The Where I Live series aims to showcase our diverse city and region by spotlighting its many vibrant neighborhoods. Each week a local resident invites us over and lets us in on what makes their neighborhood special. Have we been to your neighborhood yet? Get in touch to share your story. If your story is selected and published, you will receive a $250 stipend.
Of all the things I love about Hollywood Park, I cherish my neighbors the most. They’re gray-brown, tailed and hooved. Some are antlered, some spotted. In herds, they wander about, sometimes stopping to chew my potted flowers, sometimes lounging in my front lawn, sometimes passing through to another yard. Though some consider them a nuisance, I think they beautify my neighborhood.
When crossing the street, often in groups of families, they make me slow down and reflect on the inextricable link between biped and quadruped, a model for humans to rethink their relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom. In that kind of thinking, I know I am not alone.
In an effort at population control in 2010, the Hollywood Park City Council floated an idea to trap, transport and release the deer in Mexico. To the Council’s surprise, there was such a backlash to the proposal that the plans were swiftly abandoned. Needless to say, Hollywood Park values and protects all of its residents.
Apart from my quadrupedal neighbors, I deeply cherish my human ones. When my family and I moved to the neighborhood in 1995, some of the original residents were still around. Now the neighborhood has grown and welcomed new residents, some of whom are children or nephews and nieces of the original residents. This new generation has brought a needed and welcome diversity to the neighborhood in terms of racial and ethnic representation, political affiliation, family composition and more.
Over the decades, and especially since returning to care for my aging mother last year, I’ve witnessed the changes in, and growth of, my neighborhood. Though change can sometimes be unnerving, if not unwelcome, I have been overall pleased with how the older generations of residents have adapted to such demographic changes and for the most part readily welcomed their new neighbors. If Hollywood Park, a neighborhood that is often — and mostly unfairly — considered elitist, can find room for a diversity of families and opinions, I like to think the rest of San Antonio that struggles to incorporate the new with the old also can.
In a time when houses in new suburban developments too often look identical, Hollywood Park stands out. My neighborhood includes one-story houses, multi-level homes and multi-generational houses — often complete with a mother-in-law suite, accessory dwelling unit or a casita.
At the moment, there is some debate over whether rooms or living quarters can be rented out to hopeful residents who are not family, and while I understand the reluctance of potentially letting Hollywood Park essentially become a rental property, I hope we come to a decision on that issue with utmost empathy and patience. I believe the neighbors I love, and for years have loved, will rise to such an occasion.
