88. What’s Ahead for bigcitysmalltown: Telling San Antonio’s Story in 2025

Bob Rivard [00:00:03]:
Welcome to Big City Small Town, the weekly podcast all about San Antonio and the people who make it go and grow. I'm your host, Bob Revard. This week's guest is, well, not really exactly a guest. Meet Corey Eames, the new producer of our podcast and himself, the host of his own San Antonio centric podcast, Ensemble Texas. Corey and his family, who we'll hear more about shortly, have lived in San Antonio since moving here in 2017 from Austin. And if you, like Corey, are a relative newcomer to the city, the Ensemble Texas podcast is a great way of learning more about San Antonio and everything happening here. We'll talk about that in just a few minutes. But first, I wanna thank Ashley Bird and Maura Bobbitt with Blooming with Bertie for their work here through our first two years of the podcast.

Bob Rivard [00:00:53]:
Maura, who's in the studio with us today, will continue as a member of the in studio production team along with Erica Rempel, who is here and continues providing video and social media services, and Alfie De La Garza with Sound Crane Studio, who's not here but who's our, wonderful audio engineer and sound editor. But overseeing it all, helping me with guest bookings and taking the podcast to the next level will be Corey Aimes. So, Corey, welcome. Before we start, I wanna thank our sponsors in the New Year for making our work possible here, Westin Urban and Geekdom. We record, of course, in the Geekdom podcast studio located on the 3rd floor of the historic Rand Building on East Houston Street. Guests who have never been to the Rand Building come here and always marvel at its unique blend of history and sort of tech modernity. This building opened in the early years of 20th century as the Wolf and Mark's department store, the city's 1st multistory department store. That closed in 1965.

Bob Rivard [00:01:59]:
It became a building owned by Frost Bank, and then Graham Weston bought it in 2013 and completely renovated it and modernized it and gave Geekdom a permanent home, and that's that's where we are. So a little bit of history there for everybody. Here we are today. Corey, welcome to Big City Small Town. It's a new year, and with your arrival now as our new producer, I'm very bullish about 2025. It's gonna be a newsy year in one of the fastest growing cities in the country, and we'll be expanding the podcast to meet the moment. But first, let's introduce Corey to our audience. This is where I get to ask you to tell your life story in 5 minutes or less.

Cory Ames [00:02:41]:
Alright. Well, first off, Bob, thank you so much for having me here, and and as well, it's a a real pleasure to be joining the big city small town team. So, likewise, I I share the the excitement for this new year. But in short, the life story in 5 minutes, I was born in Spokane, Washington, but ultimately came to Texas by way of Seattle to Austin. And so I was in Seattle. Winters were a bit gray. It's a little too misty and wet there. The company I worked for at the time was all distributed, so I had the privilege of being able to work from anywhere in the United States as long as it had good Wi Fi.

Cory Ames [00:03:15]:
A friend in the company invited me to check out Austin. He said it's a little gloomy in Seattle. Give Texas a try. So stayed with him in, January, and it was 70 degrees and sunny, and I thought, I'll give it a year. Within that year, I met my now wife who's from Corpus Christi originally. But soon after we met, she told me that she was starting law school at Saint Mary's School of Law in San Antonio, and so that's what brought us to this city. 1st year, you know, we didn't know what to expect. It takes a little bit to get plugged into San Antonio, but by year 3, we were ready to settle in, buy a house, and call this our forever home.

Bob Rivard [00:03:49]:
What's your wife's name, Corey?

Cory Ames [00:03:50]:
Annie Bright. She's a professor of law now at at Saint Mary's, the school where she attended law.

Bob Rivard [00:03:55]:
Congratulations to Annie. And the 2 of you started your family here.

Cory Ames [00:03:59]:
Well, technically, our first son was born in Boston, Massachusetts. So we took a a brief hiatus there, for my wife to pursue a master's degree. That's how our relationship has gone. We'll see where she wants to get her PhD. Maybe we'll leave. I don't know. But our first son was born in Boston. And then before he turned 1, we moved back to San Antonio.

Cory Ames [00:04:20]:
Our second son, who's now about to turn 1 this month, he was born in San Antonio, Texas. So, you know, we got an interesting, mix of, where our family comes from.

