Ciudad official / SAT 1-29-22 / Bygone Japanese coin / Kid-lit authors Margret and H.A. / Nonhuman host of a talk show on HBO Max / Gambling venues with portmanteau name / Habitat for the addax antelope

Alcalde (/ælˈkældi/; Spanish: [alˈkalde]) is the traditional Spanish municipal magistrate, who had both judicial and administrative functions. An alcalde was, in the absence of a corregidor, the presiding officer of the Castilian cabildo (the municipal council) and judge of first instance of a town.  Alcaldes were elected annually, without the right to reelection for two or three years, by the regidores (council members) of the municipal council. The office of the alcalde was signified by a staff of office, which they were to take with them when doing their business. A woman who holds the office is termed an Alcaldesa.

In New Spain (Mexico), alcaldes mayores were chief administrators in colonial-era administrative territories termed alcaldías mayores; in colonial-era Peru the units were called corregimientos.

Alcalde was also a title given to Indian officials inside the Spanish missions, who performed a large variety of duties for the Franciscan missionaries. (wikipedia)

This is a very nice grid, though the only challenges it presented came entirely from words / names I'd never seen—three, to be exact: ALCALDE, REYS, and HELISTOP. These things happen, of course, when you're solving a Saturday puzzle (or even a Monday puzzle, sometimes, if we're being honest), but I much prefer the kind of difficulty that comes with tricky clues to the kind that comes from words / names / term not commonly known (I won't get in an argument about how well known ALCALDE or the REYS are, but let's just say far far far far far less universally known than, well, look at almost all the other answers: GOLD MEDALS? Everyone knows that term. LOADED DICE, same. ELMO, ROLL, etc. ... you see how "hard" grids aren't really filled with "hard" answers—it's primarily the cluing that makes the puzzle hard, or it should be). It's the unevenness of the difficulty that really highlights how much this puzzle is offering up only one kind of difficulty. It took a little time to think my way through some reasonably toughish stuff in the NW—[Power forward] made me think basketball, rowing, and that clue on APB was a wacky (and tough) delight (19A: Catchy communication, for short?) (get it? ... "catchy" ... 'cause an APB is a "communication" they send out when they're trying to "catch" a criminal)—but after I got out of the NW, I went whoosh over the top, whoosh down the west side. The only struggles: every letter of ALCALDE (hard to see the RIDE part of FREE RIDE because of this), and then the STOP part of HELISTOP and the "Y" part of REYS. My blogging software is underlining HELISTOP in red, and I feel its pain. Woof. I of course wrote in HELIPORT, which is a word. HELISTOP is one of those words that makes me think "maybe there's such a thing as wordlist that's *too* big." The upshot of all this is that it was really hard for me to see NANCY PELOSI until I got the whole pre-"Y" part of her name. POOH Bear before PAPA Bear messed me up in there too, but even after I figured that problem out, I had trouble with the congresswoman. I spelled REES thusly at one point. It was all a bit of a mess. But not too much of a mess. I don't have a problem with ALCALDE or REYS as answers; I'm just hyper-aware of how "being unknown to me" is a far less satisfying form of difficulty than "being cleverly hidden from me," and there just wasn't enough of the latter for me today. But again, that's a cluing problem. The grid itself looks OK (though not nearly as snazzy as grids I've seen from both of these constructors before). [LOL I'm only realizing *just* now, after finishing the write-up and starting to put all the formatting in place, that the REYS (plural) are the authors of the "Curious George" books, so ... yeah, I know them, though clearly without the monkey, they're nothing]

• 17A: Vuvuzela, for one (HORN) — my memory is that these were common noise makers at a recentish Men's World Cup ... maybe in South Africa? (Yes). I just remember that "vuvuzela" really seemed to burst into my consciousness all at once. Now that I look, that World Cup was in 2010, which ... wow, I have no idea what's "recentish" any more. 2010 feels like it just happened and also like it happened a million years ago and also like it never happened. What was 2010, even? Aging is a trip.
• 45D: Local borders? (ELS) — textbook "letteral" clue, where the "?" is an indication to treat one of the clue words in terms of its physical make-up rather than its meaning. Today, we are supposed to look at the "borders" (i.e. the edges, i.e. the first and last letters) of the word "local," which means we're looking at an "L" and another "L," so ... ELS. This is a cluing convention borrowed from cryptic crosswords.
• 27D: ___ artist (film professional) (FOLEY) — these are the sound people, the people who create the non-dialogue sounds in movies (the "reproduction of everyday sound effects" added to film in post-production, according to wikipedia). I don't know how I know this. I can imagine this answer tripping up some solvers quite badly.
• 29D: Nonhuman host of a talk show on HBO Max (ELMO) — my first thought was ALIG (who is, in fact, human) and my next thought was MAX HEADROOM (who wouldn't fit). I can't imagine watching even a single second of an ELMO-hosted talk show without wanting to tear my face off, but maybe it's for kids? I hope? Anyway, I remembered that the show existed, eventually, thankfully.
• 52A: Court feat of 2003 and 2015 (SERENA SLAM)— this is where you win (she wins) all four major tournaments in a row, but not in the same calendar year.