to come in with, and then he would go out to get it done — giddy up! — as his story unfolded.

It sounds like the show is going to leave room for a lot of reflection. If we look back to the controversy you faced in 2006, how do you reflect on that today?

I learned a lot about myself. [That night], I entered the realm of anger, and I backed that anger up with a thermonuclear weapon. I was very unhappy with that show, and I never went back to standup because of it. I wasn’t happy doing standup, and it was starting to take its toll on me. Usually, I could handle the audience and the extemporaneous [comments] — whether they were good or not. I heard [a negative comment] and that triggered an inner critic in me telling me [my performance] was not as funny as it should be. I was a bit depressed. All that blew up in my face. It was a catastrophe that was needed

to bring all that to an end. It was a shift that was necessary.

How did you come to that understanding over the last 20 years?

For many years, I looked at the nature of anger [and] how it brings about change. I had to deal with the awful sides of myself. How evil am I saying such despicable things to my fellow man just because I’m not in form that night? It was [actor] Boris Karloff (Frankenstein) who said a clown in the night was the most frightening image he could think of. I was a clown in the night.

Social justice activist Bryan Stevenson is credited for saying that a “person is more than the worst thing they’ve ever done.” When you hear that quote, how does it resonate with your own journey?

That’s absolutely true. The dark out there is in myself, and the way to get to it is to attend to your being and dialog with your shadow. I’ve been doing it for years. Even now, with all the conflict [in the country] and one side against another, we’re dealing with anger. We’re warring against ourselves — the American spirit. At the very beginning, we asked ourselves, “Can we create a country where everybody from all parts of the world can live?” We’ve been struggling with harmonizing. This is certainly the task for this century. Are we going to make it [or] are we just going to blow ourselves up because we couldn’t get a hold of the dark in every one of us. Each of us has to [find] our humanity. It’s all inside ourselves.

$48.19-$145.79, 8 p.m., Friday, Feb. 13, Empire Theatre, 226 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 226-5700, majesticempire.com.

Find more arts coverage every day at

She’s with the Banned

Texas librarian shares her battle over book bans in PBS documentary

BY KIKO MARTINEZ

Around five years ago, librarian Becky Calzada realized something had profoundly changed in the way some members of her community of Leander, Texas — 30 miles north of Austin — interacted with the school library system.

A school librarian for more than 20 years, Calzada — also the first Latina president of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) — started hearing about organized groups attending school board meetings to complain about the content of books on the shelves of district libraries.

Over the years, Calzada had occasional meetings with concerned parents questioning why a certain book was age appropriate, but the coordinated efforts these groups were undertaking at the administrative level were unlike anything she’d seen before.

“When you look at past trends for when parents have questions about books, it was like one person coming to you, not families going to a school board meeting,” Calzada told the Current during a recent interview. “They were not following the traditional path of talking to a librarian or a principal or a teacher. They were going straight to the top.”

At these school board meetings, Calzada said parents were reading passages from books they deemed inappropriate for school-aged children “out of context” and referring to librarians such as her as pedophiles and child groomers.

“They were spreading a lot of misinformation and disinformation about the intentions and purposes of libraries,” Calzada said. “They were spreading lies to communities and using children as a shield.”

In the documentary The Librarians, Calzada and other librarians across the U.S. find themselves on the frontlines of a national battle against conservative groups fighting to ban books from public schools. These attempts are often presented as conflicts over “parental rights,” but they’re usually driven by coordinated campaigns that portray librarians as threats rather than highly qualified educators.

Many times, the targeted books contain LGBTQ+ characters and discussions of gender identity.

For example, the award-winning 2020 coming-of-age novel Flamer by Mike Curato is one book often criticized by conservative groups for featuring a young boy confronting his sexuality during summer camp. Scenes in the book reference masturbation and suicidal ideation.

Conservative groups argue those themes are too mature for high schoolers. Librarians like Calzada argue that censorship ignores the context and intent of these books and cuts off access for the readers they are meant to serve.

Calzada and other librarians contend that books such as Flamer aren’t designed to provoke. Instead, they’re intended to help young readers who feel isolated or unseen make sense of their own experiences.

Removing the books, Calzada said, doesn’t protect children. Rather, it denies them access to materials that promote empathy and serve as a guide for their own lives during challenging and confusing times.

