Arts Alive San Antonio

By SUSAN YERKES, Contributing Writer

Fiesta San Antonio starts this week. Are you ready?

Get out your sunscreen and your flip-flops, and a big summer hat – preferably with lots of bling attached. Get ready to party like it’s… well… like it’s 2019 –the last year we had a full Fiesta.

“We’re back!” declared Retired Army Colonel Jon Fristoe, the 2022 Fiesta Commission president.  “We’re really happy to be back. We’re hoping a lot of citizens come out, and we’re hoping they enjoy themselves. We’re going to make everything as ‘normal’ as possible.”

Nothing is entirely ‘normal” in the wake of the COVID surges that torpedoed Fiesta 2020 entirely, and reduced Fiesta 2021 to a shadow of its splendid self, with just 35 or so events – some virtual – last June.

“I was president in 2020 for the Fiesta That Wasn’t,” said former Fiesta Commission leader, Jeannie Travis. “But we did the right thing. The same day we announced it, San Antonio had its first case of COVID.” Then in 2021, Fiesta Commission president, Walter Serna, led the ambitious effort of mounting a safer, seriously condensed Fiesta in June.

“Of course, it was devastating,” noted Fristoe. “The planning is a year-round thing, with budgeting, contracts, selections, entertainment – it was all just devastating to anyone involved, specifically with financial commitments, the way contracts are written.  And then last year it looked for a while as if we weren’t going to have it again, and then, ultimately, we moved it to June with about one-third or less of the events.

It’s all different this spring. And Fiesta’s 2022 theme, Resilience, strikes home.

“Now to see the people, the organizations and the whole city emerging from everything, resilience seemed like a natural theme. The official 2022 Fiesta poster has a phoenix on it, and I think that’s perfect,” he said.

 There are some differences to the celebration this year. First, it seems a little early.  Fiesta usually doesn’t even get going until the first week of April – and here it is starting March 31. The early start isn’t driven by impatience, however – it’s driven by the calendar, and the changeable dates of Easter. Since the commission decided a long time ago to have Fiesta done before Holy Week, this time  slot was pretty much the only option, Fristoe explained.

The greatest difference will affect Fiesta’s two biggest events, the Battle of Flowers and Flambeau parades.  There’s a new street parade route that may seem almost unrecognizable to veteran parade-goers. Downtown street construction, especially on Broadway, required a lot of adjusting. Uncertainty about what would be happening with the City of San Antonio and the Alamo Trust’s plans for Alamo Plaza made things even more challenging.  “We’ve been chasing our tails almost monthly with changes in the parade route,” Fristoe said, “but we’re finally going to pull it off.”

The start of the parade has moved from the Pearl to North Main Ave. and E. Locust, near San Antonio College. The processions will head southeast on Main to Lexington, then to Brooklyn Street and on to Avenue E. And then, a short jog around the Federal Courthouse to pass in front of Alamo Plaza for the ritual tributes to the Alamo battle and Texas independence – which, after all, was the whole reason for the Battle of Flowers Parade and the whole Fiesta celebration.  From there, the floats and marchers will turn west on Commerce and proceed to Commerce and North St. Mary’s Streets, where they will disband.  

The route is slightly shorter, but not enough to make much difference and there are plenty of places along the route for bleachers and chairs, so there is actually no reduction in the number of seats. An estimated 40,000 parade seats will be available, many sold by non-profit groups as part of their fundraising.

There’s been a slight reduction in the number of events, however. Back in 2017 and 2018 there were 110 or more official Fiesta events. This year just under 100 will take place, but those include all the major events: The Texas Cavaliers River Parade, Southwest School of Arts Fiesta Arts Fair, St. Mary’s Oyster Bake, A Taste of New Orleans, King William Fair, Fiesta Carnival, Cornyation, Fiesta Pooch Parade and all the other Fiesta fan favorites. Some will observe COVID precautions but most will be back in full force.   

A Night In Old San Antonio, better known as NIOSA, will also see some changes. Familiar fun, color and food will be there, but with construction underway on La Villita’s Maverick Plaza, the resourceful leaders of the San Antonio Conservation Society decided to move a few attractions — Frontier Town, Clown Alley and Irish Flats — across Alamo Street.     

The Conservation Society is leading another big change – in this case, cutting out change as payment.  They pioneered a cashless NIOSA at the pared-down Fiesta last June, partly in response to COVID concerns, and partly because that’s the way things are going in society overall. (The San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo also went cashless this year.) You won’t be able to pull out that wad of NIOSA-ready cash this year – instead, you’ll load up a “BlastPass” wristband with digital dollars (no cryptocurrency yet). The logistics were not simple. “NIOSA had to bring in some additional cell towers to handle increased bandwidth of their wireless communication for sales,” Travis said.        

The biggest newcomer on the event block is the Fiesta FitFest, organized by San Antonio Sports. April 8 through 10, the University of Texas at San Antonio’s main campus will play host to three different fun physical contests with a Fiesta twist.  There’s a 5 and 10-K run, an Alpha Warriors Fitness Challenge and coolest and newest of all — L’Etape San Antonio by Tour de France, a 100-mile cycling race through the Hill Country for serious amateurs. (You can eat a lot of funnel cake and turkey legs if you ride 100 miles). Shorter bike races and rides give the whole family the chance to take part in the fun.

You may also notice a little more pep in the step of Fiesta’s men and women in uniform this year. That’s because Col. Fristoe is the first retired military member to serve as Fiesta Commission president.

“One of my missions is to get the military back where they used to be with Fiesta, or get them more engaged this year,” Fristoe said.

“We swap every year as to whether we will have an Army or Air Force officer as the Armed Services coordinator. This year it’s Lt. Gen. Marshall “Brad” Webb, the head of the Air Education and Training Command, and he wants to be involved in everything. And Lt. Gen John Evans, the commander of U.S. Army North is already looking at some things he can do next year. It’s really nice for me, as a military retiree, to see this, and I’m trying to use my experience to facilitate it. After all, San Antonio is Military City U.S.A.  When you think about it, it was commemorating military engagements — the Alamo and San Jacinto – that started Fiesta in the first place.”

Fiesta has grown from that merry entertainment back in 1891, with ladies in horse-drawn carriages trotting around Alamo Plaza and hurling blossoms at each other, to the massive 11-day all-city revel that takes all year to prepare and brings together a more than a million people together with high spirits and friendliness. In addition, according to 2017 data, Fiesta has a $340 million-dollar economic impact on San Antonio. What’s priceless is the delight that Fiesta brings to so many people.

 Welcome back, Fiesta! Let the wild rumpus begin!

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