Tag Archives: San Antonio

The Rise of the Super Zips

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Presumably because we just don’t have enough ways yet to isolate the super-rich from everyone else, the Washington Post has prepared an interactive map of the nation that identifies what it calls “Super Zips”—zip codes that rank in the 95th to 99th percentile for median income and education level.

Austin, Texas has eight Super Zips. Not at all surprisingly, they are all west of I-35. In fact, with the exception of a small sliver of 78749, they are all west of Mopac. (Fun fact: I lived in that sliver of ’46 for just over three years! In an apartment. Trust me, the Super Zip-ness comes from the west side of the highway.) The highest overall score, a 99, goes to 78746, which includes West Lake Hills and Rollingwood, and should not be a surprise either. The highest median income, however, is in 78739 ($132,552 to the ’46’s $129,188).

The lowest score in Austin, from my cursory review of the map, is east Austin’s 78742 zip code. It ranks in the 10th percentile, with a median income of $21,071 and 14% college graduate rate. It also doesn’t seem to have much in the way of buildings.

Just for fun, I thought I’d look at all of the zip codes where I have lived in my 14 years in Austin:

  • 78705: 48th percentile, median income of $11,910 (although it’s worth noting that this zip code is probably mostly college students);
  • 78751: 57th percentile, median income of $37,521;
  • 78749: 90th percentile, median income of $79,712 (especially now that I’m not there to drag it down);
  • 78704: 66th percentile, median income of $47,336 (damn hippies);
  • 78751 (I moved back here for a while); and
  • 78723: 43rd percentile, median income of $41,839 (interesting that it has a higher median income than ’51, but it only has 28% college graduates to ’51’s 64%).

Screen Shot 2013-12-04 at 3.06.49 PM

Also interesting: the zip code where I grew up, 78209 in San Antonio, is famous for its “old money” excess, but it only ranks in the 79th percentile these days. Still impressive, but it’s clear that the real concentrations of wealth have moved further northwest (check out 78248, 78257, 78258, and 78015 for the big bucks). I bet the ’09 still has an edge in snobbery, though!

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Is North Korea Targeting……Austin?

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Okay, this scene was pretty scary. (via alternatehistory.com)

Okay, this scene was pretty scary. (via alternatehistory.com)

I’ve heard some rumblings this morning that North Korea has a list of targets in the U.S. for the missiles it may or may not have, and that this list includes my current abode of Austin, Texas. Let me first note that, according to KEYE, the source for this list is the Drudge Report, so take the news with a multi-kiloton grain of salt. Second, why Austin?

See, I grew up in San Antonio in the 1980’s, when nuclear war was the disaster du jour, much like the zombie apocalypse today. Because San Antonio had four Air Force bases and a major Army base, we pretty much all figured that we would be among the first to go if the Russians ever decided to bomb us. By the age of ten or eleven, I had an oddly fatalistic view of nuclear war, and movies like The Day After didn’t scare me all that much, because I didn’t think I’d be around for my hair to fall out in the first place. A native San Antonio author, Whitley Strieber, even co-wrote a post-apocalyptic travelogue of a post-nuclear America called Warday, in which San Antonio was one of only a few cities directly destroyed by nukes.

It sort of makes sense for San Antonio, in the 1980’s to be a target (did I mention all the Air Force bases?). Austin was supposedly even on the primary target list back then, because of Bergstrom Air Force Base. Bergstrom has been a commercial airport for over a decade, though, so what’s the deal, Kim? Do you not like live music?

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An Open Letter to Cicurina venii, the $15 Million Spider

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391px-Nycticebus_coucang_003

Because I find spiders terrifying, here’s an adorable slow loris

Dear Cicurina venii,

May I call you by your scientific name, or do you prefer your more common name, the Braken Bat Cave meshweaver?