“There’s an agenda to try to remove books around certain marginalized groups like LGBTQ identities,” Calzada said. “When we think about the immediate impact, it affects the people that don’t have access. The school library may be the one place that a student has access to information.”

Last September, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 13, which gives parents and school boards greater control over what students can access in public school libraries. The bill also allows districts to create an advisory council to oversee library books.

According to PEN America, a nonprofit that defends free expression, promotes literature and protect authors’ rights, Texas had the second-highest number of new book bans in the U.S. during the 2024-2025 school year at 1,781 total books.

“When I think about the purpose of libraries, I think about how libraries are

spaces where people go to access information,” Calzada said. “We know that information is power, so whoever controls what’s in a library controls the information.”

Along with LGBTQ-themed books being banned, Calzada also said right-wing groups target books centered around race, racism and Black history. Some banned in Texas school districts include Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez, All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson and In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Machado.

“Banning these books sends a message that your heritage, your history and people that look like you don’t matter and shouldn’t be on a shelf, which is detrimental,” Calzada said. “I’m Latina, so I think authors like Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street) and Elizabeth Acevedo (The Poet X) bring value with their beautiful stories. When I read them, I see the richness of our culture.”

While Calzada said librarians continue to be the “easy target” for public outrage, she remains committed to her work. She is the co-founder of the FReadom Fighters, a group of Texas librarians fighting censorship and providing a supportive space for librarians. She envisions a brighter future for Texas school libraries, especially when she sees students themselves get involved in making their own decisions about their reading habits.

“I have seen this myself through student action,” Calzada said. “We’ve seen students protest by starting a banned book club. This generation is highly engaged and has a strong sense of student agency. They feel very empowered, and they should. They want to make a difference in the world. They want to be a part of the process.”

The Librarians premieres on PBS’s Independent Lens on Feb. 9, 2026, (check local listings). It also will be available to stream on the PBS app.

Cooking Up Conversation

WingIt and SipIt co-founder Daryl Smith talks about food trucks, franchising and betting on San Antonio

BY KAT STINSON

More than a decade ago, San Antonio food entrepreneur Daryl Smith took a college business project and transformed it into a powerhouse local wing chain.

Smith and business partner Bernardo Baxter opened the original WingIt location in 2014, which remains home base for the brand. Since then, they have opened another location in the Alamodome and purchased a WingIt food truck.

The duo eventually expanded with a sister drink company, SipIt, which features a wide assortment of alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages that customers can purchase to-go. That project proved so popular, it’s grown to 16 locations.

We caught up with Smith to talk about his success and building a brand from the ground up.

WingIt and SipIt didn’t start as massive brands but as a single food truck. Take me back to the very beginning.

It really came full circle for me. I’ve been in the game about 14 years now. WingIt started as a class project when I was studying business marketing at Texas Southern University. I created a food truck concept for my entrepreneurship class, and after I graduated, I decided to actually bring it to life.

I found an old taco truck on Craigslist and started selling wings around my college campus in Houston. I’m originally from San Antonio — I went to Judson High School and graduated from Wagner — but at the time, Houston made sense. Eventually, though, business got hard. I had met my wife in college, but I didn’t have family there, and I realized I needed discipline and structure. That’s when I joined the Air Force Reserve, which brought me to Lackland. My plan was simple: save money, reinvest in my truck, and scale. I wanted 10 trucks — that was the dream.

And that’s what ultimately brought you back home?

Yes. During basic training, something clicked. I kept seeing food trucks on base and thought, Why didn’t I think about this sooner? I realized there was opportunity everywhere.

When I came back to San Antonio, I started setting up in Converse and Kirby. I got my first contract at Fort Sam Houston, and that exposure really helped. Around that same time, my best friend introduced me to my now-business partner, Bernardo Baxter. He had

his own food truck, Count Down Wings, and a following from his days promoting parties at UTSA.

When I saw the lines at his truck, I realized, OK, there’s money in San Antonio.

WingIt officially became a brick-and-mortar in 2014. What did those early days look like?

Very scrappy. We found a small spot in Kirby — $700 a month in rent — and made it work however we could. We couldn’t afford a kitchen, so all the food was cooked out of my food truck parked behind the building.

My mom worked the front counter. My cousin was cooking. We were on walkie-talkies calling out orders — “Drop a 20-piece.” It looked like a restaurant, but behind the scenes, it was pure hustle.