Bob Rivard [00:04:31]:
Well, that's terrific. What part of the city did you guys settle in?

Cory Ames [00:04:34]:
So we are about 5 minutes north of of Saint Mary's University, convenience for her her job, still inside the 4 10 loop. I think the neighborhood is technically called Ingram Hills, but I am surprised how many people pass through and, are surprised that our neighborhood exists in the pocket that it does. It's kind of, sort of like a space still very close in proximity to the city, and so people are a little bit surprised at the plot that we have so close to city center.

Bob Rivard [00:05:02]:
Yeah. I think that part of town really developed in the 19 seventies and and so it's not exactly mid century, but there was a time, believe it or not, where 4:10 wasn't a completed loop and, much later, 1604 was built. What led you to launch Ensemble Texas?

Cory Ames [00:05:20]:
Well, I I launched Ensemble Texas first because of the experience I had running a media organization before called Grow Ensemble. There's a connection of the name there.

Bob Rivard [00:05:29]:
That was in Washington or Austin?

Cory Ames [00:05:32]:
I it's hard to say where I lived at that exact time. We've moved so much in the last, a few years, but I believe I started that in Austin, moving into to San Antonio. But the the purpose of that was to be a a company that wasn't grounded to any location, particularly because we were so transient at the time. So it focused on, various topics in sustainability, heavily in sustainability and business, which I I have a book that I'm working on now, about that topic. But the goal of that was to to really understand and define what sustainability looked like in different industries, you know, whether we're talking about coffee, chocolate, or textiles, whatever it may be. And so I masked a a whole litany of interviews, about 250 or so. And one of the interviews stuck with me in particular. So I always like to con conclude the conversations asking the guests some sort of big question, kind of a big idea question.

Cory Ames [00:06:26]:
And that was, you know, what's the one thing that someone listening in could do to potentially leave a positive impact on the world? What would you recommend? And an answer from an author and environmentalist by the name of Paul Hawken wrote a really excellent book that kinda changed how I thought about climate, the environment. It's called regeneration, how to end the climate crisis in 1 generation. He used the phrase, find out where you live. And it really stuck with me, thinking about how little I tended to know about the places that I lived, despite spending my entire life there. And so this stuck with me for for the years to follow, and it took me down a path of trying to learn more about the native plants in San Antonio. I've taken the master naturalist training here. And so I was kind of working with this seed of an idea, having some philosophical direction. And using my experience that I gained in media there, with Grow Ensemble, I decided to wind that project down and start something with a very localized focus to San Antonio.

Cory Ames [00:07:23]:
You know, help myself, 1, you know, very self interested pursuit, in one way to to better understand the city that I live in in hopes to to better serve it, to better protect it and care for it. But, likewise, I help facilitate that process for other people, both new, like I was, and, you know, the folks who have been here for some time who maybe might benefit from a little bit of extra awe and inspiration by learning something new about a city that they can feel so comfortable in. So that's why I started Ensemble Texas, which I started last year about at the midpoint, 2024.

Bob Rivard [00:07:58]:
So how many episodes are you in?

Cory Ames [00:08:01]:
Just about 6 so far. So I started it with a little bit of idea that I would sample what kind of format it it it might turn out to be something like studio interviews, like we're doing here, or, you know, on-site, kinda on the ground interviews. And so I've done a few good stories that way, figured out what's maybe too much work for one person to handle, and what seems most sustainable, and the the sweet spot of my skills and strengths. And so I'll be launching that now or relaunching that in a way as a weekly podcast to come. I publish a twice weekly newsletter as well. But, yeah, that was kind of our first season, if you can call it that.

Bob Rivard [00:08:37]:
Well, I think it's a good newsletter, and, frankly, it's motivated me. We're gonna talk about some changes here at Big City Small Town that you're gonna bring to the to the table, and one of them is I'm going to finally launch my long overdue newsletter after, you know, 40 years of, daily journalism and writing writing columns. I've kinda taken a 2 year hiatus from regular weekly deadline writing beyond the podcast, but, it's time to get back into it, and I've enjoyed your your newsletters. Why do you have 2? And I know why, but they're they're different, but I want you to tell listeners and and tell people if they wanna go back and see what you've done on Ensemble Texas, where do they find that? And if they would like to sample your newsletter, how do they sign up?

