What's this?

It feels so uncharacteristic to me to have something nice to say about anything, but yesterday I took a ride on the river taxi up through the new Museum Reach section of the San Antonio River, opened last June, and despite my best casual effort I can find nothing to complain about.

The city spent, oh, probably way too much money putting in locks on the river, dredging out mud, building walkways and stairs and laying in landscaping (most of which survived the record heat and drought of this past summer). Private money paid for the art installed under all the bridges, some of which is very nice, some of which is merely not ugly -- given recent form on the matter, a definitely pleasant surprise -- and some of which is magically whimsical. Pictures of the art and the river are in this gallery (along with lots of other pictures; the river art is about 2/3 of the way down).

We started our trip at the River Center. For $15 each, we took a "yellow" water taxi from there, through the Horseshoe's southern (downstream) section, past the familiar sites of the Arneson River Theater and La Villita, the new-ish Westin and Contessa Hotels, the Tower Life Building and the Granada, and into the Diversion Channel; then north along the River Walk Extension, past IBC Plaza and the old Milam Building, and of course all the hotels along there -- including a new Embassy Suites being built between Travis and Houston streets -- to a transfer point at the Brooklyn Street Bridge. There we changed to a "red" water taxi, which took us through the new lock (it raises the boat nine feet) and up to the turning basin at Josephine Street. The river walk itself extends all the way up to Brackenridge Park, another couple of miles, but the navigable part ends at the turning basin. (Beyond, the river passes through the Brackenridge Golf Course; would you want to be in an open boat, passing through there? Can you say "target practice"?)

We had a very entertaining guide for the Museum Reach section, a grandfatherly type named Rusty, who told funny stories about the places along the way. I don't know that he had his historical details entirely straight, but who cares? It was fun to listen to. How they found 15,000 pounds of broken beer bottles at the Brewery, and how a couple of 90-year-old former brewery workers told the city that, back in the '40s, they had three batches of beer go bad, so they just tossed it all in the river out back; and when it dammed up the river, they sent a couple of guys out with axes to break the beerjam. How the gates of the lock originally closed watertight, which left small fish flopping around on the ledge just inside the lock, which in turn prompted grackles to divebomb the barges in the lock; so now the gates leak just enough to wash the little fish off the ledge. How the original patriarch of the present Cortez family, trustees of the know-how of making concrete look like wood, refused to teach his daughters the secret, and instead taught his nephew. (His work is all over town, from bus benches in Alamo Heights to arbors along the river to the entry to the Sunken Gardens -- which by the way should be reopening soon, after about 25 years.)

The most interesting public art under the bridges along the Reach is "sonic" art. As you approach the bridge you hear what sounds like a lot of birds, but there aren't any birds. There are microphones placed at certain points along the riverwalk, and the sound of the birds in those places is played under the Jones Avenue Bridge. It really creates a great atmosphere in that section.

The bridge just north of the San Antonio Museum of Art -- the one with the fish -- is now home to a colony of Mexican Free-Tail bats; currenly a small colony, but it'll no doubt grow, and given the attractive setting along the river, will in time probably become more of a draw than the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin.

The entire experience was a pleasure from start to finish. I wholeheartedly recommend it, especially at around sunset on a clear day. I only wish I'd thought to take a jacket.