What it is
Zipps is the sports bar Arizona made for itself, and the Arcadia Zipps is one of fourteen of them. It opened on September 3, 2009 as the chain’s seventh location, in a brick-walled room in the Gaslight Square strip at 36th Street and Indian School Road that a Corona Cantina had occupied for a few months and given up. The formula arrived intact: 27 televisions, burgers, wings, sandwiches and pizzas, pitchers priced so a softball team can split them, and the golden wing sauce that is the one Zipps item the rest of the Valley has spent thirty years trying to copy.
This is not the original Zipps. The chain has been family-owned and operated since 1995 and grew out of central Phoenix; Arcadia came along fourteen years later. The one Scottsdale knows is the Old Town Zipps on Camelback Road, and this is its twin three miles west, with Arcadia’s regulars in place of Scottsdale’s.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Mostly you should not. Zipps is Zipps, and the Old Town room is closer. The Arcadia one earns a visit in two cases: when you are already in the neighborhood on a game day and want a cheap table with every screen, and when the Old Town room is standing-room on a Saturday in October, which it will be, and you want the same wings with a chair. Our happy hour guide has Zipps down as the city’s cheap-pitcher default; this is where to find the same deal when the city’s version is full.
The practical version
Twelve minutes west of Old Town on Indian School Road, north side at 36th Street, with the strip’s own parking. Open daily from eleven into the night, with weekend brunch from nine when football is on. Price level one, which is rarer every year. Walk in; nobody books a Zipps. Wings golden, pitcher of whatever is cheapest, and leave before the fourth quarter if you want dinner at the 40th Street restaurants two blocks east.
When to go
Fall weekends. Arizona State on Saturday, the Cardinals on Sunday, brunch from nine on both, and the room full by kickoff of people who walked over. That is the restaurant at full purpose.
Spring training afternoons. The Cactus League is on the screens in March and the room is half empty on weekday afternoons, which makes it a good place to watch the game you did not get tickets to.
Any weeknight it is a neighborhood bar with a lot of televisions, which is a reasonable thing to be. The dive bars note counts the Old Town Zipps as borderline; this one is a shade more respectable and a shade less fun.
What to order
Wings, golden. The house sauce is a buttery, vinegary buffalo variant, not very hot, that Zipps has served since before most of its customers were born; it is the chain’s one real contribution to Arizona food and the thing to judge it by. The hot version is for people who think golden is a compromise; it is not. After that the menu is burgers, sandwiches and bar pizzas, identical to every other Zipps and priced to match. Pitchers are the way to buy beer here; ask the price before ordering glasses.
With kids
Early in the day, yes; Zipps is a family-owned grill as much as a bar and the Arcadia room sees strollers at Saturday brunch. After dark on a game night it is a bar.
The neighborhood
Gaslight Square is a short strip of neighborhood bars at 36th and Indian School, and the closest thing Arcadia has to a bar row; Beckett’s Table is one block east, the 40th Street restaurant cluster four blocks east, and the Arizona Canal path runs a few blocks north. For a stag weekend based in Scottsdale, the bachelor party note sends you to the Old Town Zipps; this is the backup when that one is overrun.
The story
Zipps is one of those Arizona institutions whose history the company itself keeps vague: the website says family-owned and operated since 1995 and fourteen locations, and the rest is told by the rooms. The brand predates the family; the Old Town location’s own guide on this site traces the name to the 1980s. What the current owners did was make it a neighborhood chain rather than a strip-mall one, opening one room at a time in the places Phoenix people actually live, Bethany Home, Shea, Ahwatukee, Mill Avenue, and keeping the price and the wings constant across all of them.
Arcadia got its Zipps in September 2009, in the depth of the recession, when the Phoenix New Times noted that a Corona Cantina had come and gone in the Gaslight Square space within months and asked whether lucky number seven would stick. It did. The room opened with 27 televisions and 11 AM to 2 AM hours, food until midnight, brunch on Saturdays from nine with Sundays added once the NFL season began, and a menu of burgers, wings, sandwiches and pizzas that matched the other six. In 2016 the New Times named Zipps the Valley’s best sports bar, by which time the chain was at a dozen locations, and the Arcadia room had become the neighborhood’s game-day default.
The Scottsdale connection
The Old Town Zipps on Camelback Road is the one that matters to this site, and the two rooms are the same bar divided by a city line and three miles of Indian School Road. Arcadia’s east end is in Scottsdale, so the people at the next table may well have driven over from the same zip code you did.
Getting there
Indian School Road west from Scottsdale Road, about five miles, across the 64th Street line and past the 44th and 40th Street clusters to 36th Street; the strip is on the north side with its own lot. From the Camelback-corridor resorts, 44th Street south to Indian School and right. It is a rideshare trip home; the getting around note covers that.