The QueQue: Perry appointment push for nuke waste, River Walk to get Hippie Hollow treatment, Texas, meet Anonymous

River Walk to get Hippie Hollow treatment

For the first time in a decade, the city’s contract to sell San Antonio tourism far and wide will fall to an out-of-town firm. Council last week awarded a $7.5 million Convention and Visitors Bureau contract to an Austin-based Proof Advertising, skipping over local Bromley Communications, which held the lucrative contract for the past decade. Dozens of Bromley employees sat in the chambers wearing matching “I am a job” T-shirts as CEO Ernest Bromley tried to sway council members to opt for a local agency. A local advertising budget, funded with taxpayer dollars, he contended, should go to boost the local market. Proof, which city officials said outscored Bromley and five other firms vying for the contract, will start its new three-year contract at the end of the month, with a possible two-year extension.

Bromley said the loss would force him to cut about $600,000 from his firm’s $7 million payroll, though he didn’t clarify how many local jobs that entailed. In his brief speech to council, Bryan Christian, president of Proof Advertising, said, “The real question is, what is local? Is local meaning that I can move somewhere and become local? Is local meaning starting a new business there and growing beyond the boundaries or investing in new business and bringing them to the market? I believe it’s all the above.” Proof, he said would hire local talent to help staff the company’s new San Antonio office tasked with handling the new city contract. District 8 Councilman Reed Williams prodded his fellow councilmembers to support the new contract, saying, “Please don’t make the mistake of saying San Antonio’s only open to local business.”

While she worried over the prospect of losing local jobs, District 2 Councilwoman Ivy Taylor said she was more concerned with the overall growth of San Antonio’s convention and tourism industry — an engine that accounts for some $11 billion in revenue and 106,000 local jobs, according to city stats. “Imagine 106,000 people wearing matching shirts. We want to increase overall impact,” she said.

Texas, meet Anonymous

The shadowy swarm of hackers/criminals/activists/pranksters hellbent on lulz (look it up) has largely remained quiet since mid-summer’s arrest of a de facto Anonymous leader (apparently a 19-year-old Scottish kid) following the group’s high-profile hack of Arizona’s Department of Public Safety. But now we know Anons have been plotting in the dark for the past two months, hacking Texas police servers, gathering personal information and a cache of embarrassing emails to dump online for all the world to see.

Late last week, Anonymous claimed responsibility for hacking the personal and work email accounts of over two dozen Texas police chiefs, posting the contents online, and hijacking the Texas Police Chief’s Association webpage. In a lengthy prologue to the 3 gigabytes worth of emails, photos, and memos the group dumped on a hidden server, Anonymous wrote: “Lewd jokes? Check. Racist chain mails? Check. You lost your radio license? Lulz. Playing on the fears of voters? Check. … We are attacking Texas law enforcement as part of “Chinga La Migra” as they continue to harass immigrants and use border patrol operations as a cover for their backwards racist prejudice.”