That same year, my wife and I got married, and we held our wedding reception inside WingIt because we couldn’t afford a venue. My mom decorated the whole place. That restaurant is truly part of our family story.

When did you realize the concept could scale?

Within three years, we had two locations. The second came almost by chance — my wife spotted a “For Lease” sign at an old barbecue spot. The bones were already there, and because we had experience, the landlord took a chance on us. We were young — 22 and 24 — but hungry.

The real turning point was when we added margaritas and daiquiris to WingIt. Once we introduced alcohol, everything changed.

And that eventually led to SipIt?

Exactly. We came up with SipIt in 2019 as a spinoff concept. My partner handles the financial side — I’m more of the marketing mind — and the numbers made sense. We opened in January 2020.

Then COVID hit in March, and it honestly changed our lives. SipIt became our best return on investment since we started. People wanted convenient drinks they could take home.

During the pandemic, we noticed moms leaving the line to go to Sonic or Bahama Buck’s for their kids, so we added mocktails and non-alcoholic drinks. SipIt became a one-stop shop.

Our mindset was: How do we become the Starbucks or Smoothie King of this market?

You expanded quickly with SipIt — more than a dozen locations. What’s been your “secret sauce”?

Franchising. Once we saw the success, we reinvested and started franchising. Today, we have six corporate locations and more than 11 franchise locations between WingIt and SipIt.

For us, it’s really about focusing on what we know, and then scaling it the right way.

If you could go back and do anything differently, what would it be?

I would have put better systems in place earlier to help us scale faster. But early on, you don’t know what you don’t know. You’re just trying to survive and make it work.

You also talked about giving back. Why does that matter to you now?

Lately, I’ve been going back to my alma mater and speaking to students. I want young people — especially those who look like me — to see what’s possible. I started with a class project and an old food truck. If I can do it, they can too.

Find more food & drink news at sacurrent.com

food

Culinary Spotlight

Eight San Antonio chefs, two restaurants among latest James Beard semifinalists

BY KAT STINSON

Eight chefs and two restaurants from the San Antonio area are among the semifinalists for the 2026 James Beard Awards, once again placing the Alamo City in the national culinary spotlight.

Finalists for the prestigious recognitions will be announced on Tuesday, March 31, with winners celebrated at the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards Ceremony on Monday, June 15, at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

Widely regarded as one of the high-

est honors in the food world, the James Beard Awards recognize excellence in cuisine, hospitality and leadership across the U.S. This year’s semifinalist list includes a mix of established heavyweights and newer concepts from San Antonio.

Hotel Emma names new culinary vice president John Brand

BY KAT STINSON

Chef John Brand has taken over as vice president of culinary operations for San Antonio’s Hotel Emma, following the recent departure of previous culinary director Geronimo Lopez, officials with the Michelin Two-Key property said Monday. In his new position, Brand will oversee the culinary vision and hospitality strategy across Emma Hospitality Group, which includes Supper, Sternewirth, Larder and future restaurant and bar concepts tied to the historic Pearl property. Brand brings a longstanding connection to Hotel Emma and Pearl. He was part of the hotel’s original opening team in 2015, serving as the first chef and culinary director, according to officials with the hospitality operation.

In the years since, Brand has continued to shape Pearl’s culinary landscape, most recently as director of culinary endeavors at restaurant-development group Potluck, whose Pearl properties include Best Quality Daughter and the recently shuttered Carriqui.

“Returning to Hotel Emma feels like coming back to the kitchen where it all began — where we set out to prove that San Antonio could define its own standard of world-class hospitality through food, craft and place,” Brand said in a statement. “Hotel Emma and Pearl have always been at the heart of this city’s culinary identity, and as the destination continues to earn global recognition, it’s a privilege to help lead what comes next.”

One of Brand’s central focuses will be

are deeply rooted in the San Antonio food scene.

San Antonio’s acclaimed Mexican fine-dining restaurant Mixtli earned a semifinalist nomination for Outstanding Restaurant, continuing its long track record of national recognition. The establishment earned its first Michelin Star in 2025.

The city also landed a new contender in the Best New Restaurant category with Anacacho Coffee & Cantina, located in the St. Anthony Hotel and run by chef Leo Davila.

Pastry chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph, known for his meticulous technique and boundary-pushing desserts at Michelin-starred restaurant Nicosi, among others, was named a semifinalist for Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker.