At any rate, I have never made a secret of the fact that I do not much like your kind (meaning spiders), as I tend to find you creepy. I know that you and most of your cousins here in Texas mean us no harm, and that it’s just the black widows and brown recluses that pose any real danger to us humans. You spiders have just always rubbed me the wrong way. I suppose it is because of that time in kindergarten when I reached out my hand to lean on a wall at recess and felt something soft and furry, only to discover a large (relative to my 6 year-old size) wolf spider at my fingertip. I know that’s not your fault, and I know it’s not fair to blame an entire order of arachnids for a mild youthful scare, so I apologize for the aspersions I have cast on your kind over the years.

I write to you now, in fact, to welcome you back to the public eye. I read that you recently reappeared after an absence of more than a decade, showing up at a construction site in San Antonio. In fact, no one even knew you existed until 1980, and no one saw you again until a few weeks ago. You’ve been on the endangered species list since 2000. This means that your sudden and unexpected appearance stopped a highway construction project in its tracks. It sounds like you’ve got quite a home for yourself there in northwest San Antonio, with a whole network of caves. The news says that you’re blind, so I suppose you can’t quite appreciate how much the city has changed around you since the last time people saw you.

I hope that we can find a way to live together. You should know that you’ve made a lot of people angry. They’re really angry with the government for enforcing the laws protecting you as an endangered species, but you get caught in the crossfire, and that’s too bad. I know you just want to live down there in your cave, scurrying around doing spider stuff. You didn’t ask for this kind of attention, but unfortunately, you’ve got it.

For my part, I want to thank you for reminding us all that protecting endangered species isn’t just about protecting cute pandas and majestic eagles. It is also about protecting blind, cave-dwelling, eight-legged beasts like you. You may terrify me, even if you are less than an inch long, but you ought to have a chance to use this planet along with the rest of us.

Photo credit: ‘Nycticebus coucang 003’ by David Haring / Duke Lemur Center (email) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

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The Godless Hordes Descend Upon San Antonio. With a Billboard.

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Image from: Godless Billboard on I-10 in San Antonio by San Antonio Coalition of Reason [Fair Use], via United Colaition of ReasonMy home town of San Antonio has a new billboard that’s sure to anger people who make it their business to always be angry. The billboard was placed by the San Antonio Coalition of Reason, part of the United Coalition of Reason:

“Don’t believe in God? Join the club.”

These words, superimposed over an image of a Texas sunrise, are now up on a 14 x 48 foot digital billboard located on the west side of I-10 at North Crossroads Blvd. The billboard is visible to traffic heading south, whether continuing on the Interstate just past I-410, taking the off ramp to the Wonderland of the Americas Mall or taking the on ramp south when leaving the mall.

The ad will remain up through the Memorial Day weekend, a span that includes Mother’s Day. It was placed by the San Antonio Coalition of Reason (San Antonio CoR) with $5,000 in funding from the United Coalition of Reason (UnitedCoR). The billboard campaign marks the public launch of San Antonio CoR, an alliance of six established non-theistic groups in Central Texas. The groups are Atheist Families of San Antonio, Freethinkers Association of Central Texas, Humanists of San Antonio, San Antonio Atheists Group, San Antonio Skeptics and Texas Hill Country Freethinkers.

The message seems to be simple, along the lines of “If you are not a person of faith in a supernatural being or beings, you are not doomed to ostracism and ridicule after all.” At least, that’s the message that someone who lives in as religious a city as San Antonio yet does not share that belief might get. Some billboards put up by atheist groups have been profoundly ill-advised and downright stupid, but this one seems rather muted. There is no exhortation to leave a particular faith, nor even encouragement to consider doing so per se. It just lets people know that they are not alone. Continue reading →

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My racist high school – UPDATED

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Alamo Heights Mule (Fair Use applies)I am part of the Alamo Heights High School Class of 1993. It’s a relatively small school in its own little school district a few miles north of downtown San Antonio, Texas. I got a great education there and had some amazing friends. Overall, I am very glad to have gone to school there, and to be from there. It opened up countless doors to opportunities many others have not had.

I was not always so happy, of course, while I actually went to school there. Alamo Heights is something of a bubble of wealth and privilege, where residents frequently appear in newspaper and magazine “Society” pages, and nearly everyone got a car on their 16th birthday. It is full of good people but it can brim with white racist bullcrap in a predominantly-Hispanic city.

