San Antonio’s newest comedy club creating laughs plus more experience for local stand-ups

Riot Riverwalk launched in October, bringing stand-up comedy back to downtown for the first time since 2018.

By Valerie Lopez, Tuesday December 9, 2025

Over the decades, the basement of the Maverick Building on Presa Street has been a speakeasy, a wedding venue and a storage space.

Then, on Oct. 30, it became what downtown San Antonio has been missing since 2018: a place to catch weekend comedy headliners, specialty showcases or watch open mic stand-ups bomb spectacularly.

The recently launched Riot Riverwalk is filling a gap left by the 2018 closure of Rivercenter’s Improv Comedy Club. It’s also rewriting what a comedy club can mean for San Antonio’s scene.

The new venue came about when Houston’s Brian Gendron — who built that city’s The Riot Comedy Club and the annual Riot Comedy Festival into comedy institutions — was actively scouting expansion into “Greater Houston; Brooklyn, New York; and San Antonio, fully expecting that we’d eventually enter all of them.”

After an entire day of looking at potential San Antonio venues, Gendron was exhausted and ready to head home to Houston. That’s when AREA Real Estate threw him a Hail Mary: what about the basement space at the Maverick?

“Honestly, I almost said no — I was that tired — but I’m incredibly glad I didn’t,” Gendron recalled. “The moment I walked into the building, down the steps into the already built-out Library [Cocktail] Bar, and then back to what used to be a basement wedding and events venue, I realized it was actually perfect for a comedy club.”

Perhaps it was fate that David Adelman, one of the ownership partners of the National Register of Historic Places-listed Maverick, had been searching for the right tenant to enliven the basement.

“When we re-developed the Maverick we had always hoped to find a way to turn the basement into an asset as opposed to a forgotten space,” Adelman said.

Warm burgundy and black decor replaced the former wedding venue’s white aesthetic. The stage features professional sound and upgraded lighting. It’s intimate in the way storied clubs such New York’s Comedy Cellar should be — the comic is close enough to the audience that they know whether the crowd is rapt with attention or daydreaming.

The adjoining Library Cocktail Lounge, with its book-lined walls and brightly colored portraits of comedy legends including Robin Williams, Richard Pryor and Joan Rivers, serves as an impromptu green room.

“I personally love comedy clubs, having spent time in many of the best in New York, Chicago and LA,” Adelman said. “Now we have a jewel of a club in downtown San Antonio.”

---

Growing a Comedy Scene

Riot Riverwalk is open seven nights a week. Every single night gives developing comics stage time to hone their craft.

During the week, open mics follow the ticketed showcases. Those sessions offer the kind of stage time that turns anxious first-timers into working comics. More reps means faster development.

At a mere 90 minutes from Austin, Riot Riverwalk offers comedic cross-pollination for capital-city comics wanting practice in front of San Antonio audiences.

Weekends bring touring headliners. Riot Riverwalk’s first, Jeremiah Watkins, has worked with The Riot Comedy Club in Houston for years.

“I love working with Brian because he not only cares about the comics, he cares about comedy,” Watkins said. “Each year I do the club he has found ways to make it a better and more seamless experience not only for me, but the audiences as well.”

Two weeks after Riot’s San Antonio opening, Gendron brought back FIST — Funniest in South Texas — a local comedy competition that had been dormant for years. Past winners include Big Al Gonzalez, Raul Sanchez and the late Larry Garza.

The 2025 competition kicked off in November and is expected to crown its winner Dec. 11. The winner earns the title, a cash prize and a spot on The Riot Comedy Festival in Houston in April.

---

Entering a New Phase

The Maverick Building location isn’t incidental. In addition to Riot Riverwalk, the mixed-use downtown structure offers apartments, a hotel, coffee, dining and a bar. It’s the kind of integration that keeps downtowns alive after office workers go home.

For tourists, comedy is now as easy to find as a bowl of gooey queso on the Riverwalk. For locals, it’s an elevator ride away.

San Antonians are naturally skeptical of outsiders planting roots in their city, but Gendron’s track record suggests he’s capable of creating something real. He built The Riot brand in Houston with its club and comedy festival before expanding outside his home city. His background in marketing and corporate event organizing translates directly to running a successful club. And he knows comedy: he was a 2019 semi-finalist in the Funniest Comic in Texas competition.

The arrival of new venues in 2025 — first Woodlawn Comedy and now Riot Riverwalk — also signals that San Antonio’s comedy scene is entering a new phase. More venues mean more opportunities for local talent, more reasons for touring acts to route through town and more reason to take the city’s homegrown comics seriously.

The Maverick’s basement appears integral to that by offering comics a place to grind seven nights a week. They’re showing up, they’re laughing and the Riot is growing, Gendron said.

“I hope more and more San Antonians will meet up with the many visitors to our beautiful and fun city for a great night on the town,” he added.

---

Valerie Lopez is a writer, executive producer, editor, and podcaster for comedywham.com based in Austin, covering comedy in Texas. She's interviewed hundreds of comedians based in or passing through Texas. Her work has appeared in the Austin Chronicle, The Texas Standard, the Los Angeles Times, and TheBarbedWire.com. comedywham.com.