Jacob Tyler Dunn

Palo Verde Lounge

Neighborhood: Tempe

1015 W. Broadway Rd. Tempe, AZ 85282

480-334-7567

Website

A perplexing question is, "What’s the crowd like at Palo Verde Lounge?" All kinds park themselves at this dark, cash-only Tempe bar: construction workers in hi-vis gear at a prolonged happy hour, weekly regulars from the neighborhood, new drinkers from nearby ASU. Like the clientele, the atmosphere can be hard to predict. Some nights you may walk into a quiet bar filled with laid-back folks nursing beers, shooting pool and watching TV while “Neon Moon” plays serenely over the speakers. Other nights you’ll find a packed bike rack outside and a DJ presiding over a full dance floor inside. And then there are those evenings when you’ll have to squeeze past a metal band unloading gear in the parking lot in order to enter. The man who oversees it all, Chuck Marthaler, is a former patron turned bartender turned owner, and he retains a keen sense of what drinkers are looking for in their local bar: cheap drinks, poured strong, by a bartender who’s quick to commit a regular’s order to memory.

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