“We serve 10,000 to 11,000 people a day,” says Chaz Morales of her super-sized food service position at San Antonio’s largest insurance company. The corporate food world, it comes as no surprise, is jaw-droppingly different from your corner breakfast taco joint. And from your normal, fast-casual to fine dining establishment as well. “It’s like its…
Erika and Shay Forbes-Wilson on Building ‘The Real Power Couples’
“Fall in love, stay in love, using the power of your love.” That is the motto of Reverend Erika Forbes-Wilson and Shay Forbes-Wilson, founders of the San Antonio-based endeavor The Real Power Couples. With marriage equality now a reality, officiants Erika, an ordained interfaith minister, and Shay, a personal trainer, are on a mission to…
2017 In Review: Artistic Highlights and Milestones
Originally published in the San Antonio Current. As we prepare to bid farewell to a year riddled with chaos and tragedy, and cautiously welcome another with an odd combination of hope and uncertainty, it feels slightly therapeutic to revisit some of San Antonio’s more notable moments of 2017. In an effort to paint a broad…
After Three Months in Office, San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg Ratifies His Commitment to LGBTQ Rights
On June 10, Ron Nirenberg did the unthinkable: After two terms as a Councilman for the Northside District 8, he defeated Mayor Ivy Taylor by a convincing 54.59 to 45.41 percent margin (the first time in 20 years that a candidate defeated a San Antonio mayor seeking reelection), and he did it his way: neither…
Body Talk: An Argument for Trans Inclusion
Twitter is a cesspool of meme culture that one must immerse oneself in to fully understand. And I, like millions of others, have spent way too much time on the social media site taking in the online scenery. Something in particular that has been plaguing my feed as of late has been the “Fellas, is…
Rites of Passage: Forever Remembering Tía Chuck
A lot has changed in San Antonio in the seven years since Chuck Ramirez died. There are working artists, young ones and transplants from elsewhere, who never knew him. To his extended group of close friends, acquaintances, a still-tight micro-community of Southtown artists (for whom the rise of Artpace and Sala Diaz, the expansion of…
All About That Dress: A History of Cornyation Fashion
For the last three years, I’ve been working on a book about the history of our most beloved Fiesta event, Cornyation. I’m pleased to report that the book will be published in March 2017 by Trinity University Press, and it will include more than 100 pictures of Cornyation over the years. Over the course of…
The Art and Activism of San Antonio Native Donald Moffett
As a little-understood plague decimated the gay community, San Antonio-born artist Donald Moffett had a life-changing experience when he heard about Larry Kramer’s call to action in March 1987 at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center in New York, the founding moment for the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, best known as ACT UP.…
Dad2: Retying the knot
This may be a shock to some of our friends, but we have decided to wait to get married! Well, okay, in our minds we have been married all this time: Ten years to be exact. I mean “exact,” as we recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of what has to be one of the most…
A polyfidelitous family fights to keep their kids
“My kids don’t see what goes on in our bedroom. We sleep.” After the housing crash of 2008, James Lowe, a former construction worker, moved to San Antonio from his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. With him came Elizabeth. The two were close friends at the time and hoped to find a better life in San…