I’m back home after several days of pop culture immersion at the PCA/ACA conference in San Antonio. I hadn’t traveled anywhere since well before the pandemic, so this was a little bit of flexing my writing muscle, a little bit of pursuing various interests, and a little bit of finding my traveling legs once again. I loaded up with hand sanitizer, Clorox wipes, and face masks but discovered—to my surprise—that I seemed to be one of very few people bothering with extra precautions. I thought more people would use masks on the plane, to be honest, but I saw only one or two other people wearing one.
I had decided in advance that I preferred to divide my time between attending sessions and exploring San Antonio, a new city for me and one I was looking forward to seeing. The last time I attended PCA/ACA, I focused on fitting in as many sessions as I could (to get my money’s worth, I guess) but found that strategy to be pretty exhausting. It may be that when participants are representing an academic specialty, they simply go to the sessions related to their field, but my field is probably represented by at least half of all the topics offered, so I consider all of them before choosing. Sometimes I’ll attend a wild card session just to get out of my comfort zone, so the scheduling alone requires a lot of thought. The end result of all this was that attending fewer sessions this time made for a more enjoyable experience.
Unlike my last PCA/ACA experience (in Chicago), this event seemed friendlier and more relaxed. I don’t know whether to put this down to the conference itself being quite a bit smaller this time, to other people besides myself being overjoyed to get to travel again after several years of strictures, or to the location itself. I have always found Chicago to be somewhat chilly (literally and figuratively), though I know some people love it. I found that San Antonio both was and wasn’t what I expected before I arrived, and that I had to feel my way around a bit more thoughtfully than usual. My initial impression on arriving downtown was actually one of surprise that I felt such a sense of disorientation and a little bit of dismay. I wasn’t expecting San Antonio to be bland but the fact that it’s such a popular city for conferences and tourists hadn’t prepared me for an edginess I thought I perceived in my surroundings.
At the hotel, I asked if the surrounding area was safe at night and was told very definitely that it was. Because I was presenting on the first day, I spent my first night and most of the following day focused on getting ready and never really ventured outside the hotel again until after my presentation. I had a little bit of trepidation (that never fully dissipated) but found that, as is sometimes the case, things overall did look brighter with the sun shining and the wind in my sails as I went for a celebratory walk and discovered the Riverwalk, the Alamo, and other sights within walking distance.
Personally, I found the physical environment to be an unusual mix of the graceful and historic along with the raucous and rough and thought it surprising that none of the guides I’d consulted ahead of time mentioned this dichotomy. In all my travels, I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced a place quite like San Antonio. My conclusions are based on the scant observations of a few days mostly spent downtown and don’t necessarily encompass the entire city, but I think at least a couple of factors account for the complex experience I had: there is a strong military presence because of both U.S. Army and Air Force bases in the area, and the Mexican culture is stronger in San Antonio than in any other place I’ve ever been.
I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that both of these things lent a certain machismo to the atmosphere that I found daunting. I don’t take well to feeling that I have to curtail my activities or do things differently than I normally would to feel safe, but that’s what I did in San Antonio. One night only did I stay out after dark, and even though it wasn’t much past dusk when I got back to my hotel, some of the activity on the street had me feeling less than comfortable. On the one hand, I experienced an absolutely magical walk down Houston Street, with grackles clamoring overhead and colored lights in the trees lending an air of enchantment to the growing dusk. It was wonderful. On the other hand, there was crude shouting in the streets. I don’t think I’ve ever been so self-conscious about being a woman on my own as I was in those few days.
Most people I encountered were charming and friendly, and if any of them looked askance at this gray-haired lady in sneakers flitting around their city, few of them showed it, except for a surly bus driver or hotel clerk here and there. Some people object, I know, to applying archetypes like “masculine” and “feminine” to describe things, but that seems to me the best way to convey the city as I saw it. San Antonio itself, with its beautiful historical buildings and graceful winding river, seemed very feminine to me, but it has attracted a strong masculine presence. There are positives and negatives to both archetypal qualities, but the real crux is the way they interact. The feminine element certainly doesn’t have to be passive, but somehow it did seem to be in San Antonio, in deference to a sort of untamed, insistent masculinity. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that “boys will be boys” is the pervading but perhaps unspoken ethos in the city.
For a reintroduction to the world of travel, San Antonio was in some ways a bit of a challenge, and a bit of a contradiction. I had a better experience at the conference, where I felt an openness and friendliness that was lacking the last time I went. I enjoyed my explorations of the city, which boasts some pretty impressive efforts to revive and preserve its historical buildings and places. I also felt “out of my element” to a degree I wasn’t expecting. Of course, I wouldn’t say I felt “safe” in Chicago either, but it was in more of a “this-is-a-big-city-with-a-high-rate-of-gun-violence” way, not because I felt out of place. The dangers in Chicago wear a more impersonal face, perhaps, than they do in San Antonio.
