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version of the margarita is by far the coldest and smoothest we encountered. Deciding that we had attained on of the higher marks of the City's exemplary margaritas, we were off into the night.
The Stockman's Restaurant produces a "suprema margarita," provided Pat Alexander is the alchemist in charge. She is the only concoctress of margaritas in town to my knowledge that can produce an honest pucker-up-and-bellow "bebida extravaganza" while using Tropic fresh frozen lime juice. Among other assets of the Stockman's margarita is the lack of ice chunks or other flotsam and jetsam.
But Glory and Hosannah, the object of our quarry was inevitably located. The best margarita served by the reputable restaurant in San Antonio is at the Casey, John Charles adept hands of A. C. "Ace" Williams, a bartender with twenty-seven years of San Antonio alcohol alchemy behind him. His margarita is just the right shade of lambent green and contains just enough lime floating on the top to provide proper pucker. He uses fresh lime juice squeezed daily at the bar, and a slight variation to the standard 2-to-1 ratio of Triple Sec to Tequila (he says "Quantro is too sweet")with an extra half jigger of the maguey nectar. "Ace" Williams claims that his margarita is not only the best in San Antonio nut also the West, snickering about how "they don't even know about the damn things in Vegas yet." His margarita is truly an homage to the Southwest, a part of the country known to provide a powerful thirst from time to time, and hence the impetus for more perfection in the realm of Tequilology.
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Texas Tough: Goodbye Bluebonnet Blues
Well, at least no one fainted. You might have expected that some of the little old artists of San Antonio, their clothes freshly splattered from their latest watercolors of endless fields of bluebonnets, might have taken to "Texas Tough" like fleas take to a Sergeant's Flea Collar.
Texas Tough is the exhibit that wowed them and infuriated some at the Witte Museum. It was called Texas Tough not only for the hard look it took at Texas myths - from cows to chili to hunting to, of course, 
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-Luis Jiminez
bluebonnets - but because Jack McGregor, the museum's director who put the show together, expected that the exhibit of works by eight Texas artists might be too tough for some to swallow.
"I guess about the worst reaction we got was from some artists who threatened to have a 'Texas Sweet' exhibit," McGregor laughed.
"Some people were upset, but we expected that," he added. "But they usually had objections to some of the specific works that the felt were... pornographic. Overall, it was very well received."
The pornographic works were probably Luis Jimemez's fiberglass sculpture of a car coupling with a buxom young woman or George Green's "Sexual Variations of a Cockroach," which included cockroaches in leather boots with whips.
Pleased reactions came from artists, students and the general public, and from press reviews, all of which seemed to latch on to the spirit of the show, that here was a form of art that was representative of Texas as a painting of a Yucca plant on black velvet. You could see the show with a sense of relief - that here is tangible proof that Texas is not in the boondocks, that there are some artists with a sense of humor working here, that innovative modern art doesn't have to originate in New York.
But at the same time the exhibit was not an imitation of New York art. The work was distinctively Texan, wry comments on out culture with its myths of cowboys and macho and ruralism and on the art that glorifies that culture.
As one woman told McGregor, "I had seen all these artists before, but I never saw that they were really saying something about Texas until I saw them all together."
Ron White

Enough Tough
"Not with a bang, but a whimper." Although T.S. Eliot had the end of the world in mind, his words nevertheless aptly describe the beginning of the current Art Season in San Antonio. One might, I suppose, hedge a bit and murmur "amusing" or "interesting images" or "harmonious space," any of the bromides, but, alas, the Witte's TEXAS TOUGH was neither Texas nor tough; instead the show is insulting, both to the public and to creative Texas artists. Cliche follows cliche with artists, for the most part, making trite comments on materialism and commercialism.
The insult is not that artists continue to comment, but that the Witte should offer these emperor's new clothes as an exhibit to challenge public taste. Most ideas of this show were done years ago in major cities, and most of the country - and San Antonians have had it with rows of coke bottles or precise Campbell soup cans. One must admit, though, that Warhol had no one fornicating with his coke bottles, unlike Luis Jimenez' offerings. And so perhaps if fornicating with inanimate objects turns one on, one can ventured the word "sensuous" to describe Mr. Jimenez' works. George Green's obsession would seem to be, unfortunately, with cockroaches and sterility. The combination is unfortunate, for automatically one thinks of Kafka, who used the same ideas, but effectively and originally. Alas, Eliot's words are all to apropos - his song lamented, as San Antonians must, the sterility of hollow men.
by Virginia Killen

"...there are some artists with a sense of humor working here."
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- Barry Buxkamper

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-Mel Casas