The Where I Live series aims to showcase our diverse city and region by spotlighting its many vibrant neighborhoods. Each week a local resident invites us over and lets us in on what makes their neighborhood special. Have we been to your neighborhood yet? Get in touch to share your story.
On the far North Side of San Antonio, you’re straddling the city limit, with urban appeal to the south and Hill Country kitsch to the north. I’ve grown up on that line since my family moved to the city when I was in elementary school, and it’s the area I come home to when classes at Baylor University let out for the summer.
When we first moved to this part of the city, it was all suburbs and a lot of construction. A Target, an H-E-B, a lot of chain restaurants. The construction has died down, but suburbia has sprawled out even farther. New houses on my street were still springing up when we arrived, and what was once just a field where soccer balls would go missing when kicked too high over the fence line is now a fully-peopled subdivision.
Tejas Rodeo in Bulverde was one of my first introductions to the area. It may have literally been my first rodeo, but I was immediately interested in the setting and the lifestyle that was so different from what I had known. That is, once I recovered from the horror of being 40 feet away from a rodeo clown.
Admittedly, it took me a little while to adapt to being a Texan. Landlocked San Antonio had me missing Florida’s beaches, and the summers were (and still are) too hot. That, and our area felt like it was in a lonely part of the city, too far north of all the bustle to be much fun and too underdeveloped to feel like home. I had a sense that I didn’t belong at a school that had a barn in the parking lot, and I wanted to pretend that this wasn’t where my roots ran.
Time changed my perspective on that, and it also brought some much-needed flair to the area. Now, that rural charm is something I look forward to coming home to, and Tejas Rodeo is one of the first places I take people who visit San Antonio.
Not too far from the cowboys and bull riding is the Screaming Goat in Spring Branch. As the name would suggest, there are goats present at this restaurant. But that intrigue pales in comparison to the Louisiana-style comfort food and the live music they put on almost every night of the week. I practically start itching for their fried crawfish po-boy the second I exit Interstate 35 coming back from Waco.
As a college student and a journalist, I thrive on coffee, and the far North Side has tons to offer. Merit Coffee is a San Antonio-based chain that I’ve run into during trips to Austin, and their first location opened in Stone Oak in 2009. Today, it’s full of people working on laptops and being far more productive than I have ever been on a coffee run.
One of my favorite places, however, is Pan & Coffee. This is where my friends from high school and I will debrief everything that has happened in our lives since the last time we saw each other. Career moves, drama, roommate stories, petty professors and everything between are shared over a cup of coffee and a pastry in this happy little spot.
I love coming home to them as much as I love coming home to the place I grew up. The first time I spotted street signs I recognized and twists in the road that I knew by heart, I felt an appreciation for this place that I didn’t know I had.
This summer marks the first time I have looked at home through the lens of a feature writer, which has brought a whole new angle to the city that I am currently loving — the chance to rediscover a place that is so familiar.
