Observations on Phoenix's Scene

[SW15]

bling bling crowd living well beyond their means.

Scottsdale has long been all along living beyond means. There are other areas of Metro Phoenix that tend to be more affluent than Scottsdale. While some Scottsdale residents have wealth, Scottsdale has long had the reputation for having people highly in debt to appear wealthy to others.

Paradise Valley has more actual wealth. Paradise Valley has a few resorts and essentially no nightlife as it is resorts and nice houses.

The food and clubs in old town were also shyte compared to Kierland and the Strip up by the Marriot Desert Ridge.

Yeesh, maybe I’m just old.

Kierland is in North Scottsdale. The scene in North Scottsdale tends to be a bit older than Old Town Scottsdale in the southern part of the city.

Desert Ridge, in North Phoenix, is somewhat like North Scottsdale. There have been restaurants and night venues in Desert Ridge, but it's considered far from the action of the area.

 

[BeExcellent]

Paradise Valley and Central Phoenix have more “old money” which tends to be quiet money. The retired pro hockey player I know has 4 houses in Canada and a 2M crib in PV. Lots of wealthy Canadians come to PHX. In central PHX there is the Wrigley Mansion (chewing gum magnates) who had a gorgeous estate in Central Phoenix at one time. It’s now a venue open to the public & one of the very best (and most expensive/exclusive) restaurants is there. James Beard awarded chef. Frank Lloyd Wright’s most famous late commissioned residential home is in central PHX. It’s currently on the market for 8M or so. But there is plenty of serious money in North Scottsdale now too. I have a friend who bought a home there to escape pandemic from San Francisco. His home in SF is 30M easy. He also has a place on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. He prefers AZ as his primary residence for a number of reasons, not the least of which are the tax advantages compared to CA. But he takes advantage of the robust golf scene & night scene in N Scottsdale.

Pierce is right it’s an older scene, but there are solid restaurants to be had & some nightlife in those areas, and some of those restaurants ARE the scene on weekends.

There’s not a place like the Battery in San Francisco. The city has nightlife areas but it’s not got the same nightlife demand like NYC, LA or Austin. If you are well connected you also get invited to some pretty cool BIG private parties.

The people I know are legit. There are posers here, sure. But no more than in any large metro. Dallas and Houston are both famous for 30K millionaires in their requisite BMWs too, lol. I’m a Texan & know that culture well.

Maybe it’s just where I go, I dunno.

 

[SW15]

Paradise Valley and Central Phoenix have more “old money” which tends to be quiet money. But there is plenty of serious money in North Scottsdale now too....robust golf scene & night scene in N Scottsdale.

There are posers here, sure. But no more than in any large metro.

Paradise Valley, Arcadia/Biltmore, and North Central Phoenix are older money areas. Many older homes in those neighborhoods have been updated. Additionally, people living in those areas aren't often unattached.

Scottsdale has more of a reputation for debt ridden phonies pretending to be rich. This has gotten worse since the 1990s.

In the late 2000s, when the last real estate bubble burst, repo companies were quite busy up in North Scottsdale.

Phoenix/Scottsdale is more full of posers/phonies than a lot of similarly sized metro areas. The list of Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Phoenix is weaker than a lot of the other Top 20 metro areas, which creates less overall affluence and the need to be a person in a lot of debt who imitates being rich. A lot of people with money who live in Phoenix moved there later in life after making their money elsewhere. Working in the medical industry is good in Phoenix because of the large amount of 55+ people living in Phoenix needing medical services.

Dallas and Houston are both famous for 30K millionaires in their requisite BMWs too, lol. I’m a Texan & know that culture well.

Dallas is known for pretention too. There were nights in the early-mid 2010s that I was out in Uptown Dallas before Uptown Dallas went downhill. During that time, the nightlife scene in Uptown Dallas was a lot like nights out in Old Town Scottsdale. Women were extremely uppity and rude. Lots of male competition with good looking women with bad attitudes.

In Phoenix, if a man spends his time only looking for women at Old Town Scottsdale bars and on the swipe apps, it's often going to be a really bad experience that would skew his perspective on Phoenix. Old Town is likely the worst thing that someone can do for in-person approaching. Yet, a lot of men in the area buy into the Old Town hype because there are a number of attractive women who are known to go out in Old Town.

The term 30K millionaire emerged in the 2000s from what I remember. In the 2000s, 30K was a common starting salary for entry level jobs, often right after college. With inflation, the term now needs to be at least 40K millionaire.

 

[Jake_Gyllenhaal69]

Dallas is known for pretention too. There were nights in the early-mid 2010s that I was out in Uptown Dallas before Uptown Dallas went downhill. During that time, the nightlife scene in Uptown Dallas was a lot like nights out in Old Town Scottsdale. Women were extremely uppity and rude. Lots of male competition with good looking women with bad attitudes.

Dallas is way more pretentious than Houston. In Houston, you can walk into a reservation only expensive restaurant in hoodie and sweats and not be the odd one out.

 

[SW15]

Dallas is way more pretentious than Houston. In Houston, you can walk into a reservation only expensive restaurant in hoodie and sweats and not be the odd one out.

Pretention is a lot more than what you mentioned.

Walking into an expensive restaurant like that is a poor reflection upon the individual. It's not pretentious to say that.

 

[Jake_Gyllenhaal69]

Pretention is a lot more than what you mentioned.

Walking into an expensive restaurant like that is a poor reflection upon the individual. It's not pretentious to say that.

