What is Ernie’s Inn?
The corner of Scottsdale Road and Shea Boulevard is, in Phoenix New Times’ words, “a history lesson as much as it is a dining district,” and the oldest lesson on it is a bar. Ernie’s Inn, at 10443 N Scottsdale Road on the east side of the road just south of Shea, has been a family-owned sports and karaoke bar since 1973, and the paper’s observation that “it hasn’t been through much change since then by the looks of it” is the kindest and most accurate review it has ever received.
What it offers is simple. The doors open at 2 p.m. and close at 2 a.m. every day, 21 and over. Karaoke runs every night from 8 to 2. There is a pool table, darts, shuffleboard and a wall of TVs for every game, with NFL Sunday Ticket and RedZone on Sundays and Big Ten and SEC games on Saturdays. There is an internet jukebox with, New Times noted, a weakness for Blue Öyster Cult. And there is the enclosed patio with a partly open ceiling, which lets you smoke indoors, see the stars and hear the singing at the same time. The 2021 Best Dive Bar citation called it “a rare dive so far north in Scottsdale,” which is the whole appeal in one line.
The kitchen is the one thing that has changed. For most of its life Ernie’s ran an old-school restaurant with what the paper described as a Maryland-seafood-style menu, tuna melts and club sandwiches. Listings in 2025 and 2026 say the kitchen has been closed for about a year, and the bar’s own site, which calls the place “Scottsdale’s BEST Neighborhood Sports & Karaoke Bar,” mentions no food. We would not count on it coming back; the bar does fine without it.
Honest verdict: Ernie’s is the only true dive on the Shea Corridor, it has been that for fifty years, and the family that owns it has resisted every reason to make it anything else. It leads the northern half of our dive bar list.
Karaoke, happy hour and the patio
Put your name in early. Karaoke starts at 8 and runs to close every night, with a Facebook group for the regulars who treat it as a league. By 10 on a weekend the list is long; one recent singer counted fifteen names ahead of hers and waited over an hour. The room is forgiving. In 2000 New Times described waitresses who would push anyone looking too serious onto the stage as the opening act, and the crowd still rewards nerve over pitch.
Drink the happy hour. It runs seven days a week until 6 p.m.: $4 domestic bottles, $5 premiums including Corona, Modelo, Stella and Heineken, $6 well drinks and seltzers, $7.75 for Jameson, Tito’s, Captain or Jack, and $8 for Basil Hayden, Knob Creek, Maker’s Mark, Dulce Vida and Hornitos. Miller and a well drink remain the house order, as they were when the paper handed out the 2021 award. Our happy hour guide covers the rest of the corner.
Sit outside, inside. The enclosed patio is the room everyone describes first: covered, with a section of the ceiling open to the sky, so smokers get a bar rather than a sidewalk. On a winter night it is the best seat in north Scottsdale. The indoor-outdoor bar serves both halves, and the games, pool, darts and shuffleboard, are inside.
Eat first. With the kitchen closed, the corner is your menu. Butterfield’s across the way handles mornings, Handlebar J on Becker Lane does ribs and country music a half mile north, and JING on the opposite corner is the glam option for the pre-karaoke dinner. The late-night list has the after-hours answers.
Parking and parties. Ernie’s sits in the strip on the southeast corner of Scottsdale and Shea, sharing the lot with Dirty Dogg Saloon a few doors south, so a two-bar night needs no car. The bar hosts private events; call and leave a message for the manager. Football Sundays fill the screens with Sunday Ticket and RedZone; check the events page for game-day details.
Fifty years at the corner of Scottsdale and Shea
When Ernie’s opened in 1973, Scottsdale Road and Shea was the northern frontier of the city’s social life. Bobby McGee’s, the costumed-server disco, had opened on the northeast corner two years earlier; the Windmill Dinner Theatre was on the southeast; Handlebar J was already playing country a few blocks up. The 1970s corner was a cluster of big, theatrical rooms, and Ernie’s was the small, dark one in the strip. New Times’ 2000 citation remembered it as “a darkly lighted, smoky rumpus room for serious drinkers looking to tie one on,” and gave it the Best Place to Sing Off-Key award for a karaoke stage that opened every night at 8:30, seniors on weekdays, “yuppies” on weekends, and the rule that “anything goes here, except pretension.”
The theatrical neighbors died. Bobby McGee’s chain wound down in the 1990s, the Windmill closed, and the corner was rebuilt around chain restaurants and, in 2025, an $11 million Asian restaurant and lounge. Ernie’s did not move, sell or remodel. The 2019 dining guide that New Times updated in 2021 listed it as a family-owned sports bar, karaoke spot and old-school restaurant with “an authentic vibe that can draw people in from off the street,” a Maryland-seafood menu that was secondary to “the real gem here,” the enclosed patio, and a bartender named Becky. That same year the paper’s Best of Phoenix issue made it Best Dive Bar, over every room in Old Town.
Its place in Scottsdale’s bar history is as the north end of a very short list. The Coach House has poured on Indian School since 1959 and the Rusty Spur on Main Street since 1951; the dives south of Thomas, TT Roadhouse and the Roadrunner among them, are younger. North of McCormick Ranch, only Ernie’s and the Herndon family’s Handlebar J can claim half a century of family ownership, and the full list of every bar and club in Scottsdale shows how little company it has up here.
Honest assessment: Ernie’s is a karaoke bar with a smoking patio and no food, and if you want a craft cocktail you have come to the wrong corner. It is also the most honest room on Shea, open until 2 every night for fifty years, run by a family that has never once asked what the neighborhood wanted. We hope the kitchen comes back. We would not change anything else.