In the Outstanding Chef category, barbecue veterans David Kirkland and Ernest Servantes of Burnt Bean Co. were recognized for the third consecutive year. While the restaurant is based in Seguin, the pitmasters’ influence and reputation

In the Best Chef: Texas category, San Antonio was well represented with multiple semifinalists. Those include Francisco Estrada and Lizzeth Martinez of Naco Mexican. Also nominated were Sue Kim of The Magpie and Emil Oliva of Leche de Tigre, who have shaped the city’s evolving dining landscape with their takes on Korean and Peruvian cuisine, respectively.

the continued evolution of Hotel Emma’s culinary programming, including the reintroduction of Supper as a cornerstone of the Pearl dining experience. The restaurant’s next chapter will emphasize seasonality, local partnerships and a strong sense of place, while remaining integrated into the hotel’s overall guest experience.

Beyond the dining room, Brand will prioritize kitchen leadership and team

development, with an emphasis on mentorship, collaboration and cultivating the next generation of culinary talent across Emma Hospitality Group.

“My focus is on honoring the producers, makers and teams who built this community,” Brand said, “and on shaping thoughtful, consistent food and beverage experiences that reflect the soul of Hotel Emma.”

Reenergizing Stable Hall

Can a new partner zap more life into the Pearl concert venue?

BY SANFORD NOWLIN

When Stable Hall launched in January 2024, the 1,000-capacity venue located inside historic structure at the Pearl promised to raise the bar for live music in San Antonio.

However, it didn’t take long for cracks to appear. Stable Hall fired original general manager Libby Day, a longtime

music-scene veteran, in early 2025. A few months later, Dallas-based Wood Hall — originally hired to run day-to-day operations — sued the venue for breach of contract, and the owners countersued.

Late last year, Stable Hall took steps to right the ship, first hiring music-venue vet Garrett Zimmerman as GM, then retaining Dayglo Presents — owned by longtime concert promoter Peter Shapiro — to oversee booking and other operations.

An operator of storied venues include

the Capitol Theatre in New York, Dayglo brought in high-profile talent buyer Hannah Gold, whose resume includes Willie Nelson’s Luck Reunion festival and the Newport Festivals, to oversee its San Antonio partnership.

The Current caught up with Gold by phone to discuss Dayglo’s plans to rejuvenate Stable Hall and get a better understanding of how it fits into the Alamo City music ecosystem. Although she took a pass on discussing the Wood Hall legal fight and the venue’s past

failures, she spoke openly about her ambition to raise its raise.

The following conversation is edited for space and clarity.

As impressive as Stable Hall is, it launched in an already crowded and competitive music market in San Antonio, which some people attributed to its problems gaining traction. How do you make it stand out?

One of the most important things in the music industry is your relationships with people, and what else you’re working on that people you can use to leverage and get things done. I talked to a couple of people who’d worked in the

room before. Nobody really had super-negative things to say. It just seemed like they didn’t have the right person in the room. … But when I found the room, actually walked in and started looking at their calendar —  what was upcoming — I saw there’s a lot of challenges in that market. There’s a lot of bigger promoters that already work in [similar-sized venues]. It’s a beautiful room. The size is flexible, but it can also be limiting, depending on what you’re going after.

I specifically came from a room in New York, City Winery, where I grew into a buyer and where I booked 350 shows a year. So, I’m used to volume booking. It’s a very different beast when you’re in a city like San Antonio, just because what does this market support?

I think the question for me when I walked in was like, “What’s the marketing team in place?” Which now, of course, Dayglo is helping supplement marketing, and Shore Fire Media’s our PR team, and these are both really good, strong teams.

It just seems like having a couple of people — Pete [Shapiro] and myself — behind the venue, who have a lot of relationships with agents and managers [is vital]. We can go to people and say, “Hey, we really need to get this venue off the ground. We really want to provide it with some world-class entertainment. Guys, we need you to help us get some shows in here.”

And that’s how starting a venue works, because there’s always competition in every market. I’ve worked in markets all over the country at this point.

So, you’re saying that you’re tasked with hitting “Restart.” You’re not just coming in to do a slightly better version of business-as-usual.

One-hundred percent. … When you’re a music booker, you’re looking for agents to be hitting you up about shows, in addition to the proactive outreach you do. There needs to be that flow. And whether I’ve worked in Rochester or Buffalo, or California or wherever, you hope that there’s more of that kind of natural flow.

