Riverwalk Gears Up for Alcoholics Anonymous Convention
The San Antonio Riverwalk once again prepares for the 50,000-strong AA Convention, while alcoholics everywhere steady themselves to attend. Our regular Happy Hour reporter Vincent Chavez reports.
Local San Antonians are no strangers to alcohol, basking in the warmth of half-day Happy Hours and drink specials that stretch from the Aztec Theater all the way round the circuit back to the Aztec Theater. Always ready to provide advice to visitors on the best place for a well cocktail or a $1 Miller Lite, the upcoming flock of failed alcohol abusers will test our limits of advising on “Things to Do” that don’t involve get bat-shit sauced on Sangria.
Indeed, even the City has created a leaftlet for locals entitled “12 Riverwalk Activities When You Can Only Drink Soda”, and admitted they had to pad the last two to make it a round number. Media manager Mike “Mugsy” Parras explained: “Seaworld is great, but the Shamu Show is intolerable without a cool, clean beer in your hand, and even our famed Riverboat tour only makes sense when you’re sweating piss from the night before and trying to burn time before the bars have cooled cut-price buckets of Corona.”
“Bad for business,” says bar owner.
"Untouched" booze.
Most bars on the Riverwalk rely upon convention traffic to subsidize cheap booze for locals, claims local bar owner Tim O’Reilly from O’Reilly’s Authentic Irish Pub. Whereas a pile of 10,000 music teachers will drain the town dry of everything but the most expensive liquor within hours, and the petroleum convention slams enough grain alcohol to create a cloud of alcohol that makes it unsafe to drive downtown with the windows down, AA poses its own unique problems.
Tim adds: “Who are these guys anyway? 50,000 anonymous people is just too many. What if someone loses a coat?” The local bar trade association concurs, and has petitioned to have the annual meet-up moved up the road to Austin, the city that often boasts it can handle a big convention but has yet to do so. Another owner, who wished to remain anonymous, not because he’s an alcoholic, said it was like the volcano that was screwing around with Europe, and the dent in alcohol sales could cost as much as $20 million a day for Riverwalk bars and restaurants.
12 Step Solution
However, bartenders and wait-staff said they weren’t planning to take the reaming by AA while laying down, and have developed a 12-step strategy to convert at least 10% of the former drunks back to the dark side. While not willing to part with all their strategies, steps include:
- Offering complimentary Jello shots outside the Henry B Gonzales convention center.
- Serving non-alcoholic beer, most of which contains trace amounts of alcohol, to act as a “gateway beer” to hard shots.
- Hiring hot girls to talk only to the real men who are drinking.
- Changing sermons at the local Baptist church to focus on Jesus’ sponsorship of red wine.
- Adding half-shots of vodka to any soda drinks ordered.
- Infiltrating their presentations with subliminal images of sweet, sweet liquor.
“Our comprehensive 12-step strategy starts with admitting there’s a problem, and the problem is they’re not drinking,” says program designer Jack Stone. “We going to create an environment for these former boozers to show the crushing force of sobriety is no way to live. It’s either our way or the highway – or the highway after several beers.”
