What it is
Valley Bar is the music club in the basement of a three-story mid-century office building on Central Avenue near Monroe Street, a building old Phoenix knew as The Hub, five blocks north of the arena and the ballpark. You find it by walking into the alley on the building’s north side and down a flight of stairs; there is no storefront on Central. Below are 8,000 square feet in three rooms: the Music Hall, a stage and a floor holding about 250 people, where the touring indie, punk, hip-hop and comedy acts play; the Rose Room, a cocktail lounge named for Rose Mofford, the beehived Arizona governor of the late 1980s, with drinks named for Arizona politicians and a free early show most nights; and the Game Room, with pool tables, pinball, skeeball and shuffleboard. A kitchen feeds all three. Over the main bar hangs a mobile depicting Winnie Ruth Judd, Phoenix’s 1931 trunk murderess, which sets the tone.
Charlie Levy opened it in May 2015. Levy runs Stateside Presents, the Valley’s independent concert promoter, and co-owns the Crescent Ballroom a few blocks northwest, and Valley Bar was built to take the shows a size smaller than the Crescent, the bands a year before they fill it. Phoenix New Times has named it Best Rock Club three times and, in a moment of honesty about the competition, Best Basement Bar.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Scottsdale’s live music runs to cover bands in resort bars, a very good jazz room and country at the honky-tonks, and the note is honest about the gap: there is no room in the city where a touring independent act plays to 250 people who came to listen. Valley Bar is that room for the whole Valley, and it is a bar you would go to with no show on, which is more than most venues can say.
The practical version
Twenty-five minutes from Old Town via the 202 to 7th Street and Washington; downtown garages or, better, the train to Washington/Central a block away. Music Hall tickets ahead through the site; the Rose Room, the Game Room, trivia and the late DJ sets are usually free. Shows start around 7 or 8, the free Rose Room set around 6:30, and the bar runs late. Cocktails are priced like a bar, not a venue.
When to go
Any night a band you have heard of is in the Music Hall, which, in a 250-capacity room, means a band you will not hear of for another year. Friday and Saturday, when the headliner lets out around 10 and the free 130 Club DJ sets in the main room run past midnight. A weeknight with no plan, for the free Rose Room show at 6:30, trivia in the Music Hall, or Latin night in the Game Room, which in October 2026 was selling out on a Thursday.
Summer is a good season for a basement; the building above it keeps the heat off.
How to spend an evening
- 6:30, the Rose Room. The free early show, a cocktail named for a politician you have never heard of, the Judd mobile over the bar.
- 7:30 or 8, the Music Hall. The ticketed show; the room is small enough that the back is close.
- Between sets, the Game Room. Pool, pinball, skeeball; the shuffleboard table is the one with a wait.
- After, the main room again. The weekend DJ sets are free and the bar does not rush you.
- Out through the alley, to the train a block away or a rideshare called from Washington Street rather than the alley.
Eating
The kitchen does bar food properly and the hours run with the bar. Pizzeria Bianco on Heritage Square is six blocks east and closes at 9; The Churchill’s container courtyard is a fifteen-minute walk north toward Roosevelt Row for an earlier, bigger dinner. Both have guides in this section.
The neighborhood
Valley Bar sits in the few blocks of Central between Washington and Van Buren that are the oldest surviving commercial downtown, with the 1920s office buildings and the Orpheum Theatre within a short walk, the Suns arena and Chase Field five blocks south, and Roosevelt Row a mile north. It is where a downtown night ends up, which is the point of a basement.
The story
Charlie Levy spent the 2000s as the Valley’s independent concert promoter, booking the bands the big companies ignored into whatever rooms would have them, and in 2011 he opened the Crescent Ballroom a few blocks from here and gave downtown Phoenix its first good mid-sized venue in a generation. The Crescent worked, and it created the problem Valley Bar solved: the bands too small for the Crescent, and the nights a downtown crowd wanted a bar with a show rather than a show with a bar. In 2015 Levy, with Tucker Woodbury, who had helped open the Crescent, and a group of Stateside Presents staff and friends, leased the basement of the old Hub building on Central and opened Valley Bar in May.
The design was a set of jokes about Arizona that turned out to be a design. The Rose Room took Governor Rose Mofford’s name and her beehive; the cocktails took the names of the state’s politicians, flattering and otherwise; the mobile over the bar took Winnie Ruth Judd, the 1931 murderess whose trunks of body parts are Phoenix’s most famous crime; the kitchen opened with a hot-dog operation; and the entrance stayed in the alley, which the Viva PHX festival had already christened Punk Rock Alley. Underneath the jokes was a serious room with good sound, and the bookers filled it. The Best Rock Club awards from Phoenix New Times began in 2016 and have kept coming, and when the paper invented Best Place to Drink Underground in 2022 and Best Basement Bar in 2023, there was not much of a contest.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale and Levy’s venues divide the Valley’s music by temperament: the resort town has the jazz room, the honky-tonks and the hotel lounges, and downtown Phoenix has the touring acts and the basements, and the live music note explains why that is unlikely to change. Scottsdale’s own underground tradition is the speakeasy and the dive bar, both of which Valley Bar resembles more than it resembles a concert hall, which is why Scottsdale drinkers who find it tend to come back without checking who is playing.
Getting there
From Old Town, Loop 202 west to the 7th Street exit, south to Washington Street and west to Central; the building is on the east side of Central just north of Washington, and the alley entrance is on its north side. Twenty-five minutes with no traffic, more on a Suns or Diamondbacks night when the whole district fills. Park in a downtown garage, or drive fifteen minutes to a light-rail station in Tempe and ride to Washington/Central, a block away, which is how most of the east side does it; our getting around note covers the late-night rideshare math.