Readers' Choice: Zia Record Exchange
Readers' Choice: Zia Record Exchange
But MacAlpine's old-fashioned soda shop, a local landmark since 1928, at least makes every Friday night all right for swingers. Using a neighboring former antiques shop for its ballroom, this retro-for-real restaurant offers a sublime dinner and dancing package for anyone who truly wants to swing back in time. For $15, guests can enjoy a burger and a malt while twirling on authentic soda counter stools, then do some twirling of their own on the dance floor. Dance lessons led by members of the Arizona Swing Network -- and all the frothy milk shakes you can consume for the rest of the night -- are included.
Readers' Choice: The Bash on Ash
Readers' Choice: Nita's Hideaway
Readers' Choice: Rhythm Room
Readers' Choice: Zia Record Exchange
We're especially blessed in the Valley to have a classic rock station that appreciates the serenity of the mad-ass car bop to the nth degree. KSLX is heavy on the big chunky-butt riff and on the weirdness that is psychedelia. For instance, there can't possibly be another station on Earth that plays more Eric Burden and the Animals or Electric Light Orchestra than our very own baby-boom-honoring programmers at KSLX. If you catch the DJs at their most tender (or perhaps most bored) moments -- say at 3 a.m. or 2:15 p.m. -- you might hear something truly double-take-inducing -- 10-minute prog-rock opuses by Traffic or even Elton John, or perhaps album cuts that almost never get airtime (think the totality of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours).
Readers' Choice for Best Radio Station -- Rock: KUPD-FM 97.9
Monroe's has the underground part worked out -- can you recall the last club in the Valley that's a walk-down? We can't, either. Using this subterranean advantage, it's possible to slip in at happy hour and feel you're in a blues cellar in St. Louis where the 115-degree sun can't catch you crying in your beer. Monroe's has played host to bands like Hot Ice and Morgan City General, a blues duo from Iowa that plays there every Wednesday night, but to anyone whose introduction to the blues was the Robert Johnson boxed set, it's the romantic notion of a musician with one hell-hounded trail that brings people to Monroe's modest suds cellar.