In the absence of a clear public signal from City Hall, the contest over the 1.7 acres donated by former BudCo owners Vincent and Berkley Dawson for a pocket park next to the historic Hays Street Bridge is simmering down to skate park v. brewery. "Skateboarding and rollerblading are two of the fastest growing activities in the United States with more than 14 million participants," begins a June 17 letter to Mayor Julián Castro from the Downtown Residents Association.

The Friday-morning crowd at El Mirador, where San Antonio's political class talks business over breakfast tacos, featured State Representative Joaquín Castro at a table with state Senator Carlos Uresti. Their fellow diners' working assumption was that Castro was trying to convince Uresti not to run in the newly created Congressional District 35.

Add Rebecca Waldman to the list of people reportedly under consideration for the chairmanship of the San Antonio Water System. She's a former Alamo Heights city manager and one-time director of the City's old Assets Management Department, where she worked closely with then-City Manager Alex Briseño, SAWS' outgoing chair.

One opponent of Eugene Simor's proposal to build a brewery alongside the refurbished Hays Street Bridge undertook a bit of back-door diplomacy last month in hopes of derailing the plan, which also relies partially on a plot of land originally donated to be a pocket park. A San Antonio River Authority board member wrote one of the land's donors, Vincent Dawson, encouraging him to get in the fight because the property used to hold a warehouse for BudCo Ltd., the beer distributorship that Dawson and his brother Berkley sold to Silver Eagle Distributors in 2007.