And I think that the room was in more of its infancy stage than I realized when I came on board, but that’s OK. That just means that you take the first six months to a year to really hammer on it, give it attention. … Artists are on the road so much these days, that if it’s a good room and you take care of people when they come through, and it sounds good and the green rooms are nice, they’re going to want to come back.

How soon are people going to see changes at Stable Hall?

I think it’s going to take six months to really get things up and running. … When you book a show, you’re booking it like four or five, six, maybe seven months out most of the time. … When it comes to establishing a venue, City Winery, the first year it opened, they had, I think, 60 or 70 shows, which is pretty good,

Mbut also, it’s New York City — everybody plays here on every tour. By the time I left in 2021, it was closer to 400 [shows a year] between the upstairs room and the downstairs room.

Is that the volume you’d like to be doing here?

I’m still learning the market. San Antonio is a much larger city than I think most people expect, but it depends on the appetite for music in the city. And obviously, we don’t want to book shows that aren’t going to sell. So, I have to figure out, over the course of the next few months, which nights do people want to go out in San Antonio? Will people go out on a Tuesday if it’s the right show? Hopefully. …

So, ideally, I’d love to have three to five shows a week. That would be awesome. If the market can support it, we’re going to do it. And if not, we’re just going to put the best shows in possible and keep the volume as high as we can.

I have heard some music fans complain they never fully grasped Stable Hall’s identity. Is that something you think is important to address?

Before I take on any job, I call people in my network and I say, “Hey, man, do you know about this? What are your thoughts on the room? Have any of your artists played it?” … And every piece of feedback I got about the space was that it was really a nice place to play. Agents that have been there have really enjoyed it. Managers, they’ve just said, “We’d love to continue bringing business to the room.” Which to me means it’s got all the right bones and it just needs the right people running the

ship, and hopefully we are those people. We’re definitely going to give it our best shot. And I think Pete and I don’t do anything half-assed. … Pete and I take everything we do seriously, and we want to bring our best game face to the table and see what we can bring to the venue. So, I think it’s a great space. And again, I just think San Antonio is such an interesting city with a lot of culture. I feel like we’ve just got so much to work with there.

And I looked at the room originally and I thought, “Oh, the programming they’ve already gotten here makes a lot of sense, the Dave and Gillians and the Shakey Graves and that kind of thing, but I think they could probably do a lot more.

So, in addition to doing a lot of Americana, country, alt-rock, whatever, I want to see what else works in the space — through experimentation of booking shows and seeing how they do ... . And hopefully also, the added element of Dayglo’s marketing team helping with the in-house marketing. Dayglo are complete pros, and they’ve been in the business for a long time.

When the venue opened, the original team promised local acts would be part of this mix, but as you know, that’s not always easy for venues of this size to pull off. Can you make local musicians part of the mix in a way that makes sense?

There’s a lot of different ways to do it. And again, that’s something you face in every market. …

One thing [we] talked about was figuring out if we wanted to do some residencies or showcases and book multi-artist events — especially if there are any other events we can build around … . And maybe it’s a really low ticket price, maybe there are some organizations we can work with that can help underwrite some shows for us to support local artists, any kind of cultural boards or things like that.

I used to go to the Canadian consulate in New York and see if they would help partner on a show with me to bring in a musician from Montreal or Toronto. …

You also have opportunities when you book national touring act and they’re not touring with a support act … . So, I have a whole list of local artists in any market I’ve booked that we can call and say, “Hey man, would you be willing to come in and do a 30-to-40 minute opening set for Alejandro Escovedo or something?” And that’s a really great way to help developing artists have exposure, or people who have been around for a long time who just want to play. …

When you work for a small promoter, one of the good things is there’s not a lot of red tape or bureaucracy to work through. You sort of have an idea, and if it’s so smart or it will work, then you give it a shot and see what happens.

