November 15 will go down as the day the music died for the Korova, a popular downtown San Antonio music venue. Less than a mile from the River Walk, the gritty space opened in 2009, and was famous for hosting raucous shows from some of the country's best punk, hardcore, and metal bands.
On Friday, November 17, Korova's owners took to Facebook to make the sad announcement. "As hard as we tried the last couple of weeks to do everything in our control to avoid having it come to this, the time has come," they wrote. "We know the rumors have been flying for a couple of weeks, some true and most not, but the truth of the matter is we fought every single day up until Wednesday evening to get operations back up and running."
In an statement to the San Antonio Express-News, owner Angel Castorena says San Antonio's shifting population was a partial factor in the venue's demise. "San Antonio is growing and it's getting harder to keep up, but we're still proud of what we did over eight years," he told the Express-News.
Some of the venue's upcoming events, including the popular Punks for Tots toy drive, will now take place at Fresca, while other shows have been rescheduled at Paper Tiger.
Though the Korova has only been shuttered for two days, the building is already under new management and will be taking on "an entirely new direction" with no plans for a live music venue. Said the owners: "It's a bittersweet ending for the place some loved to hate and some truly loved as much as we did."
