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Best Car

Tesla

In case you haven't heard, green is the new black and Tesla is the talk of the town. Ever since Arizona entered the running alongside Nevada, Texas, and New Mexico for the rising company's future 10 million-square-foot gigafactory, this luxury electric car has been receiving accolades from big-spending auto connoisseurs and cajoling congressmen alike. And though Arizona did not get the proposed $4 billion to $5 billion project (which will employ roughly 6,500 workers in Reno), thanks to our inability to pass a bill allowing Tesla to actually sell its coveted vehicles directly to the consumers (way to go, Legislature), it's not stopping shoppers at Scottsdale Fashion Square from stopping by the Tesla showroom to ooh and aah and potentially order online. Saving the environment has never been so stylish.

Best Bike Shop

Slippery Pig Bicycles

We'll fess up to a smidgen of bias on this one — Slippery Pig, our favorite bike shop, is right next to one of our favorite hangouts, Lux. But the Pig's a superstar in its own right — it's no customer hog, mooching off walk-over traffic from the busy cafe. About 10 years ago, the bike store came into new ownership and stopped selling classic bikes (remember Casey's Classics?) and started selling the sort that cyclists drool over. Though smaller than some other Valley shops, the interior's laid out in East Coast, pack-it-in style, complete with repair shop in the back. Specialized brand bikes are in heavy supply, but that's not a bad thing. We saw numerous mountain bikes priced at more than three grand — and looking like they're worth every penny. A decent array of fixies, snow bikes, hybrids, and cruisers complements the high-end mountain and road bikes that make up most of the stock. A manager tells us they sometimes take bicycles to sell on consignment, meaning you should keep an eye out for a good deal on a fancy used bike. It also rents bikes and carries a fine selection of bike apparel, gear, and parts. If we weren't so amped on coffee every time we go in, we'd browse all day.

Best Running Store

Road Runner Sports Scottsdale

The first thing you need to do before taking up running is get yourself a good pair of shoes fitted to your running style. At Road Runner Sports, the staff will put you on a treadmill and observe how your feet hit the ground to diagnose whether you overpronate, underpronate, or have a neutral foot strike. Then the fun of picking out shoes begins. Good running shoes can be pricey, so keep an eye out for special deals on "endangered" shoes being replaced with newer models. Plus, if you or someone in your family has a VIP membership, you'll get an extra 10 percent off and a 90-day trial period to test out your new wheels.

Best Audiophile Equipment

Arizona Hi-Fi

Lots of ink has been spilled about the "vinyl renaissance," but the truth is, if you're playing your wax on a cheap all-in-one turntable/stereo combo, you might as well be listening on your laptop speakers. That's where Arizona Hi-Fi comes in, offering primo turntables, tube-driven amplifiers, headphones, and more. It's gear for the kind of folks who think of music as an investment, more than just an accessory, and it's right next to Stinkweeds, where there's plenty of high-quality titles to try out on your swanky new turntable and speakers.

Best Record Store for CDs

Stinkweeds

Everything about Stinkweeds reeks — get it? — of professionalism. The tidy store fits thousands of mostly indie and hard-to-find treasures into a tiny space that packs an astounding number of albums per square foot without feeling particularly crowded. Indie music mags, books, and 'zines fill the store's back wall, and T-shirts and vinyl line the store's walls. CDs take up the bulk of the store, and the racks are filled with everything from ABBA to Xiu Xiu. The store is basically everything you'd expect from owner Kimber Lanning, an icon in the Phoenix music scene. Her hands-on involvement in promoting local businesses and musicians dates back decades.

Best Record Store for Vinyl

Revolver Records

The best record stores have something beyond albums in their bins. The music playing on the speakers, the posters and albums chosen to decorate the walls, the person behind the counter — when you enter a great record store, the sum is greater than the parts, and it's immediately apparent. Whatever that impossible-to-define ambiance is, Revolver Records' downtown Phoenix location has it. You walk in and you know you're among friends, musical and otherwise. You can flip through the racks and find rarities from musicians you'd forgotten you loved, strike up a conversation with the employees and get a non-judgmental recommendation to help expand your music tastes, or stop by on First Friday to hear a local band or two. Do any of it and you'll get an idea why Revolver is consistently the best of Phoenix.

Best Dollar Store

Dollar Tree

Dollar Tree is to dollar stores what Saks Fifth Avenue is to department stores. You won't find any seconds here; no discontinued crap from full-price shops or expired lunch meat or unidentifiable things tossed randomly into torn-open boxes set on the floor. Dollar Tree is the cleanest, best-organized place in town for inexpensive stuff you'd pay five times as much for elsewhere if dollar stores weren't a thing. This is a great place to take the kids when they have holiday shopping to do (we hand them 10 bucks and let them go wild) and even better for name-brand soaps and cleaning supplies (we recently bought Glade Solid twofers — for a buck, natch) and storage tubs and baby toys and kitchen supplies and fake Barbies and and and . . . Hey, anybody got a buck we can borrow?

Best Shopping Co-op

Double Nickels Collective

Double Nickels Collective is a one-stop shop for things you had no idea you needed. And that makes the record store/vintage boutique/comic book shop/stereo equipment emporium one of our favorite places to swing by on a mellow weekend afternoon. Not just a destination for browse-happy shoppers, it's also home to one of the Valley's most beloved indie music institutions: Ghost of Eastside Records. Stinkweeds, Stereophonic High Fidelity, and some of the Valley's most avid record collectors also stock shelves at the collective, which is just a few doors down from Yucca Tap Room. Apart from audio selections, shoppers will find Ben Funke's funky throwback fashion under the Meat Market Vintage banner and book selections from Ash Avenue Comics.

Best Multimedia Resale

Zia Record Exchange

Open less than a year, the spacious Zia on Mill Avenue and Southern — one of four locations in the Phoenix area, including a new one in the East Valley — is our favorite purveyor of new and used games, DVDs, books, magazines, toys, CDs, and vinyl. With thousands of square feet to roam, plus a fine selection of pop culture tchotchkes and bins full of cheap books, it's the place for one-stop holiday shopping. It's also a great place to while away the afternoon, flipping through albums you used to like, finding new music you didn't know you liked, and comparing notes on upcoming shows and releases with the friendly staff.

Best Bookstore

Changing Hands Bookstore

Call us shallow or impossibly snotty — we always judge a book by its cover and a city by its bookstore. Portland has Powell's, New York's got The Strand, even Venice Beach has an amazing independent bookstore, Small World Books, right on the main drag between the T-shirt shops and the henna stands. But when it comes to our town, things have been awkward: For many years, the city of Phoenix really didn't have a bookstore, not a legit indie with new titles and author events. Finally, the day came — in late May, to be exact — and we learned we are not alone in our sentiments, as eager customers flooded the new Changing Hands, housed in a gorgeous space in a development called The Newton in the space formerly occupied by the legendary restaurant Beefeaters. And with that, Phoenix had arrived. Tempe remains lucky as ever — the East Valley outpost of CHB is still running strong and the bookstore will continue to host events all over town.

Best Of Phoenix®

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