Find more music coverage every day at sacurrent.com

critics’ picks

Thursday, Feb. 5

Honey Bunny, Powdered Wig Machine, Fancy and the Fortunate Sons, The Westway

This packed bill comprised of some of San Antonio’s most interesting rock acts marks the debut of Locals Helping Locals, a new monthly live music showcase where SA musicians raise money for SA charities. Sounds like a sensible endeavor, no? Organized by the Chuck Vans Show online radio program, the showcases will take place on the first Thursday of every month with each raising funds for a different nonprofit. This one will benefit Magdalena House, which offers support and safe housing for women and children leaving abusive situations. $10, Rah! Rah! Room, 6322 San Pedro Ave., instagram. com/therahrahroom. — Sanford Nowlin

Saturday, Feb. 7

Virginia Creeper, Elnuh

Austin band Virginia Creeper named one of its albums People Love the Dallas Cowboys Because They Want to Love Themselves, which is pretty much a perfect album title. The group plays a refreshing and unpretentious brand of ’90s-style of indie-rock. Which is to say, the guitars are big without overloading the listener and the vocals are strong without being drowned in histrionics. Thanks to quality songs with atmosphere to spare, Virginia Creeper is one to watch. Meanwhile, “trash gaze” act Elnuh are one of San Antonio’s best rock bands regardless of subgenre. $10, Lonesome Rose, 2114 N. St. Mary’s St., (210) 455-0233, thelonesomerosesa.com. — Bill Baird

Tuesday, Feb. 10

The Hot Sauce Band

The Hot Sauce Band is a group of jazz ringers — drums, vibraphone, bass, guitar — that performs in a revolving setup. The group is led by vibraphonist Toro Flores, whom the folks at radio station KRTU have described as a “San Antonio living jazz legend.” They aren’t kidding, either. The man absolutely shreds on his instrument. Free, 8 p.m., Sancho’s, 628 Jackson St., (210) 320-1840, sanchosmx.com. — BB

Adrian Ruiz Sextet

In addition to leading the prestigious jazz program at St. Mary’s University, trumpeter and composer Adrian Ruiz has quite a musical career of his own, which includes a 2021 Grammy nomination and numerous festival appearances. For this show, Ruiz will lead a sextet comprised of fellow St. Mary’s faculty members through standards, improvisation-driven pieces and everything in between. $25, Jazz TX, 312 Pearl Parkway, (210) 332-9386, jazztx. com. — BB

Wednesday, Feb. 11

Kat Edmondson

A songwriting treasure from Houston, Kat Edmondson promises to serve up the “bare essentials” in an evening interweaving music and stories in a format that’s becoming familiar at Stable Hall. Edmondson’s dreamy voice harkens back to sirens of an earlier area and helps lure listeners into her lyrics. She’s a frequent collaborator with Lyle Lovett, and in similar fashion, Edmondson’s songwriting tends to dig at a deeper truth. $42.18-$98.50, 8 p.m., Stable Hall, 307 Pearl Parkway, stablehall.com. — DC

Thursday, Feb. 12

Pasatono Orquesta

It’s not often that Stable Hall opens its doors for a free show, and rarer still is the opportunity to hear the Mixteca music of Oaxaca. Pasatono Orquesta delivers an exquisite rendition of this southern Mexico style, featuring specialized stringed instruments used only in the region. The Mexico City-based orchestra has

In Jamaican culture, sound systems are groups of DJs, sound engineers and emcees playing music together. Their homemade electronics and massive walls of sound are the stuff of legend. San Antonio’s King Remo Sound System keeps this tradition alive — think huge wood speakers delivering thumping decibels and pulsing bass to get bodies moving. Selecta Will Dub, known for his Friday-night KSYM show focused on dub classics, will bring the night to life. Reggae DJs Posey Parker and McPullish also will spin. Free, 9 p.m., Nowhere Bar, 1375 Austin Highway, instagram.com/nowherebar_sa. — BB

Saturday, Feb. 14

Tab Benoit and Paul Thorn

Tab Benoit and Paul Thorn meld their different styles of Southern music into an evening that should bring out the best in both. Louisiana’s Benoit is best known for his swampy blues while Tupelo, Mississippi native Thorn channels both Southern rock and Americana. Both are master storytellers, and their combined alchemy seems likely to create magic on the Tobin stage. $38.50-$89.00, 8 p.m., Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, 100 Auditorium Circle, (210) 223-8624, tobincenter.org. — DC

Sunday, Feb. 15

Tish Hinojosa

shared its music at prestigious stages ranging from the Lincoln and Kennedy centers to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. By turns joyous, heart-rending, and exquisitely performed, Pasatono Orquesta is a delight. Free with RSVP, 8 p.m., Stable Hall, 307 Pearl Parkway, stablehall. com. — BB

