Small towns in two cities = S.A.

"San Antonio isn't so much one city as several small towns." I've heard or read this remark more than once, and I remember it issuing from both natives and visitors.

To an extent, I agree. As I mentioned in my initial posting, I enjoy traveling by bus to various neighborhoods all around the city. And truly, there have been times while off the bus for shopping, participating in some local event or just doing a walking tour, that I've had a distinct sensation that I was in some small town somewhere. And I had to consciously remind myself that I was in San Antonio, eighth largest city in these United States!

However, I feel a need to refine that above remark. S. A. is actually several small towns aggregated into TWO cities. You see, when I'm inside Loop 410 (the innermost of two numbered divided highways which encircle S. A.) I feel that I'm in the REAL San Antonio. I'm in the metropolis that has been called (by Will Rogers or somebody) "one of the four truly unique cities in the U.S.A." Even tho' downtown is getting more and more skyscrapers that are in the standard tall, squared box effect seen in any metropolitan downtown anywhere in the country, there still are some original-looking high points here. E.g. no one could mistake the Tower of the Americas for a tall, narrow left-over from a Worlds Fair in another city - I'm thinking of how you cannot mistake it for Seattle's Space Needle. Likewise, being on the South Side with the old Spanish missions or the Westside with its barrio tejano atmosphere, one KNOWS that one is is S. A.

So that's one S. A. (the original and REAL one, in my book). The other is colloquially called "Loopland". It lies, for the most part, between Loop 410 and Loop 1604 on the northern side of Bexar County. I go to Loopland, and it looks just like any other city in Texas, in the southern USA - maybe in the country. I t presents the very same multi-lane thoro'fares for carrying suburban dwellers to & from their jobs in downtown, the very same strip shopping center after strip shopping center after shopping mall, the very same neighborhoods of houses that all have the same bland appearance.

Hark! I hear Malvina Reynolds singing her 1960s hit song "Little Boxes." And they're all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same. . . .

Yeah, I think Ms. Reynolds was probably in Loopland when she recorded that hit song. It certainly does precisely for an anthem for the city. And I mean the city "Loopland". Not the REAL San Antonio!