From the Alamodome to the Strip: A Weekend That Swings Both Ways
Some weekends make you choose between spectacle and sweat. This one refuses to. Tonight, one of the biggest bands on the planet plants its flag in the Alamodome, while a few miles north the St. Mary's Strip does what it always does — deliver loud, close, and cheap-enough-to-say-yes.
Let's talk about the giant in the room first. AC/DC bring the POWER UP Tour to the Alamodome tonight, Friday, July 24. This is arena rock in its purest, most unapologetic form — the kind of show where the volume is a physical sensation and the crowd sings every syllable of songs older than most of the people screaming them. San Antonio has always been an AC/DC town; the Alamodome will prove it again. If you've got tickets, you already know. If you don't, you'll hear it from the parking lot.
But here's the thing about a stadium night: it doesn't cancel the rest of the city. It just raises the stakes for everybody else. And the Strip, as usual, is happy to answer.
Over at Paper Tiger (2410 N St. Mary's St), the two-stage indie-and-heavy institution keeps its own momentum going with I Promised the World on Friday, July 24 — the same night the Alamodome lights up. That's the beauty of this town: you can go massive or you can go intimate on the exact same evening, and neither choice is wrong. One's a spectacle you'll tell stories about; the other's a room where you can actually feel the kick drum in your chest and maybe shake the artist's hand afterward.
Paper Tiger has been running hot all week, too. Earlier, on Monday, July 21, the venue hosted The Word Alive with Savage Hands and Downswing — a metalcore bill that gave the Strip's heavier faithful exactly what they came for. It's a reminder that Paper Tiger doesn't just coast on weekend traffic; it keeps the lights and the amps on all week long, which is precisely why it's become a fixture of the scene rather than just another stop on a tour routing sheet.
So how do you play a weekend like this? Two ways, and both are correct.
Option one: Go big. Fight the Alamodome traffic, pay for the parking, and stand in a sea of denim while AC/DC does the thing they've done better than almost anyone for decades. It's a bucket-list night, the kind of show that becomes a personal timestamp — "I was there."
Option two: Go local. Point yourself at North St. Mary's, let Paper Tiger's I Promised the World fill the smaller room, and remember that some of the best shows of your life happen when there are only a few hundred people in the building and the band can see every one of them.
Option three, for the ambitious: there's no law against catching the tail of one and the front of the other, if your timing and your rideshare budget cooperate. This is a compact city. Use it.
The larger point is one Alamo City has been making for years: a healthy music scene needs both the arena and the club. The stadium show sells the tickets and the T-shirts; the Strip develops the bands, the bartenders, and the diehards who'll still be here when the tour buses have moved on. This weekend, both halves of that ecosystem are firing at once.
Whatever you pick, pick loud. San Antonio wouldn't have it any other way.
Sources: AC/DC POWER UP Tour — Alamodome; Paper Tiger — setlist.fm