Up and coming comedian Alex Falcone sends us updates from his time on the road. His hair looks great today. —The Real Editors, Not Just Alex Writing On His Own
I really wanted to love San Antonio. It was my first time in Texas and it started so well. The first native Texan I met here told me, within ten minutes of our meeting, that when his dad died he left each of his sons a couple guns and a copy of the constitution. Texas was so incredibly... Texas. I was going to have a great time. And then it just kind of evaporated. Everybody I asked to show something that exemplified the city just kind of sighed. "You should watch a Spurs game and drink Corona." "Have you tried shooting a gun in the air after the Spurs win?" "Oh yeah, and the Alamo, right?"
That's all anybody could say. The Spurs and the Alamo were the only things going on in the 7th largest city in the country. It was almost sad. Since I wasn't going to the NBA Finals and I'd rather be killed in a church by an invading Mexican army than drink Corona, I figured I had better visit the Alamo.
More after the jump!
The Alamo is a freemium tourist trap. For $0 you can walk around and read a couple signs. For $16 a tour guide will carefully avoid telling you just how much of the building is original (Very little. The only original masonry is a few stones on the front wall and, of course, the original parking lot the invading army used to park their SUVs for just $8 for the first hour.)
More horrifying than anything that happened at the Alamo in the 1800s is the industry that's popped up around the war memorial today. Every crappy tourist attraction you can imagine has set up shot on the block. A wax museum, a haunted house, and two different outposts of Ripley's Believe it or Not. If you'd like to save the $18, let me just spoil Ripley's for you: the answer to pretty much everything is "not."
The other big attraction Saint Anthony, Texas offers is their famous River Walk. The 2-foot-deep muddy river is surrounded by curving sidewalks and carefully manicured greenery. While huge portions of the River Walk are quite pleasant, the main part through downtown feels like if Venice was rebuilt by Disney. A 40 minute boat tour features such exciting landmarks as "Up here on your left is a Hilton hotel" and "once my friend fell in this river and we all laughed."
The restaurants should be offering the most amazing authentic Mexican food and barbecue but instead are all variations on Chili's. Even the pigeons just eat at Chili's all week. This explains why your Bloomin' Onion tastes like bird shit.
On my flight home I sat next to a delightfully Texan woman who had some theories on barbecue sauce (she's for it!) and vegetarians ("But... what about pork?"). She promised that next time I was in Texas, she'd show me all her favorite parts of San Antonio. "And if the Spurs are playing, I'll buy you a Corona."