There is very little overt racism, but anyone who actually understands racism knows that you do not have to physically harass or assault members of a different race to be racist. Racism is also not simply a matter of not liking members of another race. I have come to be a strong believer in the “privilege + power” definition, which holds that racism consists of both disdain for another race and the power to do something about it. I did not always understand that, but I am also a white male, so I have no experience whatsoever of what it is to be on the receiving end of racism, sexism, or pretty much any other kind of systemic oppression. All I can say for certain is that I get that I do not get it.

I had planned a more in-depth post to further explore issues like this. Really, the bottom line is that I do not have much of value to say about race, because I have no lived experience of it (same goes for gender, sexual orientation, even religion for most of my life). All I can really do is listen to others as they share their experiences, and reflect on what I may have done in the past and what I can do differently.

That is really all there is to say (by me) on the matter.

Of course, my high school had to go and spur me to action, so I’m writing this post off the cuff, without great deal of preparation. But this is not about my inconvenience. This is me confronting the racism of my hometown.

I’m a fairweather fan of Alamo Heights sports, in that I only tend to pay attention when they do well, and that’s only because hey cool! My high school won something!

I was excited to learn that the Mules (yes, that’s our mascot) basketball team has made it to the state finals tournament. That’s the first time this has happened since 1991 (when I was a sophomore and recent basketball team dropout). Also, the new coach is a guy I went to high school with. It’s the way the fans reacted to the latest big win that is (or should be) embarrassing to all of us.

Edison High School is only a few miles away from Alamo Heights, but it could be on a different planet. It is in a much less affluent part of town (although it does include one very well-to-do area), and the students are mostly Hispanic. When the Mules beat them the other night, securing a place in the state tournament, well, here’s what happened:

A local school district is apologizing after an apparent incident of racism at a boys high school basketball game this past weekend.

When the final whistle blew Saturday, Alamo Heights celebrated a convincing victory over San Antonio Edison.

Alamo Heights Head Coach Andrew Brewer said he was proud of his team.

“Tremendously proud,” Brewer said. “Tremendously. It’s the best group of kids.”

But it was just after the trophy presentation when the coach was not proud of the chant coming from Alamo Heights fans.

“USA, USA, USA,” they chanted.

San Antonio Independent School District officials took the chant as a racial insult to a school with all minority players from a school with mostly white ones.

I can already anticipate the reactions from Alamo Heights students and parents: something to the effect that the kids didn’t mean anything racist by it, that they were just celebrating, that it never occurred to them that this would be offensive, and that Edison’s players and others are being too sensitive. I feel fairly confident that the response (i.e. excuses) will fall into one of those areas.

The first thing to understand, drawing from the racism definition above, is that white people don’t get to decide when someone else should be offended. Second, if it did not occur to people that a predominantly-Hispanic group would be offended by predominantly white, affluent, mostly-Republican students chanting “USA,” then there is a problem, but the problem is not occurring in the Edison neighborhood. Alamo Heights has an image problem, and it has since long before I was a student there. This is Exhibit “A” as to why.

According to KSAT News, the students who have been identified as participating in the chant have to apologize to Edison and are banned from the remaining playoff games. If that seems harsh, keep in mind that kids in Alamo Heights tend to get whatever they want. Call it tough love.

UPDATE, March 6, 2012: Edison’s school district administration has filed a complaint with the University Interscholastic League:

The San Antonio Independent School District filed a complaint with the UIL on Tuesday regarding a chant by Alamo Heights students after a boys basketball game against Edison High School on Saturday.

***

SAISD athletic director Gil Garza filed the complaint with the University Interscholastic League, the governing body for Texas public schools. It was the second year in a row that a complaint about racially motivated chants was filed after the Region IV-4A basketball tournament.

A similar incident occurred last year in a game between Cedar Park and Lanier high schools.

“A bunch of kids made a poor decision, but we can’t ignore it,” Garza said. “Our community is fed up.”

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