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Boiler House
The former Pearl Brewery has been transformed into a very nice conglomeration of restaurants, shops, outdoor markets, music events, and so forth. The old boiler house is now home to a restaurant called – this is complicated! – the Boiler House. It has a “casual yet energetic atmosphere” which I think means “loud.” But it also has wine and craft beer, so I guess after a while that atmosphere won’t be bothersome.
San Antonio, Texas
photographed 10.25.2014
Goods
If you are in San Antonio and want to get away from the tourists around the Alamo and the Riverwalk, you could do this:
1. Have breakfast at Ocho, a nice little place at the Hotel Havana. (But the waitress will ask you to not take photos with your camera. You can, she says, take as many as you want with a phone. When asked the difference, she says they don’t allow cameras “with lenses” because of “privacy concerns.” You decide it’s not worth the time to explain to her what a lens actually is. Or how a photo shot with a phone is kind of more likely to instantly show up on Facebook.)
2. Walk north along the Riverwalk. There won’t be any tourists, other than yourself and any companions you may have brought along. But there will be plenty of runners and walkers and dogs. It’s a nice walk. Some of the bridges have art under them, and there’s even a set of locks. It’s a very pleasant place.
3. Take some time at the Pearl Brewery, which hasn’t actually been a brewery in a long time. If it’s a Saturday, the part with the farmers market and retail shops will be pretty crowded, but the part where the sign says GOODS will be quiet. You can sit in the shade and read a book.
4. Or you can take in the stores and do a pretty fair amount of people watching at the market.
5. Or, you can find a chair on a grassy slope above the river and read that same book. (We are Water*, by Wally Lamb, was what I was reading, in case you wondered.)
6. After a while, you could go to La Gloria for some street tacos.
7. And then, you could get the water taxi to take you back toward downtown. The taxi’s only marginally faster than walking, but it does go through the locks, which is something that I don’t get to do in my day-to-day routine.
San Antonio, Texas
photographed 1.25.2014
* I agree with the review, and am glad that the book was on sale: it wouldn’t have been worth it otherwise.
Meanwhile, over at the old brewery
The former Pearl Brewery site in San Antonio is in the process of being transformed into a mixed-use development; the brewery operated from 1881 until 2001. The site sat vacant until 2006, when the first tenant of the redevelopment, the Aveda Institute, opened. Now there are about 35 tenants.
The last time I was in San Antonio, for a conference, my work colleagues and I took a cab over to the brewery to check it out. Our cab driver was entertaining. By “entertaining” I mean she scared us to the point that we opted to walk back. She talked the whole way about various traffic accidents she’d been in; none of them were HER fault, though, so I am not too sure why we were worried. As she pulled into the brewery, and ran up over a curb, we suddenly realized that the very first place we saw – which turned out to be the Aveda Institute – was just where we needed to stop. She offered us a card, so we could phone her to arrange a return back downtown. I guess she’s probably parked under a tree somewhere, waiting on that call.
After we ditched her, we decided that our frayed nerves could probably do with a margarita or four. Luckily for us, we found La Gloria Icehouse, which had an accommodating wait staff, and accommodating happy hour prices.
Then, as I said, we walked back, along the Riverwalk, which is pedestrian-only, so we weren’t at risk of seeing that cab driver. Or being run down by her.
None of this has really anything to do with the photograph, except that it is another building on the brewery grounds.
San Antonio, Texas
photographed 11.26.11
One Day | One Image 