Cory Ames [00:09:20]:
Sure. So first and foremost, tactically, ensembletexas.com is gonna be the place for that. If you aren't signed up for the newsletter already, the first screen that you'll get right there is an easy prompt to sign up for that. You'll start to receive an introduction email from myself, and that'll explain what kind of content you should expect to come. But the twos 2 newsletters, we got 1 on Tuesday, 1 on Thursday. The Tuesday newsletter is more of a long form feature. And, you know, I like to think of this a little bit of like an editorial style to try and see how I can understand myself what's happening in San Antonio as as the city changes and grows, so fast in in such interesting ways. But, likewise, maybe share new thoughts and ideas or perspectives as to how we can think about how that growth happens.

Cory Ames [00:10:01]:
You know, maybe what's best for San Antonio, even exploring, you know, what what best might look like for San Antonio. And so that's a long form feature, and so that's that's definitely a bit different. The Thursday email is more of a specialized curation of events and things to do in the city. And so I like to think about this as a very easy way to get people more connected to San Antonio. And that's by attending, you know, local, cultural events or art openings or, you know, concerts, whatever it might be, or recommendations for hikes or specific things to do depending on the time of year. I think that's a really kinda easy entryway to make sure that people are getting out and understanding San Antonio, its, you know, natural landscape as well as cultural landscape, supporting small businesses. And so it's just a quick or not a quick list. This can be pretty lengthy, but it's packed with a lot of good information to plan your weekend, plan your next week, whatever it might be.

Cory Ames [00:10:55]:
So 2 very different emails, but I think they serve, a similar purposes.

Bob Rivard [00:10:59]:
What's your goal in terms of frequency of, podcast, episodes?

Cory Ames [00:11:05]:
Yeah. I plan for it to be a weekly show.

Bob Rivard [00:11:07]:
Okay. Yeah. This year in 2025?

Cory Ames [00:11:09]:
Mhmm.

Bob Rivard [00:11:09]:
You're gonna be a very busy guy between us and your own and your own podcast. Let's talk a little bit about some of the changes that are gonna occur here at Big City Small Town which I, some were bubbling up, but others, you've brought with you. So, the first one, that I want to share with listeners is I'm going to take my weekly commentary, which I call the last word, and separate that from our Friday release of a weekly episode, interview with a guest, conversation with a guest like we're doing today. That will now drop on Saturday mornings. That will mean that you can get in and out of the Friday podcasts a little bit, more quickly. I think we're gonna try to edit that down to closer to a half an hour rather than 45 minutes and and, people are busy. And then, a very short, last word episode every Saturday, and then I will release the newsletter every Monday. And the newsletter will give me an opportunity, Corey, to do something that I literally did for decades every week in in this city, which is, it'll give me the opportunity to share timely commentary on news developments and and, my own views and observations about the city, its leadership in in all spheres, government, business, culture, nonprofits, just whatever's on my mind, I'd like to share with our listeners.

Bob Rivard [00:12:30]:
So you can go to bigcitysmalltown.com, and you can find our 87 episodes now archived there. We'll be hitting a 100 here before too long in the new year. And also, you can sign up for the newsletter. It's free. There's no spam. We won't share your email with anybody, and I look forward to doing that with you, starting this Monday, January 13th. So, news there. And you're gonna help me with guest bookings, and and, obviously, our setup here is different than what regular listeners are used to.

Bob Rivard [00:13:03]:
You can see some bare wall back here. I'm hoping to start showcasing some San Antonio artists and their work, behind us with each podcast episode. We'll see if, our friends at Geekdom will let me do that. And, we like having artists on the podcast every so often and supporting their work, and those episodes always seem to do well. And now we'll, we'll bring a little work into the studio. Our listeners are pretty familiar, Corey, with my views on life and work in San Antonio, but you're new to, to many of the people watching the podcast or listening to it. And I'm just curious as somebody, 8 years in the city, so you're you're pretty rooted, but you also have that fresh eye perspective that someone like I don't have. What are your views of San Antonio right now and and, both the good and bad about the city? You've lived on the West Coast.