I wouldn't personally do that, but I would most definitely recommend Dallas to any of my friends from Nashville or Atlanta that were looking for a similar location in Texas to relocate to lol. Houston might be more pretentious on the machismo side, but external appearance I have to hand it to dallas.

 

[SW15]

There is a bar in Phoenix that has been around since the 1990s that gives off a classy vibe. The bar is upscale and tends to attract an older, more affluent clientele. It is in the Biltmore area of Phoenix, so it's a different vibe than the Old Town Scottsdale vibe.

I never went to MercBar because it's an older crowd, but I'm now likely the age where I could go to MercBar and not be out of place. It's a 35+ kind of place.

Welcome

MercBar Phoenix is an outpost of the original MercBar opened in 1993 on Mercer Street in the heart of Soho, New York City.

www.mercbaraz.com

 

[eli77]

When you mention phoenix when immediately came to mind was the whole casting couch controversy from way back when lol

 

[BeExcellent]

Well all I can say to @SW15 is that his experience of Scottsdale has not been my experience at all. But I know people who are legit, rather than phony poser types. The posers can’t afford the places I frequent on a regular basis, and it does weed the phony’s out, which is good because posers are as obvious as the moon in the sky at these places. I have come back and forth from my other homes in other states for 20+ years with business, have many tenured friends in the area who are well established and understand matters of class & taste and are very open minded on various topics. The weather is fabulous and if you don’t have to do the 9-5 grind you can enjoy the area at your leisure.

In my mind if you are concerned about the 30 or 40K millionaires you are probably in the same places they are. Typically I’m not so I don’t see lots of that.

<Shrugs>

 

[Pierce.Manhammer]

My experience of Scottsdale tends to mirror what @BeExcellent describes above. If you go to a cheap restaurant you’re gunna get cheap food, it’s that simple.

While I did not hobnob with the 1% I was in the 3% crowd both literally and figuratively for a long time. When I first started traveling to the area for business I stayed at the W because of the chains reputation elsewhere, I learned that lesson about old town and that W quickly.

 

[SW15]

@SW15....his experience of Scottsdale has not been my experience at all. But I know people who are legit, rather than phony poser types. The posers can’t afford the places I frequent on a regular basis, and it does weed the phony’s out, which is good because posers are as obvious as the moon in the sky at these places.

In my mind if you are concerned about the 30 or 40K millionaires you are probably in the same places they are. Typically I’m not so I don’t see lots of that.

My experience of Scottsdale tends to mirror what @BeExcellent describes above. If you go to a cheap restaurant you’re gunna get cheap food, it’s that simple.

When I was living in the area, I was in my 20s. A lot of my interactions with women started in Old Town Scottsdale and Mill Avenue (Tempe) bars. That's likely to have skewed my experience negatively. A lot of the Old Town bars I went to in that era have since closed and been replaced by bars bringing in a similar type audience.

At that point in my life, I had heard of non-bar approaching but didn't know how to implement it well. Roosh's "Day Bang" came out after I had left the area and that book helped me a lot with making a concerted effort towards non-bar approaching. I lightly dabbled in some non-bar approaching at Piestewa Peak in that era.

If I had been a primarily non-bar approaching person during the time I lived in Phoenix, it's likely I would have had a different experience. The same outcome likely occurs as I likely would have left the area anyway.

The weather is fabulous and if you don’t have to do the 9-5 grind you can enjoy the area at your leisure.

The weather can be good. Late nights/early mornings can be in the 30s/low 40s. Jackets are needed. Mid-days in the winter are good.

Many of the truly affluent in the area make their money in other parts of US or world and then downshift/retire in Phoenix.

The 9-5 grind in Phoenix is tough. I mentioned this in the first post of the thread previously.

there is not a good base of corporate employment in Metro Phoenix. Few top companies have their headquarters in Metro Phoenix, so a lot of the general business jobs are lackluster. If your job is in the medical industry, Phoenix has a decent employment base. The medical industry has always done quite well in Phoenix due to the fact that the area is a hub for retirees needing medical services.

I'd only consider work in Phoenix now if I had some sort of medical-related job.

Additionally, now I would be more concerned about water-supply related issues than I was when I was there in the 2000s. In the 2000s, it was bothering me to see what I considered as excessive development on the edges/fringes of the metro area. Loop 101 was fairly new then and I wasn't liking that I seeing development north of Loop 101 in North Phoenix around Desert Ridge and in North Scottsdale. I didn't like it that desert land was being torn up for more concrete. I didn't think the level of development I was seeing made environmental sense. The crash of 2007-08 slowed that for a few years but growth eventually resumed.

 

[SW15]

From October 15 to April 15, the late Fall, Winter, and early Spring are reasonably nice. The Phoenix (and Tucson) winters don’t live up to the hype. If you’re out at night in Phoenix in January, expect temperatures in the mid-30s to low 40s at 1-2 AM. That doesn’t happen in Miami or Tampa in the winter. There are still big variations in day and night temperatures in the desert, even though it’s not as drastic as it was 40 years ago when there was less development.

The weather is fabulous and if you don’t have to do the 9-5 grind you can enjoy the area at your leisure.

Bumping this thread as late March is near the end of the season for good weather. April 15 is a good guideline for when good weather in Phoenix starts to end.

One thing that I didn't do in relation to weather there was early morning walking/hiking in the warmer months. The sun rises around 5 AM in the summer, so it would be possible to do some outdoor approaching on Phoenix's most popular hiking trails between 5 AM-7 AM in the warmer months. That would be the only hope for doing outdoor approaching in the warmer periods of the year, which are about to start to get going. Outdoor approaching is difficult anywhere though.