What it is
Cobra Arcade Bar is the arcade bar on the corner of 2nd Street and Roosevelt in downtown Phoenix, a 3,300-square-foot room lit mostly by the screens of several dozen restored arcade cabinets and a row of pinball machines along the wall. The bar sells themed cocktails, local beer and shots; the games run on tokens; the crowd is downtown’s twenties and thirties, with a few people old enough to have played the cabinets the first time around. It opened in the middle of the 2010s as Roosevelt Row went from galleries and empty lots to a real district, added a second location on Congress Street in Tucson, and has kept the same formula: open daily at 4 PM, last call at 2 AM, and the lineup of games changing often enough that regulars check the website.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Scottsdale’s bars are lounges, patios, clubs and a few honest dives, and our nightlife and dive bars notes cover them well. What Scottsdale does not have is a place where the drink is secondary to the thing you are doing, which is why groups keep ending up in Old Town’s bars with nothing to do but drink. Cobra is the alternative for one night: an hour or two of pinball and old cabinets between dinner on Roosevelt Row and a late jazz set at The Nash around the corner, 22 minutes from Old Town and a block from the light rail. It is not a destination on its own. It is the piece that makes a downtown night work for a group that does not want to sit.
The practical version
Open daily 4 PM to 2 AM, 21 and over. Tokens from a machine near the door; buy more than you think. No kitchen, so eat on Roosevelt Row first. Street and lot parking, or the Roosevelt and Central light rail stop a block west, which is how you should arrive. Weeknights before 8 for the games; Friday and Saturday after 9 for the scene. Check the website for the game list and the Sunday Cobra Cantina afternoons.
When to go
Weeknights, early, if you came to play. Tuesday through Thursday after 6 the room is half full, the pinball row is open and the cabinets you want are free; by 9 on a Friday every machine has a line and the room is loud enough that the games are an excuse. First Fridays, when the Roosevelt Row art walk brings thousands of people to the street outside, are the busiest nights of the month and the hardest to park for. Sunday afternoons run a Cobra Cantina theme with free entry and drink specials, a quieter version of the bar that works well as a day-drinking stop before an evening game. Summer is fine; it is a dark, cold room, which is exactly what downtown Phoenix needs in July.
What to do here
Play. The cabinets lean to the classics of the 1980s and 1990s, fighting games, shooters, racers and the four-player beat-‘em-ups that groups fight over, and the lineup changes; the pinball row runs from older tables to brand-new releases, and the new ones draw the crowd. The drinks menu is themed, sweet-leaning and cheap by Scottsdale standards; the beer list is local; the shots are the group’s problem. Nobody is here for the cocktails, and that is the point.
Eat before or after. Roosevelt Row’s restaurants are within three blocks, and Matt’s Big Breakfast is across the street for the morning. For the rest of the night, The Nash is around the corner with late jazz sets and no cover, which is the best possible change of pace.
With kids
No; 21 and over at all hours. Teenagers who want arcades have the East Valley’s family arcades, and the Roosevelt Row galleries are a block away for the hour the adults are inside.
The neighborhood
Roosevelt Row, downtown’s arts district, murals and galleries and small restaurants along Roosevelt from Central to 7th Street. Cobra sits at its western end near the light rail, in a block that also holds coffee, tacos and the jazz club, which makes it the easiest downtown district for a Scottsdale visitor to do on foot after arriving by train.
The story
The arcade bar was a 2010s idea that arrived in Phoenix as Roosevelt Row was becoming a neighborhood. The district had spent the 2000s as galleries in old bungalows and vacant lots waiting for towers; by the middle of the following decade the light rail had been running down Central for several years, apartment buildings were going up along Roosevelt, and the street had enough people on it at night to support bars that were not galleries. Cobra opened in a 3,300-square-foot space at 2nd and Roosevelt with a few dozen restored cabinets and a row of pinball machines, and became one of the anchors of the district’s night. A second location followed on Congress Street in downtown Tucson, in the middle of that city’s own historic bar strip. The Phoenix room has kept adding and rotating machines, including new pinball releases as they come out, and runs themed nights, Sunday afternoons among them, to keep the regulars coming back on the quiet days.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s own nightlife runs on the Old Town entertainment district, a few blocks of clubs and patios that fill with bachelor and bachelorette parties every weekend of the season; our bachelor party note plans that weekend honestly. Those groups keep discovering the same thing, that a night of bars with nothing to do but drink gets expensive and shapeless by midnight, and Cobra is the downtown Phoenix answer to that problem: a loud, cheap hour with a purpose, 22 minutes away and a block from a train.
Getting there
From Old Town, west on Indian School Road or McDowell Road to Central Avenue, south to Roosevelt Street, then east two blocks to 2nd Street; the bar is at the corner, with the entrance on 2nd. Street parking on Roosevelt and the numbered streets, plus pay lots, all of which fill on First Fridays. The Roosevelt and Central light rail stop is a block west, and the train is the right way to do this bar; our getting around note has the late-night schedule and the rideshare math back to Scottsdale, and our late-night food note has what is open when you get there.