Bob Rivard [00:13:56]:
You've lived in Austin. You've lived in Boston. So you have a lot of perspective of, life in other, you know, very, attractive cities. Seattle, I would add Spokane to that. I have relatives that live there and, and then Boston where I have a brother that lives there. I love Boston, except this time of year. What are your thoughts about San Antonio and its trajectory?

Cory Ames [00:14:19]:
Well, first off, I think that it's very exciting. It's really interesting at a baseline to be in a city at a moment like this, to see how fast things are changing, even in the span of of 8 years, which can seem like a decent amount of time to to root yourself in some place. But in the span of how long people have been working on many of the initiatives, projects, and developments in San Antonio that are really coming to fruition now. It might seem like a little, slice of time, but it's very exciting. It you can't stop seeing the city build in all different places, whether that's announcing new parks, you know, new housing developments or expansions to the Pearl Hemisphere, new, you know, public spaces. And so I overall, I love it. It's a great place to be. And at the same time, I am just so interested in how growth can can change a city.

Cory Ames [00:15:10]:
And I'm of the belief that not all growth is good growth. I think growth is worth being excited about, but I think that the level of awareness and consciousness that we have to it is really important. So couple of those examples, Seattle, for 1, was a city that was dramatically changed by the growth trajectory of Amazon. And I think in many ways that maybe diluted what people thought was the exact culture or unique identity, the grunge culture that Seattle originally had because Kurt Cobain, Nirvana, and everything, and Jimi Hendrix, you know, this this kinda story in music history. It doesn't look the exact same way today as Amazon's growth has taken place, brought in, you know, many engineers from all over the world earning maybe a 125, a 150,000, 200,000 in some scenarios. It changes the makeup of the city. And likewise, Austin too, a city that even in the year that I was there, I felt like it moved so fast. And likewise, now, you know, Austin is a city with a very funky culture, mixed now with this kind of ultra modern tech scene.

Cory Ames [00:16:07]:
Again, a lot of people will say, man, Austin, you should have been here 10 years ago. And I feel like we've heard that whole, you know, refrain again and again. Boston's different city that's kind of existed in the United States since the start of the United States, so I feel like it's had a much kinda a stronger ground in its identity. And so I kinda feel like a student of this growth, and I'm interested to see, you know, where that heads for San Antonio. And so I wanna see it, you know, happen in such a way to where we're still, you know, very excited about what San Antonio is on the other side of that growth. You know, Spokane, for example, an overflow city from Seattle, I I might not be able to afford a home in the hometown that I grew up in. And so I have a 3 year old, a 1 year old right now. I'm hoping that in 2 decades, you know, San Antonio is still a city that they love, you know, not just me and my wife, but it's also a city that I hope that they want to live in because that's my my my selfish goal.

Cory Ames [00:16:55]:
I want them to to stick around ultimately. So there's considerations on that. You know, how does the city develop? Of course, it's gonna develop, and I think there's a lot of exciting ways it's it's doing so. But I just wanna be mindful of that growth, you know, how it's happening. I think there's a big story around AT and T, historically, you know, in our downtown and then pulling out. You know, it's like, how does San Antonio invest and build a community that's strong and resilient? Of course, you know, inviting to various partners like that, but not so that if someone moves or leaves, that the city is then, you know, its core or downtown is devastated for years to come. So those are things that I'm I'm interested in in thinking about as the city changes so rapidly.

Bob Rivard [00:17:31]:
It's interesting, the cities that you named, Boston, Seattle, and Austin have some of the highest college education attainment levels of any major cities in the United States. San Antonio, just the opposite end of the spectrum, And that's that's our challenge is we have a very high poverty rate in our city. It's persistent. It's multigenerational. It's, largely, focused on, you know, the city's considerable Latino population, which is about 60 60% or more. We have a relatively small, black or African American population, about 7% of the city. But, those groups clearly do not share in the prosperity that San Antonio has seen, at the same level that the, the white population has enjoyed. And, you know, your wife works at one of the several, multiple institutions of higher learning here, 33 Catholic universities alone, Texas, A and M San Antonio is is the newcomer, growing very fast.