Friday, February 13

Glitterer, Graham Hunt, Prize Horse

Ned Russin started post-hardcore act Glitterer in 2017 as a one-man band while a student at Colombia University. That incarnation spawned two buzzworthy EPs and eventually led to a fully formed outfit now based in Washington, D.C. The band dropped its fourth album, erer, in November, showcasing Russin’s powerful vocals augmented by a full guitar sound and shimmering synths. $21.29, 8 p.m., Paper Tiger, 2410 N. St. Mary’s St., papertigersatx.com. — DC

King Remo Sound System with Selecta Will Dub, Posey Parker, McPullish

A legendary singer-songwriter playing a free midday show at a legendary venue? Sign us up. San Antonio native Tish Hinojosa will drop in on Texas’ oldest existing live-music hall to share her catalog of folk songs inspired by her upbringing in King William and influenced by her Mexican American heritage. With songs in both Spanish and English, Hinojosa remains an enduring voice of our region’s Latino experience. Free, noon, Gruene Hall, 1281 Gruene Road, New Braunfels, (830) 606-1281, gruenehall.com. — DC

Sunday, Feb. 15

Opeth, Katatonia

Now in its third decade, Sweden’s Opeth is an icon of progressive metal. The band is known for its precise, often-knotty riffage along with some mind-bending twists and structural turns. It doesn’t hurt that frontman Mikael Åkerfeldt possesses a distinctive voice that can shift between soulful baritone crooning and terrifying death growls. The band comes to SA promoting 2024’s Last Will and Testament, a full-on concept album. Some fans have dubbed the release “Deathro Tull,” and the name fits, since Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson appears on several tracks, providing both narration and flute. 7:30 p.m., $60-$200, Majestic Theatre, 224 E. Houston St., (210) 226-3333, majesticempire.com. — BB

“Who’s Your Baddie?”--they’re villains, to a degree. by Matt Jones

© 2025 Matt Jones

Across

1. It may be served with gravy

8. Comparative phrases

15. Over a third of Earth’s land area

16. “Will it happen to me?”

17. Austin Powers villain who’s way more malicious than quirky?

19. Things to show newbies, as the saying goes

20. Elmo’s foil

21. “Before,” if before 22. It’s usually blue, green, or brown

23. Sandwiches served with tzatziki

24. Tide type

25. Rogue

26. Computer file, informally

27. Bayer cramp relief brand

28. Margaret Mead study site

30. German state whose capital is Dresden

31. Inspector Gadget villain who grabs plush toys at an arcade?

34. Gave a creepy glance

35. Night noise

36. “___ if I never left!”

37. Square root of nove

38. Army officers, for short

41. Persist in

42. Acrobatic

45. Take a big risk

46. “I heard him exclaim, ___ he drove out of sight ...”

47. Frasier’s surname

48. Blender button

49. Spider-Man villain reading apprehensively through social media?

52. Genre for many boy bands

53. Enlighten

54. “In all likelihood ...”

55. Greek counterpart of Ceres

Down

1. Comedian called “The Entertainer”

2. Illinois’s second-most populous city

3. Apprehensive (with a more common opposite starting with “in”)

4. #1 picks

5. Suffix for many sicknesses

6. OPEC’s concern

7. Source of unpasteurized milk

8. 1920s anarchist in a prominent trial

9. Late-’90s Apple products now in their 7th version

10. FundaciÛ Joan ___ (art museum in Barcelona)

11. “Newhart” establishment

12. Jumped atop

13. Spare

14. At an alarming angle

18. “___ should you!”

23. Lose it

24. Undeliverable letter, in post office slang

26. Secluded valleys

27. 1984 Olympic slalom champ Phil (and not the talk show host Bill)

28. Abandon, as a project

29. Breakfast hrs.

30. “Success!”

31. Hindered

32. Sowed again

33. Like a moose

34. Did with relish

38. Cowboy movie prop

39. Thirty, in Paris

40. “If I Had a Hammer” co-writer Pete

42. Mail for a knight

43. Quebec city, its peninsula, or its bay

44. It may be seen at the close of business

45. ___ de leche

47. ___ AmÈrica (South American soccer tournament)

48. “Clue” professor

50. Tunisian tennis player Jabeu

51. Pindar poem

Answers on page 25.