Yesterday I posted about how an economic study indicates San Antonio could support the addition of both the NFL and Major League Baseball. Which was cool news. Unfortunately, someone had to go splash the cold water of reality on all of us giddy at the prospect:

With a possible extension of San Antonio's tourism taxes to build a Major League Baseball stadium, the options left to finance city leaders' dreams of an NFL team are dwindling.

There's only one-eighth of a cent left under the cap for sales taxes — revenue that could go for library improvement or crime prevention instead of artificial turf and luxury suites.

And the tax options left under 1997 sports venue financing legislation are unpopular options with sports team owners and are unlikely to generate the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to bring football here.

And, if you want to get into the nuts and bolts of it:

The original bond debt for the AT&T Center could be retired by 2012 instead of the contractual 2022, according to the latest projections. But there is still more than 100ドル million in principal to pay, and adding an estimated 240ドル million for the baseball stadium and improvements around the arena to that number could mean tourists would be paying the taxes another 20 to 30 years, according to David Smith, budget officer for Bexar County.

That debt could stifle future public money options for a stadium should the city get another chance at luring an NFL team.

So essentially we're looking at a situation where the city and county have enough potential revenue from the tourist trade to build one stadium without socking it to locals, but not two. Even though the locals could support both.

Logically, there's the Alamodome which could play host to an NFL team, but the Alamodome was built just before luxury suites became a major revenue stream for teams, and has very few of those money generators. The Alamodome is a great stadium to see a game in, and I don't think a new stadium should be built to replace it. But extensive rennovations are needed to bring it up to "modern" NFL standards, rennovations which would cost 100ドル million or so. That's not as much as building an entirely new stadium, but again, that money's not going to be there if a new baseball stadium goes up. And San Antonio still doesn't have a commitment from any team or league for relocation or expansion.

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Now this is interesting. During San Antonio's flirtation with the New Orleans Saints last year, Bexar County officials commissioned a long-term economic study to quantify assertations that the region could support two professional sports franchises, ie the Spurs of the NBA and Team X of the NFL. Turns out the recently completed study was more positive than anyone expected:

The study found population in the region should increase to 4.92 million by 2015 from an estimated 3.99 million this year, or 2.3 percent a year.

The number of jobs is forecast to increase 2.8 percent annually to nearly 2.2 million, up from 1.7 million this year.

Total personal income could increase 7.2 percent annually to 238ドル.9 billion from an estimated 128ドル billion this year.

Hockenyos' report says recent growth in the regional economy, mostly along the Interstate 35 corridor from San Antonio to Austin, has led to 478,000 net new jobs, or 3 percent above the previous year.

In contrast, national employment grew 1.5 percent.

"Growing appeal of the region as a site for expansion and relocation of both people and firms helps San Antonio/I-35 consistently perform 'above the line' relative to the U.S. as a whole," the report said.

San Antonio's "economic roll" includes the new Toyota manufacturing plant and suppliers, the selection of Fort Sam Houston as the new headquarters of U.S. Army South and new high school work force academies that help produce skilled workers.

The long and short of it is that San Antonio's economic base is growing far more rapidly than it ever has. No only do the numbers indicate the region (which includes Laredo on the border and tech-savvy Austin to the north) could easily support a second franchise today, but they also seem to point to the economic ability of San Antonio to host a third professional team ten years down the line. If projections play out as expected, of course.

This is an interesting bit of news for everyone to chew over. There's a faction that is opposed to pursuing the Marlins, because they view the acquisition of a Major League Baseball franchise as automatically precluding the addition of an NFL team. But this study shows they're not mutually exclusive. San Antonio can literally have it's cake and eat it too. Cool.

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It started drizzling yesterday, and it's been raining steadily here all day. Great news for our drought-stricken region. The air is thick with humidity, and the temperature's just cool enough to be comfortable.

The smokers in our building gather on the loading dock on the first floor to get their nicotine fix before riding back up the elevators to whichever floor they work on. I've noticed today that even if nobody is in the elevator besides me, there's a lingering scent of damp, musty tobacco. Reminds me of my Grandpa Fritz, who had that same odor clinging to him on rainy days. At least, he did until cancer finally caught up with him. Odd what memories the weather holds in store.

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I survived my whirlwind excursion to Aggiecon. It was great to see folks such as Rick Klaw, Mark Finn, Bill Crider, Lou Antonelli and the rest, but other than that... the con was anemic, once you get right down to it. There were problems with the autograph sessions that have persisted for several years the con organizers continue to ignore. Attendance was light. Dealers room and the art show were both significantly smaller than in years past. And, to add insult to injury, the con had for some bizarre reason decided to drop a chunk of change to bring in Peter Mayhew and his 20ドル a pop autographs at the last minute. Media guests are the reefs upon which the ship of Aggiecon has desperately tried to dash itself upon regularly over the years. Aggiecon is not a convention where the demographics and economics allow for dropping several thousand dollars on a media guest. Financial solvency will not result. Especially when said guest is signed just a month before the con and no mention of the fact is included on any promotional materials. He's not even listed in the program book, fer cryin' out loud.