Bob Rivard [00:18:33]:
UTSA is, one of the biggest universities now in the in the state and, what it's doing downtown is very exciting. But we have a something of a political standoff and culture war between the state's Republican leaders and the big city mayors. One result of that has been governor Abbott, and and his allies have been starving, the public school districts, vetoed a $4,500,000,000 public school funding bill last legislative session in 2023 when legislators failed to give the governor his school voucher bill, and we're opening up now 1 week from Monday, January 13th with the 89th legislative session, and all eyes will be on legislators. They had a $34,000,000,000 windfall in 2023. Oftentimes, that turns out in the next session to be a budget shortfall, but in fact, we're gonna have another multibillion dollar windfall, probably 20 to 25,000,000,000, and we now have, 20,000,000,000 or so, or heading toward that in our rainy day fund, and by law, that has to be drawn down when it reaches that level. So there's a lot of money out there to invest in the cities if we can get state legislators to focus on public education, the housing crisis, the great need for water conservation and management projects, and, of course, in this, frigid weather that we're facing, strengthening our very vulnerable energy grid. So there's gonna be a lot in 2025. Fast forward to January 20th, we've got the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president, and, that will be a peaceful transition.

Bob Rivard [00:20:25]:
He'll take the oath of office with president Biden sitting there. President Biden took his oath of office, and not only was Trump not sitting there, but, it was after the January 6 riots where we've had nearly a 1000 people, criminally prosecuted for insurrection and rioting and attacking Capitol Police. It's gonna be a it's gonna be a much quieter ceremony in Washington, but then what happens next is, on everybody's mind. Will there really be mass deportations? And if so, it looks to me like San Antonio and South Texas might be ground 0 of an effort like that, and I don't know what that means in terms of of, detaining people, putting them in camps, finding countries that will take them. I just don't have any idea how that can work. And frankly, I don't think it will work, but we're gonna be watching that. We've got the legislative session, and, and closer to home here in San Antonio, we have a mayoral election. I I've lost count, but I think there's about 16 people that have indicated they're gonna be on the ballot.

Bob Rivard [00:21:30]:
Probably 10 of those will not run serious campaigns or raise money. But even so, if we have a half a dozen credible candidates, which probably will include at least 3 city council members, sitting council members, and one former council member, it's gonna be a, very competitive race, and probably the May vote will take us into a June runoff. So there's gonna be a lot of lot of news in 2025. Mhmm.

Cory Ames [00:21:55]:
Well and all the reason more for me to to feel very grounded and connected to your sense of community. And, you know, the national narrative can be a little bit difficult to decipher and make sense of and and what's gonna happen. And so I think that both with, you know, a lot of the opportunity that San Antonio faces and maybe some some potential challenge, I think it's more important than ever that, you know, we feel very grounded in a in a localized sense.

Bob Rivard [00:22:19]:
Well, Corey Ames, welcome again to Big City Small Town. And for our listeners that aren't familiar with Ensemble Texas and your work there, tell them how to find it and how to sign up for your newsletter again.

Cory Ames [00:22:30]:
Yeah. Again, head to Ensemble Texas dotcom to do so. That's the best place to to get signed up for the newsletter. Myself, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, so you can get connected with me there. I'll be looking forward to to hearing from you.

Bob Rivard [00:22:44]:
Well, that concludes this episode of Big City Small Town. Thank you for watching or listening or both. Please do sign up for the new newsletter, which launches this Monday, January 13th. You can go to big city small town.com. And as I said, just put your email in there, and we won't share that with anybody. We won't get any spam. And every Monday, you can look forward to that newsletter. And thanks again to our sponsors, Westin Urban, building the city our children wanna call home, and here at Geekdom, our sponsor where startups are born.

Bob Rivard [00:23:14]:
It's a great place for creatives of all ages to become members and get to work, turning your idea into a real business. Thanks to our producer, Corey Ames, Laura Bobbitt, our in studio production, Erica Rempel for video and social media, and Alfie de la Garza of Sound Crane Studio. We'll see you all next week.