Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:32:00

The building spent 18 years as the White Rabbit, the St. Mary's Strip institution where the Black Crowes, Creed, the Shins, Cage the Elephant and Kendrick Lamar all played on the way up. Paper Tiger, at 2410 North St. Mary's Street in San Antonio, took over the space in 2015 and made it the city's definitive independent music venue. The handover was a genuine changing of the guard: the Sciaraffa family had run the White Rabbit since 1996 - famously keeping it open to under-21 kids when few rooms would - before selling in 2014 to a group led by restaurateur and developer Chad Carey, whose team renovated the building and reopened it in March 2015 under the new name. The layout gives bookers two tools: a 1,000-capacity main room and a 200-capacity small stage, letting the venue run touring headliners and local up-and-comers on the same night, often with separate tickets. The booking policy is proudly omnivorous - indie, punk, noise, hardcore, hip hop, electronic and country all share the calendar - backed by a sound system widely regarded as the best of any club in the city. The setting matters: the North St. Mary's Strip is San Antonio's densest run of bars and venues, a corridor that boomed, faded and boomed again, and Paper Tiger functions as its anchor tenant - the room every touring band at this level plays when the routing hits South Texas. Practical notes: shows are general admission and most run all-ages with a bar for those over 21; parking on the Strip is street-and-lot scramble on weekend nights, and the patio between the two rooms doubles as the between-sets social hub. The old room's spirit survived the renovation: the White Rabbit's all-ages ethos carried into the new operation, and the venue's posters-and-concrete aesthetic keeps the space feeling like a club that books for the music rather than the bar spend - a distinction regulars cite constantly.