I purchased two season tickets to the San Antonio Symphony for the 2021-2022 season. The cost was over $2000. This was going to be my last big thing before coming to grips with my much lower retirement income.
There has not been a single SAS concert so far, and it looks like there will not be one this year...or quite possibly ever again.
Now I find out there was a longstanding labor dispute going back several years, even before the losses due to the pandemic. The SAS was making below even pitiful offers in the contract negotiations with the musicians. The SAS probably knew quite well these offers would never be accepted. I believe they sold me these tickets in bad faith. I think a class action lawsuit would be appropriate and I'd be happy to join one.
Last time there was a dark year like this was 2002, and things were quite different then. With a few extra big donations the Symphony resumed the next year. I didn't feel so bad then that my tickets were automatically turned into a "donation." (I wasn't ever given a choice that I was made aware of.) But now the situation is much more bleak. There is much less money available, and there is no light at the end of the tunnel that anyone can see.
Fortunately, the musicians themselves, and the good people of the San Antonio Symphony League and others have organized MOSAS (Musicians of the San Antonio Symphony) concerts, including this Thursday and Friday, which I am planning to attend.
These are nice, but not as nice as the reserved front seats I had at the luxurious Tobin featuring world famous soloists that I was used to. And there is no telling how long this can continue. Plus I'm having to pay for these concerts all over again, my previous $2000 having been vaporized to pay for SAS managers who are not doing anything useful.
When the luxurious Tobin was reconstructed out of the old Municipal, we were told that this was the salvation of our world class symphony. But rather than absorbing the construction costs, they were loaded onto the back of ticket prices, which immediately doubled. How was this ever supposed to "save the Symphony?" I had been perfectly happy with the old Majestic theater, actually, though admittedly the Tobin was a little nicer.
Meanwhile, San Antonio has now passed $1.2 Billion in bonds. A fraction of these bonds go to pay for necessary things, like $100 Million for repair of "F" rated roads. IMO they could easily spend the whole $1.2B on such things, we have the roads and infrastructure of a third world country.
Instead, much of the money goes for what I call "vanity" projects, similar to the currently in dispute "Broadway plan" which actually narrows much of one of the cities most vital roads, in the vain hope of making a more liveable city with wider and fancier sidewalks for the lucky locals (who probably aren't even much interested, they spend their time elsewhere too).
This is all part of what I'd call the "Build it and they will come" mythology, which I believe is promoted primarily by construction companies and their shills in the local media. We spend billions to build more useless monuments to this kind of vanity, and hardly a penny to support our poor working artists and musicians--the ones who actually make the culture that used to make our city great.
I also blame, in particular, Mayor Ron Nirenberg. He ran on giving San Antonio metro trains, not wider fancier sidewalks near Alamo Heights with less useful thoroughfares. I will remember him as the mayor who built fancier sidewalks while the San Antonio Symphony was demolished, much as I remember Mayor Hardberger as the mayor who closed off the most useful downtown streets--the real "Hardberger Park." I happened to live near a section of highway near a serious "calming" feature narrowing the pavement down to one lane...it was not "calming" at all but infuriating until it was finally fixed--at mind boggling cost.
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