Los No. 2 Dinners

The Los No. 2 Dinners started out in the underground contemporary art scene playing shows at the San Antonio Museum of Modern Art in the late 1970s. They became known as the local anti-disco rock-n-roll band that wrote about their hometown (Livin’ Inside the Loop, Downtown San Antonio) and remixed rock songs with a San Antonio bent (like Take a Walk on the West Side and On Broadway). They soon had a regular gig at the Friendly Spot on Beauregard Street, in the King William Neighborhood on the cusp of historic preservation efforts.  Within a year their gig was shut down for noise complaints.  The band found their way to the St. Mary’s Strip; an up and coming music and restaurant entertainment district in Tobin Hill.  The Dinners would play many weekends throughout the month on the strip, sometimes on both Friday and Saturday nights at St. Mary’s Bar and Grill, Tycoon Flats, and Joseph’s Foodliner.  While they had always been gigging at other venues, a few years later they nonetheless felt the effects of the highly publicized murder of strip patron George Waters III as many of the initial establishments began closing up and people went elsewhere. 


Thank you to Eric Friedland for being interviewed and Norman Avila for sharing flyers. 

What it Takes for a Good Music Scene

"A good music scene needs three things. It needs a good radio station. Needs some good bands, and it needs good venues. Those things three things have to work together to have a good music scene. "

Early Days of The Strip

"[The St. Mary's Strip] started off with one or two little places, and once people started going to them, it just took off.  It was a great place with a lot of good clubs and a lot of bands."

Next Thing They Knew

"Some other places started happening, and then a couple of little art gallery kinds of things sprang up, so I am not sure what the connection was, but next thing I know we're booked in places along the strip."

Playing at Joseph's Foodliner



"[Joseph's Foodliner] was pretty much the way it is now [White Rabbit and Paper Tiger].  There was this little entrance way and it kinda curved around and then it was this big giant long room, and it had a stage and PA system with a sound guy.

We played a New Year's Eve one time at Joseph's Foodliner and they served a midnight buffet.  Can you imagine?"

On the Narrative of The Strip Being Dangerous in 1990s

"It didn't affect us as much in those days because we were playing a lot of other places...[but] the reaction was swift and pretty radical.  I mean places went dead.  It was big news and they were afraid to go down there.  They weren't going to go down there, so restaurants and clubs started shrinking.  One by one they started dropping off and the place turned into a wasteland."

The Strip as a Cultural Resource

"[The strip’s] been very significant because… it's been a hopping place for bars that have live music, local music.  You know, that's the key; hire local bands. Number one, it works out great for everybody…their friends all go to school here, and they all hang out together anyway, and you got a built-in crowd.  Like I said, the colleges and the high schools, if they're old enough, you know,  there's a lot of places you can go on St. Mary's where you don't have to be 21.  And so I think it's been very important, and I think it'll continue to be.  I think it's a generational thing, you know, it's a lot of  ‘my big brother used to go there all the time, now I'm going to go.’  You know, it's where you go. "