In March 2014, I joined a meetup hike in the White Tank Mountain Regional Park, on the far west side of Phoenix. I didn’t know anyone in the group, but as one does, you end up chatting with other hike participants. After making my way through conversations with perhaps a dozen hikers, I ended up chatting with one of the last few I hadn’t yet met. Her name was Carey.
At some point in the pleasant but forgettably standard conversation, I mentioned that I had a bit of a drive home, as I lived across town. She said that she did too.
I told her that I lived over in the PV (Paradise Valley) area. She said, “yeah, me too.”
I said “Oh yeah? I’m near 40th St and Cactus.” She said, “Me too.”
“Huh. I live in Greenspoint Apartments,” I said after a short pause, starting to wonder if she was just messing with me.
“Me too,” she responded, starting to wonder if I had been stalking her.
“Wow, really??! I’m in Building 8.”
“Me too…”
“I’m in 8102,” I said, somewhat incredulously.
“I’m in 8301!” she exclaimed.
I had somehow met a neighbor who lived two floors above me, and used the stairway that spilled out in front of my door. She and her husband hadn’t live there for long, but we had yet to meet each other at the apartment complex. Instead, it was on a 10-mile hike, arranged by strangers on the internet, on the far side of the Valley a solid 45 miles away.
We exchanged information and ran into each other a day or two later in the complex. I met her husband, also named Scott, later that week. We became friends.
For those who’d like more friends, here’s an important life lesson: if you want to make new friends, you have to go do things with people you don’t already know 😉
Carey ended up joining a comedy troupe that rehearsed on Sunday nights. It didn’t take long for Scott and I to start hanging out on those evenings. We’d often wander a few minutes over to an unremarkable dive bar named Paradise Lounge. It was awkwardly located in an explicable corner of a strip mall, tucked away behind a Baskin Robbins and an alterations shop—a location so obscured that it’s amazing anyone ever found the place.
Inside, it featured…well, just dive bar stuff. A basic bar, random stuff adorning the bar wall, (presumably stale) bags of chips, a Golden Tee golf game, some soft tip dart boards, a few small TVs, some tables. Bad decor, plenty of innuendo jokes scattered about, a curtain separating the bar from the so-called ”kitchen.” It was dark inside, the tables were wobbly, the chairs were uncomfortable, and yet, it was home on Sunday nights for quite some time.
We’d “go for the one” …and leave hours later. Sometimes, many, many hours later. We always started with a pitcher of Kilt Lifter (the local craft beer you could find on tap basically anywhere in the state), occasionally migrating to other options from there.
One of our regular bartenders was in her late 40s, and routinely wore a very loose neck t-shirt with no bra—and whether intentionally or not, gave a complete showing of her significant and sagging boobs every time she leaned over to take your empty glass or wipe the bar top. This was not exactly what anyone wanted to see, it was just part of the required experience—an unavoidable side effect of drinking there.
There were plenty of regulars—really, a place like this could only survive because of regulars, locals for whom this was simply the closest bar. While we would make bar conversation with others, we never developed any lasting bar friendships, probably due to our odd Sunday night timing.
We have many pretty good Paradise Lounge stories, and probably just as many amazing stories that we don’t remember, given the circumstances. After a year or two, I met Jen and moved south to Ahwatukee, and Scott and Carey built a house in the north Valley. Our treks to Paradise Lounge were largely behind us.
We remained friends, of course. A big hockey fan, Scott got a part-time job for the Coyotes as the guy in the penalty box who opened and closed the door for players. Pretty cool if you want to sit up close and personal with some of your hockey idols. Eventually, he parlayed that into a full-time gig with the NHL, running all the officiating cameras and related tech for refs and coaches for several arenas around the West.
He also joined us as season ticket holders for ASU football, tailgating for as many of the games as his hockey travels schedule could allow, and joining us for game watching parties for the weeks the team was away.
We also managed a number of day trips together, camping and backpacking trips, and other adventures. Somewhat infamously, we took a long road trip together to Bighorn Canyon in Montana just so I could mark off that park unit late in my national parks quest.
Amid all these other adventures and get togethers, Paradise Lounge faded into the distance, now just a cherished memory we’d occasionally reference in conversation.
With the Coyotes moving to Salt Lake, Scott and Carey needed to move back into an NHL market. They’re heading to Denver later this month. But before they could leave, Scott and I needed one last visit to Paradise Lounge, the place where our friendship really blossomed.
So on Friday night, we finally made our triumphant return.
A half-decade had passed since I had been to Paradise Lounge, but not much had changed inside. Well, except that they somehow did not have Kilt Lifter on tap anymore, which was disappointing for sentimental reasons. I didn’t recognize the bartenders, or any of the patrons, for that matter. The chairs were worse than I remembered. A few of the decorations behind the bar were familiar, a few were more recent additions. The overall vibe had not changed one bit though.
We spent a few hours there, but were both reminded that there are many better bars out there. In fact, I was a bit surprised that we had enjoyed it so much back in the day.
But it wasn’t the place, of course, that had made it so enjoyable. It was the simple ritual of hanging out with a buddy and enjoying a few hours of carefree chatter over some beers, immune to the stresses of the upcoming work week. Paradise Lounge was not an actual paradise, but it was a temporary escape nonetheless.