On the Street

"Death is Mother Nature's way of telling you you're in the wrong gear..."

Letters (to the On the Street Penthouse Suite)

#1 Virus

Been out of town a few days - have y'all seen this?

Freakin' ballgirl in minor-league game....Absolutely incredible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SqJz0NgnnE

And then, the follow up email...

After further reading, seems to be a Gatorade commercial....Too bad - pretty cool, still.....Yes, I'm gullable.

#2 A Brief Letter from OTS San Luis Obispo Domestic Correspondent Steve

Mark,

seen this criminalz video?:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNZSe8Q8-Iw

S

Yeah, the song is really annoying for long stretches and seems like a devil spawn from DJ Screw. There was a sense of legitimacy with the video until the guerilla in-line skater showed up. Still, riding a bike on the 405 speaks for itself.

A Summer Breeze

On the way over to the Very Vodka party I had heard rumors that a truck had collided with the SW Crafts Center.

Yes. Luckily, the damage was small and the party was held at the other campus across the street.

Current parties guarantee a line at the beginning. A buffet of food and liquor speaks a voice San Antonio understands.

Within minutes of opening the floodgates people diffused to various spots with drink in hand and plates of pasta, salad, cake and other things inbetween.

Knowing that things might run out I tried to get my fill early. I think everyone knows the score with these kind of events.

Low light, vodka, imperfect equipment, all lead to this fuzzy foto. In the nether regions of the party a small wind quintet (or something close) was found to be playing at low volume.

Another blur. For more precise fotography, check this out.

The Americans Are Coming

Last night the NBA draft came and went. For Spurs fans this moment often is a geography lesson as the four corners of the Earth and scoured and plumbed in search for the next project. The Spurs' pick was both expected and surprising: they did indeed choose an American player as almost everyone thought they should, yet they find someone from a school, basically, no one has heard much of.

The player: George Hill

The school: IUPUI (which stands for Indiana University-Purdue University, and the "I" I'm not sure about.)

There were other picks as well.

Player: Malik Hairston

The school: Oregon

Player: James Gist

The school: Maryland

By picking George Hill with their first pick, there was a fair amount of head scratching, especially when more known and successful college players such as Mario Chalmers from Kansas and Chris Douglas-Roberts from Memphis were still available. George Hill must have impressed people in the pre-draft scouting camps and private workouts. Still, there is a tendency for teams to discount the proven success of other players and get seduced by the appeal of an unknown. Whether that is the case is to be determined. As usual with the Spurs, there were rumors of CIA-like smokescreens, saving face moments to the media, mysterious last second emails, and other obfuscations that completely blur actions and results.

Fans are grumbling in general but people are waiting to see what George Hill can do.

Victory

This was a movie that had often eluded me. I didn't have cable television when it became a cable hit many years ago. By accident I saw it at the video store. It has Pele. It has Sly Stallone in his only "intriguing" period of work - the brief time after Rocky and before Rambo II when he actually had to go out and try to act in movies he didn't have complete control over, or at least for the most part.

How else to explain this...

Victory was one of John Huston's last films. Michael Caine is there as well as Max Van Sydow, real futbol players and other old schoolers. It doesn't quite hold up, in part because of Stallone's over acting. The film does feel very british though, for whatever it's worth.

Urban Forestry

With the chondromalacia still haunting, the ride-by journalism has been greatly reduced. It's lamentable. So what does this mean? Too often having to walk to get some sense of activity.

Perhaps not as bad as Dr. Detroit but the feeling is there. Rumors of an off-road bike trail in the Olmos Basin off Dick Frederick came back to me. (OTS historians will recall a mention of this trail from before. The extent of it, at the time, wasn't fully explored.) Now, I finally wandered around back there.

Finding online images of this spot is surprisingly difficult. Even the annual Basura Bash zone isn't exactly the same.

Anyways, it's back in there off Dick Frederick. It's probably the best urban forest in the city, for whatever that's worth. The maze of interconnecting paths suggest years of slow maintenance. Someone hand built a small bridge back there. There's also a hand built bench to rest on. Fotos possibly to follow later on. Walking is very british as well.

And so goes another week on the streets of San Antonio. As always, to be continued...