I pointed this out in frustration to some of the con staff, and was given some wishy-washy answers in reply: "Well, he's a friend of ours," and "But he cut us a really good deal" and--this is my favorite--"We had to get somebody!" No, Pointdexter, you don't have to blow four grand on an actor who'd be a C-lister at Wizard World. Especially when said four grand (or however much it is) constitutes at minimum a quarter of your convention budget, and has no hope in hell of being recouped. I guarantee there weren't 10 people in attendance there specifically because Mayhew was present. And even if the con had advertised his presence, who's going to drive from Houston to see him when Creation will stage one of their overpriced dog-and-pony shows with him out at one of the airport hotels three months down the road (provided Mayhew hadn't already been there for a boat show six weeks prior). To top it off, the con also had James C. Leary in as a media guest. Leary's claim to fame being the heavily made-up demon "Clem" from several episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I pray to high heaven they didn't actually pay cash money for this guy to come in, because again, not even a dozen people bought con passes to see him.

Are Mayhew and Leary nice guys? As far as I know. But they're horribly, awfully, grossly inappropriate guests for Aggiecon. If there is no Aggiecon 38, the blame lies squarely on the convention officers who thought it'd be a good idea to bring in media types. Their fault. Because there is no way this convention made money this year. The question is "How much did they lose?"

If the con committee has a lick of sense, they'll revise their charter/constitution/operating procedures to forbid the outlay of appearance fees for guests, if not the outright banning of media guests. No media guests--be they from Star Trek, Babylon 5, Farscape, anything--have ever worked out financially for the con. Several times the red ink would've sunk the con for good had Texas A&M not eaten the loss because the club was a university-sponsored organization. But Aggiecon doesn't have that safety net anymore, and by golly, if they want the convention to survive, these students have to stop wanting to convert their convention into some College Station-based version of Dragoncon and start acting responsible with their limited financial resources. Because right now, they're on the fast track to oblivion.

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Just a quick one for you folks before I hit the sack. Tomorrow, March 25, I'll be at Aggiecon 37 in College Station. It's just a one-day appearance, but my programming is packed--I'm on SF In the Real World, Multi-Media Future, Cloning & Immortality and Creating a Space Habitat as well as the usual Guest Reception and autograph sessions. See you there!

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No? Would you believe Kerrville? I'd been planning a trip to Kerrville for the sole purpose of paying Natives of Texas a visit, because they propogate p. tenuiloba and p. affinis, two native species of Passiflora that I've wanted to grow amongst the other things in my yard. And these two are pretty darn rare in nursery circles, so a road trip was in order. Calista wanted to ride along, so it became a father-daughter outing.



Since we were going to be in the area, I thought we'd make a side trip to one place I'd always wanted to visit myself--Stonehenge II, a 60 percent scale model of the ancient standing stones from England, built by Al Shepperd and Doug Hill in a Texas Hill Country pasture.



I didn't tell Calista where we were going after the nursery. She didn't really notice we were traveling a different road. But the road literally comes out of the trees along a turn, and bam! there it is, looming up from the flat grassland with limestone ridges in the distance. Calista literally gasped, and demanded "What is that!?" Her enthusiasm, shall we say, was infectious. And I didn't have to talk her into getting out of the car and walking out to the site.



Not content to let standing stones lie, so to speak, Shepperd and Hill eventually branched out into other forms of reproductive stonework, such as this replica Moai from Easter Island. Two flank the Stonehenge replica, roughly 50 yards to either side.



The second Moai is wearing one of the odd hats the Easter Islanders placed atop some of the statues. With the exception of two big limestone slabs used in the Stonehenge mockup, all the creations are sculpted using steel, plaster and concrete. It's obvious the structures aren't real stone, but that doesn't diminish their impressive nature. It's a lot of fun, tucked away in the middle of nowhere. The world needs more whimsy of this sort.

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Here's a switch: Some poor schmuck interviewing me! Rick Klaw does the dirty deed in a Q&A now up at SFSite.com:

What do you do as an interviewer to prepare yourself for the interview? I assume you don't just show up.

I don't just show up, no. That's the kiss of death. You learn that early on in journalism as a reporter. If you show up, your ignorance will be on display for everyone to see and snicker at, and even when you do prepare, a lot of times your ignorance is on display because you haven't prepared enough, even if you do an extensive amount of preparation.

First of all I just try and find the author's web site. If they don't have an author's web then, just any fan sites or anything up there, just the basic biography first, who they are, what their influences [are], if they grew up here, or they grew up there; that's just background information to give you kind of a picture of the person. Their bibliography: find out what books they've written, what their newest books are, what their most recent stuff is, what they're most known for. If they're known for winning Hugos back to back to back, well then that's a significant part of the story. That's background information to give you a feel for the author and a foundation to base everything else on, but what I've found is the most important thing to do is to track down as many prior interviews as possible, not to steal the question, but just so you know what questions are always asked, then just do one step and DON'T ASK THOSE.

That's the main thing that I learned: don't ask these questions, don't ask this question, don't ask this question because everyone else has. Now, I say that, but that's not always really possible or advisable, as far as not asking questions. Because when I interviewed Vernor Vinge, I started off the interview with an apology, I'm sorry that I'm going to start this off, because you've answered it a million times, but let's talk about the Singularity, this concept that you have. He laughed, and then we went on from there. I didn't limit myself to that, which I've seen some interviews with him that that's all they discuss is the concept of the Singularity where humanity reaches a cusp and what comes out the other side of that no longer resembles humanity as we know it.

And you want to know the scary thing? That's only PART ONE of the interview. For a fellow who's only published one book, I sure do seem to think highly of my own voice!

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