What I learned on a long walk up Broadway
Why it matters: The Broadway corridor north of downtown is in flux. It's home to longtime family-style restaurants and posh new eateries, showcasing San Antonio's past, present and future.
There's no better way to take that all in than on foot.
Catch up quick: Síclovía closes streets to cars and opens them to walkers and bikers. On Sunday, it will stretch from Parland Place to McCullough Avenue downtown.
How it works: I started my journey by The Newstand coffee shop at Josephine Street, walked two miles up to Hildebrand Avenue and then turned around.
Zoom in: City leaders have long hoped to make Broadway into San Antonio's great urban corridor. Whether or not it already is depends on who you ask.
The big picture: The corridor has long been a cultural hub. Brackenridge Park, the Witte Museum, the DoSeum and the San Antonio Botanical Garden are on or nearby Broadway.
It's also lined with businesses of all types — local delis, an antique shop, a laundromat, a dollar store, bars, a barbershop.
What they're saying:"It's an amazing north-south thoroughfare that was important in the early history of the city," local historian Maria Watson Pfeiffer tells Axios.
Early San Antonians traveled along Broadway because of the Alamo acequia, the Spanish water system near Brackenridge Park.
"Since it more or less parallels the river, it's always been a spine in that way."
Context: San Antonio voters in 2017 approved bond funding for Broadway improvements aimed at making the street more pedestrian friendly. Officials planned to reduce it by one lane in each direction, add bike lanes and widen sidewalks.
But the Texas Transportation Commission halted those plans when it reclaimed ownership of Broadway in January 2022 to prevent the city from reducing the number of lanes.
The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has since repaved the road and made updates without removing lanes, adding bike lanes or widening sidewalks.
What I found: Sidewalks are better in some places than others, but they're largely intact.
The main difficulty is crossing the street to access a business on the other side, since crosswalks are spaced out and the street is so wide. I witnessed a couple people making a run for it.
I passed a few bikers who rode on sidewalks rather than the narrow car lanes.
State of play: Broadway businesses are in a constant state of change.
Jim's Restaurant, a local favorite, shut down last year after 53 years. A Houston restaurant group is taking over the space.
Half Price Books and the Antiquarian Book Mart next door closed in May after a developer purchased the site. Half Price Books had been there 45 years.
The Ranch Motel, a boutique lodging and leisure club, opened in late 2023. Chains P. Terry's and Postino both opened last year, as did La Panadería, a local chain.
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8 hours ago
- Yahoo
California was comfortable, this American woman says, but ‘everyone is much happier' since the family moved to Spain
As she casually traverses one of the most scenic stretches of the Spain's Camino de Santiago, taking in the rugged beauty of the northern coast with her husband and three children, Dr. Colleen Crowley feels a wave of gratitude for where life has taken her. For many, hiking a section of Europe's most storied pilgrimage route would be a once-in-a-lifetime journey. For Crowley, an American psychologist, and her family, it's part of daily life. She knows the landscape so well that one might assume she had lived here for decades. In fact, they arrived just three years ago, along with her mother, then aged 80, and the family dog, Mo. 'It sounds so trite, but I think everyone is much happier here,' she said, describing the move as 'amazing and transformative' for all of them, particularly her three children, who were aged 16, 13 and 8 at the time. 'All three of them say, ''We wish we had done it sooner.' Which is really kind of amazing to see.' Transformative move Crowley and her husband had long planned to live abroad once they had children, but they were waiting for the right time. 'I think for both of us, it's sort of just been foundational to who we are,' she said. 'To sort of live in different cultures and communities. And it felt sort of antithetical to who we are to just reside in one location.' Crowley is originally from Colorado. Before moving to Spain, the family lived for a decade in Montecito, California, a coastal enclave in Santa Barbara County where Oprah Winfrey and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex own homes. 'It was a wonderful place to raise a family,' Crowley said. 'But honestly, maybe a little too wonderful. It's very manicured. It's very limited.' She wanted her children's perspectives to be 'in a way that staying in such a sheltered environment would not allow for.' But leaving the close-knit community was difficult, especially as she and her husband, an environmental lawyer, she both had demanding jobs. 'It can be tricky,' she said. 'We both had big careers, and three kids in different developmental places.' The shift toward remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic made the leap easier. Her eldest daughter graduated from high school around the same time, tipping the scales. 'So between our careers, and where our kids were developmentally, we were like, 'I think it's time to go,'' she added. Why Spain? Crowley had long been intrigued by the country, partly through the works of Ernest Hemingway, and then an ancestry test revealed she had Spanish heritage. The family also considered Chile, which she and her husband first visited together in 1997, but Spain seemed the more natural fit — even though she had never been there. 'We wanted to live in a place where we could pursue our love of the outdoors — surfing, skiing and hiking,' she said. The children took part in the decision-making process. They sold their four-bedroom home, pared down their belongings and persuaded her mother to join them. Crowley obtained a non-lucrative visa for her mother, which allows non–European Union citizens to live in Spain without working if they can prove they have sufficient funds. She and her husband were granted digital nomad visas, which allow remote work for up to five years. In July 2022, the family flew from Los Angeles to Barcelona with 10 suitcases, then boarded a ferry to Mallorca, the largest of Spain's Balearic Islands. Mallorca, popular with visitors from around the world for its sheltered coves and limestone mountains, offered an easy adjustment. But after six months, the family felt it wasn't the right fit. Quality of life 'It's very international, which made the transition a little bit easier,' Crowley said. 