General Considerations, San Antonio

During my 4 days stay in San An, I was approached by 2 guys on separate occasions... they're polite.... but they ask for money. The first encounter was this guy outside the Rivercenter Mall. Walking about, came up to me and asked if I had some change to spare him for parking. Next to that particular mall entrance is a basement parking lot.
While waiting for the trolley, I watched him going up to many passerby, saying the same thing.
Only 1 man, who looked like a visitor gave him some money.

Later in the day at the Streetcar Station, this other man approached me and had no story. he went straight to the point and asked if I had a dollar to spare him.
So, it's up to you. I didn't give any money them. What would you have done?

People coming to San Antonio need to be aware of the number of drivers here who don't have auto insurance. My wife has been hit three times in five years by uninsured motorist. Last Friday was the latest event. The policemen who came to the accident scene found out the driver at fault had NO INSURANCE and was driving with a mexican license. No citations were isssued because there is no value in writing them, even though the driver adimtted speeding through a red light. The cop said in the last year the number of uninsured mortorist on the highways in San Antonio has risen to 90 percents. The state and the city cannot or will not stop the flood of uninsured motorist driving here so all drivers beware.

Much has been said about the dangers of driving with cell-phones. However, San Antonio's River Walk was the first place I ever encountered the danger of pedestrians with cell phones. One stylishly dressed young lady was so engrossed in her phone conversation, paying no attention to where she was walking, that I had to do a remarkable little tap dance (for my squatty old body, that is) to avoid being pushed into the river. This is one place you have to watch other pedestrians as keenly as you watch other automobile drivers in traffic - or you get wet!

San Antonio is roughly 2 hours from the Texas/Mexico border, the busiest border in the world in terms of drug trafficking. With drug trafficking comes drug pushers, drug takers, and drug fanatics (aka dope "feans"), and a general deterioration of parts of the society.

Just pay attention to where you're at and your surroundings, and if something looks suspicious, don't get involved.

Well, I don't know about the rest of SA, but the NW side has some hard water in their water supply (in particular large deposits of calcium).

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but will definitely come as a surprise to most city dwellers.