First Look: San Antonio is about to get a horny new vinyl bar

The needle is about to hit the groove for a brand new vinyl “listening room” in San Antonio’s Authorities Hill neighborhood.

Poised to be a paradise for native crate diggers and vinyl junkies — to not point out, others merely in search of an aesthetic and curated evening out — Volta is sort of able to make its huge debut.

Volta has already held its delicate launch within the house as soon as occupied by Gen Z hang-out Snake Hill. Over Thanksgiving weekend, the fledgling nightspot performed host to a full roster of DJs spinning tunes starting from ’60s and’ 70s psych and storage rock to cumbia, soul, blues, jazz and hip-hop.

“Principally something that’s on vinyl, you’ll be able to spin right here,” co-owner Danny Delgado mentioned.

Volta is the most recent brainchild by the group behind the Lonesome Rose, Holy Diver, Palomino and ’70s-sleaze biker bar Sluggish Journey, which inhabits the spot subsequent door.

Between crafting artisanal cocktails, bartenders will choose tracks from a set of greater than 7,000 data on the wall behind them. Nevertheless, solely a few of the data are supposed to be performed, in keeping with Delgado.

“Brainwaves Data hooked us up,” the co-owner mentioned in regards to the sweetheart deal that enabled the membership to amass its assortment in a single fell swoop.

Different nights, native DJs will deliver their very own collections to spin.

Listening rooms have develop into a world craze over the previous few years, with the fashionable vinyl bars popping up in London, Tokyo, Seoul, Mexico Metropolis and different hip city facilities.

For San Antonio — a fast-growing hotbed of vinyl lovers — Delgado causes that it was solely a matter of time.

“We needed to do it earlier than another person did,” he defined on the delicate open.

Whereas Volta hasn’t but formally introduced its grand opening, Delgado informed the Present it should probably be on the weekend of Dec. 19.

For now, the brand new spot has been christened by toasts between buddies of the bar, who float forwards and backwards between Sluggish Journey subsequent door. This intermingling may present a preview of what the duo of hip bars may do to revitalize the strip throughout from Fort Sam Houston as its personal nightlife vacation spot.

And to get forward of the avalanche of inquiries, no, the bar isn’t named after experimental rock band The Mars Volta.

Like lots of the particulars at Volta, the identify is an homage to one thing a lot older.

“Volta” comes from Volta Laboratories, the place Alexander Graham Bell invented the primary phonograph, later referred to as the gramophone, document participant and — extra not too long ago — the turntable. Two such phonographs are additionally on show on the document wall behind the bar. A set of Technics turntables can be embedded within the bar itself behind a set of inexperienced banker’s lamps.

Each inch of the cocktail and listening lounge is adorned in classic work, thrifted all around the state by Delgado, together with chíc metallic-striped wallpaper and different design touches to convey the sensation of a extremely curated — but by some means unpretentious — atmosphere.

It’s the sort of place the place company ought to really feel comfy imbibing in something from a grimy gin martini to a Excessive Life and shot.

Delgado says a specialty cocktail menu can be on the way in which, together with a meals menu. These particulars ought to take form in a couple of week, after we’ll know extra in regards to the grand opening as nicely.