'But we really wanted family and nature and a Spanish experience.'' So they tried San Sebastián, the food capital of northern Spain's autonomous Basque Region, known for its striking coastline, world-class surf breaks and surrounding mountain trails. 'We knew we had found the spot for us after two days,' Crowley said. 'The size, geography and nature were a great fit for what we prioritize and value.' They rented a home and began establishing routines: enrolling the children in sports, finding doctors, joining friendship circles, discovering grocery stores. 'It's a process,' she said. Integration has not been without challenges. Basque culture, she noted, is 'known to be quite insular.' While locals have been kind, many socialize primarily within cuadrillas — close-knit friendship groups formed in youth. 'We will never be in a cuadrilla,' she said. 'But you find some special relationships and that sustains you.' The family spends much of their time outdoors, hiking sections of the Camino de Santiago, surfing in nearby France and exploring the Pyrenees. 'We had a really lovely quality of life in Montecito,' she said. 'But it's just different here. It's just a different ethos entirely, and a significant increase in quality of life.' Most of the family has picked up Spanish easily, but Crowley admits she is still learning. They are also studying Basque, though she calls it 'a really difficult language to learn.' They eventually moved into one of the few large houses in San Sebastián, with views of both the ocean and town — a rarity in a city dominated by apartments. Her mother lives nearby, in a flat overlooking the Bay of Biscay. 'Because we work from home and have a big dog, apartment living was a stretch for us,' Crowley said. 'There are not many homes like this in the area so we were lucky to find it.' They have a car but rarely use it, preferring to travel by bicycle. 'In the United States, you have two cars. You're always driving, and it's horrible. So that's been amazing,' she said. 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'The level of care… the responsiveness,' she said, 'has been amazing.' Her mother's proximity to them has been invaluable, Crowley said. 'If we would have to go back to visit her… California is far from Spain. And there are so many other places we're trying to explore.' Crowley said she hasn't returned to the United States since the move, and neither have her children. 'My kids have no desire to go back,' she said. Since relocating, she has combined her psychology background with her personal experience to create a workbook and online course guiding others through the process of moving abroad. 'Everybody sort of has a fantasy to move abroad,' she said. 'Whenever you tell someone, I don't care who they are, they're like, 'Oh, I've always imagined moving to Thailand or wherever. And so I sort of accidentally got contacted by all these friends of friends and family of friends asking for tips and tricks. 'It's really fun to watch people decide where they're going to move to start living out their dream.' And as her own family continue to live out their dream in Spain, Crowley is in awe of her three children, who she said have been 'leading the charge' in redefining their lives. 'My 16-year-old said to me a year ago, 'Sometimes I feel like life didn't start for me till I moved abroad…'' she said. 'They could land anywhere on the planet now and thrive… Even traveling doesn't give you that.' Solve the daily Crossword
Los Angeles Times
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65 of our favorite places to eat in the San Fernando Valley
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Yahoo
a day ago
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Pilgrimage route cut as Spanish wildfires spread to Picos de Europa mountains
Pilgrimage route cut as Spanish wildfires spread to Picos de Europa mountains By Guillermo Martinez and Nacho Doce PALACIOS DE JAMUZ, Spain (Reuters) -Raging wildfires in Spain spread to the southern slopes of the Picos de Europa mountain range on Monday and authorities closed part of the popular Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route. About 20 wildfires, fuelled by a severe 16-day heatwave, have devastated more than 115,000 hectares (285,000 acres) in the regions of Galicia and Castile and Leon over the past week. "This is a fire situation we haven't experienced in 20 years," Defence Minister Margarita Robles told radio station Cadena SER. "The fires have special characteristics as a result of climate change and this huge heatwave." She said thick smoke was affecting the work of water-carrying helicopters and aircraft. The Spanish army has deployed 1,900 troops to help firefighters. Highways and rail services have been cut in the area, as well as the "Camino de Santiago" hiking route, an ancient pilgrimage path trodden by thousands in the summer. It links France and the city of Santiago de Compostela on the Western tip of Spain, where the remains of the apostle St James are said to be buried. Authorities in the Castile and Leon region have closed the path in the area between the towns of Astorga and Ponferrada, which are about 50 km (30 miles) apart, and told hikers "not to put (their) lives in danger". A firefighter died when his truck crashed on a forest path near the village of Espinoso de Compludo. Four firefighters have died so far. The Interior ministry says 27 people have been arrested and 92 are under investigation for suspected arson since June. Southern Europe is experiencing one of its worst wildfire seasons in two decades, with Spain among the hardest-hit countries. In Portugal, wildfires have burnt 155,000 hectares so far this year, according to the ICNF forestry protection institute - three times the average for this period between 2006 to 2024. About half of that area burned in the past three days. Robles said things are not likely to improve until the heatwave that has seen temperatures hit 45 Celsius degrees (113 Fahrenheit) starts easing on Monday evening or Tuesday. The heatwave is the third hottest since 1975, when the national weather agency started tracking them. Most of the country is subject to wildfire warnings. (Writing by Inti Landauro; editing by Giles Elgood)
