Charles Apple

So I posted Tuesday about this interesting punk cabaret CD giveaway The San Antonio Express-News is doing to create some recruiting buzz this week in Boston. The Dresden Dolls. Never heard of them, but they sound interesting.

Immediately, my youngest — and trendiest — staff artist, the fabulous Miranda Mulligan, responds: She’s a huge fan. She even nailed all four trivia questions. I’ll have to see if I can weasel a spare CD out of Dean Lockwood to give her.

San Antonio’s Dean Lockwood.
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But that got me to thinking: Seems like San Antonio is always doing something interesting. Although he got in late tonight, Dean was kind enough to answer a few questions for us…

Q. I’ve been to San Antonio, but that was 34 years ago. I was 11 years old. I remember it being a small city out in the middle of a desert. But no longer: San Antonio has a reputation as a cool place to live. It’s young and trendy. It has historical significance. It has that riverwalk thing going. It has NBA hoops. Just how the hell does San Antonio get away with being such a great city?

A. Kind of trite, but it’s a big city that doesn’t feel like a big city. Cheap housing, lots of land (people here fancy buying a hunk of the Hill Country — which I suppose could ruin things one day). Laid-back people and great Mexican food. Do you need anything else?

Before coming here in ‘99, I didn’t realize how popular a tourism and convention city this is. But I pretty much think it’s a state law that you have to drive a big-ass pickup here. (They’re going to find me in my little-ass Hyundai any day now …)

Q. So tell me more about the riverwalk. Friends who go there just gush about it.

A. The Riverwalk is just impossibly cute and cozy I think. It helps that the San Antonio River (it’s a real river) is about 20 feet wide and maybe three feet deep. The Riverwalk is also set down from street level and lined with lots of trees — so it’s just cozy. And it has all those romantic little walkover bridges (remember Jennifer Lopez in “Selena”?)

Actually, I think the Riverwalk needs a bit more live music and clubs on it. A little too heavy on restaurants.

Q. Last year you guys pulled off a major coup and landed one of my favorite artists — Mike Fisher, formerly the graphics editor of The Charlotte Observer and then one of George Rorick’s hot guns with KRT’s News in Motion video animation studio. What’s it like working with Mikey? What kind of dimension does he bring to the paper?

A. Mike is great. Very talented and very serious. (Actually, I think he scratches his head about the rest of the art department sometimes — they’re a joke-loving bunch in there, with a pretty biting wit. Mike doesn’t bite much — but I’m sure he’ll learn!)

Mike has Cinema 4D down and does really amazing TV-style storytelling animated graphics. We just put most of the department through Flash training and it’s fun to watch Mike kinda eyeballing it suspiciously. My guess is we’ll take his already great animations from Cinema 4D and use Flash as the platform for interactivity.

Q: Are you recruiting in Boston? What are you looking for? Anything in particular?

A. We’ll do general recruiting. No specific openings right now.

Great! Good luck, Dean. I met a number of really sharp young people tonight. You’ll find an interesting recruiting pool here in Boston this weekend.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 11th, 2007 at 2:07 am and is filed under Innovative ideas, Newspapers, SND/Boston, Visual Editors, VizEds Blog, Workshops. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.