What is Dirty Dogg Saloon?
Every city with a Bike Week needs one bar where the bikes can park in front without irony. In Scottsdale that bar is in a strip mall next to an Oregano’s. Dirty Dogg Saloon, at 10409 N Scottsdale Road, sits on the east side of the road just south of Shea Boulevard, a few doors from Ernie’s Inn, and it has been, since at least 2005, the city’s rock ‘n’ roll biker bar: dark, loud, cheap and decorated with hundreds of pieces of women’s lingerie hanging from the ceiling.
Phoenix New Times gave it a Best of Phoenix award that year, Best Place to Watch Bikers Break-Dance, and in the citation made the point every later visit has repeated: the Harleys out front belong mostly to middle-aged and thirtysomething professionals, and under the leather are “biker b-boys who just wanna bust some moves.” The paper’s Night Owl columns in 2010 and 2011 filled in the room: the lingerie, a giant buffalo head, a jackalope by the smoking patio, a mini-motorcycle behind the bar, dollar bills behind the neon beer signs, ’80s metal on the jukebox, Queensrÿche and the Scorpions and Mötley Crüe, and a weekly Wild & Wet Wednesday wet-T-shirt contest at midnight with $800 in prize money and dancers pouring water from a metal tub on the bar. “All the trappings of a strip club,” the listing says, without the nudity or the champagne room, and cheaper.
That was fifteen years ago, and the bar’s own description today is milder: a rock ‘n’ roll themed spot that caters to bikers, “a local watering hole vibe on weekdays and wilder parties and events on weekends,” with lively, outspoken bartenders. It is open Tuesday through Friday from 3 p.m. and Saturday from 1 p.m., to 2 a.m., closed Sunday and Monday, with happy hour 3 to 8 and live local bands on the calendar. Nobody has published who opened it or when.
Honest verdict: the Dogg is the Shea Corridor’s party bar, Ernie’s is its dive, and the two share a parking lot, which makes this corner the best two-stop night north of Old Town.
Weekday bar, weekend bar
Know which one you are walking into. Tuesday through Thursday the saloon is a neighborhood room: regulars at the pool table and shuffleboard, darts in the back, TouchTunes on the jukebox, the 3-to-8 happy hour and bartenders with time to talk. Friday and Saturday the bikes line the lot, a band loads in, the crowd runs from leather to fraternity and the volume goes up. New Times’ 2011 Rockabilly Sunday review found “bar flies, bikers, and a few rockabilly fans” from their early 20s to mid 40s, mostly in black and jeans; that is still the weekend mix, minus the Sunday, which the bar now takes off.
Happy hour and specials. Happy hour runs Tuesday through Saturday, 3 to 8 p.m. Saturdays in the fall add all-day drink specials for college football on the TVs. The 2019 New Times dining guide mentioned Whiskey Wednesday and Sunday Bloody Sunday; the current calendar is on the bar’s site and Facebook page, and it changes. Prices are not published, but the rounds have always been cheap: $2 PBRs on Mondays and $4 Jack cocktails on band Thursdays in the old listing, $2 Tecates and $3 Sailor Jerry shots in the 2010 and 2011 reviews. Our happy hour guide covers the corner.
Bands. Live local rock is the weekend draw, historically on Thursdays and now wherever the calendar puts it; the Rockabilly Sundays of 2010 and 2011 brought Germany’s Booze Bombs and locals like the Rhythm Dragons for no cover. The live music guide has the other rooms; this one and Handlebar J a half mile north are the corridor’s two.
Bike Week. Each spring, when Arizona Bike Week fills WestWorld, the Dogg is the listed biker-friendly bar for Scottsdale, with specials and extended hours, and runs its own Spring Fling for riders who stay on. Expect the lot to be bikes only.
Logistics. No kitchen; outside food is allowed and the Oregano’s in the same strip is the usual source. The smoking patio is out back by the jackalope. Photography has not been welcome inside since at least 2010. Rideshare on weekends; the lot belongs to the bikes.
Lingerie on the ceiling at Scottsdale and Shea
The corner of Scottsdale Road and Shea has been a nightlife corner since Bobby McGee’s opened its costumed disco on the northeast side in 1971 and Ernie’s opened its dark bar across the road in 1973. Dirty Dogg Saloon is the youngest of the corner’s survivors and the only one whose origin nobody has written down. Phoenix New Times’ earliest mention is the 2005 Best of Phoenix award; the bar already had hundreds of bras and panties on the ceiling by then, and we will leave the guess at its age there.
What the record does show is a bar that figured out its act early and ran it hard through the 2000s and early 2010s. The 2010 Night Owl column is the fullest portrait: a strip-mall room with London Gold and Oregano’s for neighbors, a party that happened “on the bar,” seven contestants at midnight, $800 in prizes, Harleys outside owned by businessmen and inside “mostly young, muscular college students.” The 2011 Rockabilly Sunday review called it a dim room “with all the trimmings of a biker bar,” “sexy/sleazy depending on how you feel about a ceiling covered in lingerie.” The 2005 award had already made the real joke: the bikers were professionals.
The bar has aged into something calmer. The website that once hosted a photo and video gallery now sells a calendar and a job application, the contests have left the public schedule, and the pitch is weekday watering hole, weekend party. The Dogg’s survival on one of the most expensive corners in the city, through a recession and a pandemic, says the formula holds. The listing that New Times updated in 2021 called it simply “the type of biker hangout with sexy waitresses and bartenders,” with an “at-times rowdy crowd,” and put it on the same page as the corner’s steakhouses.
Its place in Scottsdale’s bar history is as the north’s answer to the Buffalo Chip in Cave Creek: the one room between the 101 and the Phoenix line where a bike is the expected vehicle. The dive bar list sends you to Ernie’s next door first; the list of every bar and club in Scottsdale puts the Dogg right beside it. Honest assessment: it is not a subtle bar, and on a Saturday it is not for talking. On a Wednesday at 5, under the buffalo, with a cheap beer and a game of shuffleboard, it is a better neighborhood bar than most of Scottsdale would admit.