Brian Kenneth Swain

When UTSA football head coach Jeff Traylor first showed up for work on December 9, 2019, the team was just coming off a combined record of 7 and 17 for the preceding two seasons. The task at hand was clearly a challenging one. Still, if you’d asked Coach Traylor at that time what he felt were the odds of the team finishing the season two years later at 12 and 2 and winning the Conference USA championship trophy, even he might have been a bit doubtful about that enormous of a turnaround, and Coach Traylor is a pretty optimistic guy. Still, it can’t have come as a complete surprise, given the already remarkable results of the previous season. “I was grateful as can be for the seven wins we got in my first full season with the team,” ...

Sometime late last summer I was listening to a radio interview and they happened to mention an organization here in the Alamo City known as the San Antonio Mastersingers. I had never heard of such a thing, but I decided to check it out. I had done a bit of choral singing way back in my high school days and in more recent years spent time occasionally playing my guitar and singing for my dogs. As luck would have it, auditions for the fall season were just getting going around the time I heard the radio piece and so I gave it a shot. A few weeks later I was the newest member of the baritone section, one of the 120 or so singers who make up the group. During the audition, and in the weeks of rehearsal that followed, I had the distinct ...

We’ve written about many nonprofits in these pages—everything from home renovators to military working dogs to golf tournaments for cancer research funding. But one thing we have most decidedly never done is present a charity that was started by a brothel owner. But, because we’re all about breaking barriers, that is precisely where we are headed this month. Specifically, our story is about a San Antonio organization called Providence Place, led by Dr. Judith Bell; and yes, the organization was started way back in 1895 by none other than brothel owner Madame Mary Volino, a woman who, after several years of what one imagines was a successful commercial venture, happened to overhear the words of a street preacher and decided on the ...

USAF Brigadier General Caroline Miller Commander, Joint Base San Antonio/502nd Air Base Wing In past articles, I’ve mentioned that my very first trip from my Maine home was to Lackland Air Force Base for USAF basic training way back in . . . well, a long time ago. And now, after decades of traveling the globe for work and leisure, I’ve found myself right back here, calling San Antonio my home. Turns out, though, that I’m not the only person with that sort of circular life story. USAF Brigadier General Caroline Miller tells a similar story, except that in her case it was her parents who got married back in the mid-sixties at the Lackland AFB chapel. Now, all these years later, she is back in the Alamo City in command of the 502nd Air ...

I first met Texas Public Radio (TPR) President and CEO Joyce Slocum in 2016, when she was a speaker at the TEDxSanAntonio annual conference. She was the final speaker of the daylong event, and quipped that the slot was a challenging one, as she was the only thing standing between the 800-plus audience members and “adult beverages.” With this admission, Joyce proceeded to spell out the philosophy that has allowed her to be successful in her professional and personal life, a philosophy she summed up with the two simple words “be nice.” In the brief but compelling remarks that followed, she provided numerous examples of how her life had taken unexpected but advantageous turns through a combination of personal civility and seizing on ...

One of my casual comments to Pearl Chief Marketing Officer Elizabeth Fauerso went something like this: “If the Pearl keeps adding high-quality restaurants, shops, and other facilities at the rate that it has in its first twenty years, it’s only a matter of time before out-of-towners start associating San Antonio with not only the Alamo and the Riverwalk, but the Pearl as well.” Upon reflection, it was clear that I underestimated the impact that this twenty-two acre development has had on the city, its residents/visitors, and on local economics, as Elizabeth observed by responding that the Pearl was already very much a part of what visitors associate with the city. Point conceded. However, in order to fully appreciate the ...

An important question every professional athlete must wrestle with at some point in their career is ‘what comes next?’ once their time in the big leagues is over. This is true whether your sports career lasts only a short time (4.5 years is the average for the NBA, 2.5 for the NFL), or whether you’re fortunate enough to play on for a decade or more. Some aspire to coaching, others to broadcasting. But with supporting sports opportunities far less numerous than actual playing roles, the majority of former pro athletes eventually find themselves doing something that has little or nothing to do with their athletic experience. And so naturally this was one of the first things I asked about when I sat down to speak with former San Antonio ...

We talk with some regularity in these pages about the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), and rightly so, what with it being one of San Antonio’s marquis educational destinations. Indeed, the CIA is widely regarded as the best preparatory school in the world for those aspiring to careers in the culinary arts. And while the school’s graduates routinely end up working at (and frequently starting) the world’s finest eateries, it’s always gratifying when one of the Alamo City’s native sons returns to share his culinary gifts with his home town. Such is the case with CIA-trained Chef Johnny Hernandez, lifelong San Antonian and far and away the most successful and best-known culinarian in the city. Chef Hernandez currently owns nine ...

“It went from running away from the police to shaking their hands and saying, ‘Thanks for watching our wall while we’re not here.’ Back in the day, we would see a building or a wall and call someone asking for permission to paint there. Now they’re calling us and asking us to do it. Hell, and commissioning us to do it!” Funny how life turns around sometimes, particularly when you’re a street artist who grew up doing something many people regarded as little more than vandalism. David (Shek) Vega, one of San Antonio’s best known urban artists, fondly recalls the marked differences between the San Antonio of his teenage years and today. “These days, Nik (artistic collaborator Nik Soupé) and I are free to create as much art ...

San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo 2021   Let’s get the bad news out of the way right from the get-go, shall we? Contrary to what you may have heard from friends, colleagues, or certain political figures running for office, 2021 is not magically going to see the end of the pandemic, at least not for a few more months. There will still be masks and Zoom calls and daily case counts on the news. But it’s not all doom and gloom. It looks like there are vaccines right around the corner (and who doesn’t enjoy a good shot in the arm?) and, with luck, many of the annual events we had learned to take for granted before 2020 will begin making comebacks, albeit cautiously. One such event will be the 2021 San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo, ...