What was American Junkie?
American Junkie was the bar that proved a room on the far edge of the district could run two businesses a day, and then proved how quickly a relaunch can fail.
It opened in late November 2008 at 4363 N 75th Street, on what Phoenix New Times called the eastern edge of Scottsdale’s entertainment district, where the club blocks give way to the quieter end of Old Town. The owners were the same folks, as New Times put it, behind the Pussycat Lounge and Dirty Pretty, two of the decade’s scenester rooms. The concept was a bar and grill with a long menu, sandwiches, pizzas, mac and cheese, baked chicken, roast turkey with stuffing and breakfast, that became, in the paper’s first look, an eatery, lounge, rock spot and danceteria all rolled into one. Old rock gig posters lined the back wall beside a placard of Pablo Escobar. Above the circular bar hung the wheel, a Wheel of Fortune-style contraption that women spun from on top of the bar for a free T-shirt, half off the tab or a dare.
The daytime version won the awards. In 2009 New Times named it Scottsdale’s best sports bar, better than Duke’s, for its screens, drinks, decent menu and modern furniture comfortable enough to watch a game in. The nighttime version drew the little black dresses and the after-work crowd to a DJ and a busy patio.
The end came in two steps in 2014. The bar, reportedly sold to new owners early that year, closed in August for a major overhaul and relaunched on September 6 as Junkie 2.0 under new operating owners. By the end of September it was dark again, and it stayed that way. The Hot Chick opened in the building in 2019. The honest verdict: American Junkie had a sound idea and five good years, and its last month is the cleanest case study Old Town offers in how not to reopen a bar.
Day shift, night shift, and the wheel
Come for the game. The 2009 Best of Phoenix verdict is the one to trust: on a Saturday afternoon American Junkie looked like a trendy nightclub but worked like a sports bar, with well-placed screens, good drinks and a menu you could eat a whole afternoon through. New Times’ only complaint was the name, which made inviting friends to watch football there an awkward sentence. By 2014 the sports identity had a team attached: the Junkie 2.0 relaunch declared the bar the official home of the Seattle Seahawks and Ohio State, with early weekend openings for both.
Stay for the wheel. The prize wheel over the circular bar was the house gimmick from the first week, and the one feature every owner kept. The rules were simple and the prizes were cheap, a T-shirt, 50 percent off the bill, and the point was to get someone standing on the bar. New Times’ Party Crasher column in December 2008 found a pretty raucous place, with the rumors of wild nights true, sorta.
After dark it was a club. The back room, with the gig posters, was the part the regulars liked; a former owner of the defunct club Glam told New Times it was kinda cool. DJs ran the weekends, the patio filled, and the crowd skewed to fashionistas and the white-collar after-work set rather than the bottle-service tables a few blocks west. In its last incarnation the hours were Wednesday through Friday, 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., plus the football mornings.
Mind the geography. 75th Street is east of the Saddlebag and Stetson core, next door to Boondocks, and it has always been where the district’s cheaper, looser rooms live. That is the same reason The Hot Chick works there now, and the reason American Junkie could afford to be a sports bar by day. The Old Town nightlife guide explains how a night moves from this edge into the center.
The relaunch that lasted three weeks
The record of American Junkie’s last year is unusually precise, because New Times covered every step. On August 1, 2014 the paper reported that the bar had closed that week for what its Facebook page called a major overhaul: contractors and audio-video crews inside, new televisions with full 1080 HD video, and flyers for its DJ nights teasing Junkie 2.0. The paper noted that the décor and concept had not changed since the bar opened in late 2008, down to the wheel, and that the owners promised to be back for the Seahawks’ opener on September 4.
The relaunch arrived on schedule. AZ Big Media reported on August 20 that Brandon Butner, as general manager, and Crissty Santana, as marketing director, had come in as new operating owners, a couple who had run Baja Junkie in Los Cabos, with an all-new staff from management to security. The upgrade was 30 HD televisions, two projector screens, a new sound and lighting system and new furniture, with the infamous wheel kept. The soft opening was Thursday, August 21, at 5 p.m.; the grand opening was Saturday, September 6, at 8 p.m. with Playboy DJ Rhiannon, and LMFAO’s DJ Lucky Lou was booked for the 13th.
Then it stopped. On October 21 New Times reported that American Junkie had apparently closed again, dark on weekends for several weeks, with its Twitter account last updated September 28. A former employee said it had closed at the end of September and offered no reason. The paper said the bar had reportedly been sold to new owners earlier in the year and that a Tempe-based company, Meal Ticket, owned it; Meal Ticket did not respond. That is where the published record ends. Some later listings carry the American Junkie name toward 2019, but we have found no report of it reopening, and the building’s next documented tenant is The Hot Chick, which opened in early summer 2019 and won Best New Nightspot that year. Whatever the sequence between the fall of 2014 and 2019, the sources do not describe it.
Honest assessment: American Junkie was a good neighborhood sports bar with a club’s night shift, which is a format Old Town has since perfected, and it belongs on every bar and club in Scottsdale as the Pussycat team’s most practical idea. Its end, a sale, a summer remodel, a splashy relaunch and a closure inside a month, is the part worth remembering: a 2.0 is still the same address, and the 2010s district was already moving west to Saddlebag Trail.