Michael Mehl

210 CHILLIN

I saw these words the other day, decalled onto the rear window of a souped-up, black, late-model Suburban -Westbound on Highway 90, just off the I-35 South intersection, near downtown San Antonio- layered over a silver silhouette of our downmarket city’s unprepossesing skyline. The semiotics -hard at work on the darkly tinted window- would seem to indicate that for all practical purposes, San Antonio is a happenin place to chill. Or so the Suburban’s gangsta’d-up Latino owner would like it to be.

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This is not my house.

 

But I do live in Monte Vista, a historic neighborhood just five minutes North of, and uphill from, downtown San Antonio, where many homes are as grand as this one.

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Let’s get this straight.

Train rides are not the pastoral, romantic, or exciting experiences put forth so frequently in the nostalgic, affected fictions of novels and films. Even less so if said train ride is an obligatory means of transportation, not having other viable choices to reach a particular destination (in light of the choices one does have, gullibly subscribing to the aforementioned notion of rail-travel quaintness in Southern Kalifornia, was not the most fortunate example of good judgement). 

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There’s a compelling argument to be made that the top competitive sports in Southern Kalifornia are surfing and surgical enhancement, in no particular order.

On closer scrutiny however, one would also have to include in this rarefied list the pervasive influence of what is most definitely The National Pastime of the Coastal Kalifornios; which Mr. Otis Redding so famously evoked when he wrote:

“I’m sittin’ on the dock of the bay

Watching the tide roll away.

Ooo, I’m just sittin’ on the dock of the bay

Wastin’ time”.

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