By Oronte. On our last full day we had an appointment with Rudy and Dave, who flip houses for their real estate company. More...

By Oronte. The rest of that afternoon we drove through copycat subdivisions around The Dominion. More...

By Oronte. Listen, I’d want to keep us out too. Three thugs loosely associated with a regional state uni in southwest Louisiana, one of them calling himself a perfesser, and some guy from NYC with a bag full of expensive cameras? Forget about it. More...

By Oronte. Heading north on I-10 we passed an empty lot the size of God, marking the scale of change. The lot is between the Forest Park Medical Center, which sold in bankruptcy in 2016 after a massive felony-fraud scandal, and the Landmark One Office Building. A hotel and conference center are planned for the site. More...

By Oronte. The four of us walked down a little one-way road through a neighborhood under the three highways. The houses were mostly big Victorians falling apart with neglect. More...

By Oronte. A friend had told Matt that if we really wanted to see disparity we should go see Dignowity, a downtown neighborhood still patchily gentrified. We ended up near the convergence of I-10, I-35, and US Route 87. There we found this woman, a figure of lonely desolation, under the rectilinear forms of the highways looming overhead. More...

By Oronte. Danny calls himself a Crusty. Crusties are (often) young people in a subculture that has a look and lifestyle. They move around out of restlessness and a desire for experience, and often have no permanent home. Danny has been on the street 12 years but doesn’t consider himself homeless. More...

By Oronte. Hispanic Elvis was born and raised in San Antonio. He frequents tourist sites around the city and performs with and without music. (His guitar is made of cardboard.) His talent, he says, is a gift from God. More...

By Oronte. The next day, early, we headed for Market Square, in downtown San Antonio. The Market is a first stop for many tourists, with its good restaurants, food carts, performers, and more than 100 shops and stalls selling pottery, jewelry, rugs, and all manner of geedunk. More...

By Oronte. I had shown Donato the iconic cover of Henry Miller’s Air Conditioned Nightmare, a shanty dwarfed by a skyscraper, to illustrate Matt’s idea of disparity. Donato thought there might be an equivalent shot with trailers in the foreground and mansions behind, with the stone wall separating them. More...