What was Mickey’s Hangover?
The best thing Randy Smith ever did for Old Town was build a bar for the people his other bar would not let in.
Mickey’s Hangover sat on North Brown Avenue, at the corner the city now lists as 4310 N Brown Ave (New Times used 4312), a block north of Indian School near Fifth Avenue and Drinkwater Boulevard. It opened around 2000; Phoenix New Times threw ink at its fourth-anniversary party in November 2004, which puts the opening in the first year of the decade, though no one published the exact date. The owner was Randy Smith, who in 2001 opened SIX on Stetson Drive, the neon ultra-lounge with model-grade servers and a bathroom with glass doors. Mickey’s was its opposite on purpose: a vintage living room of thrift-store couches, cheap drinks and a patio, where, as New Times put it, no one here is trying to impress.
What made it an institution was the clock. Mickey’s served Red Neck Sliders, cheese fries and nachos until 3 a.m. or later, after every bar in the district had called last call, and that made it the major post-2 a.m. hangout for the Valley’s club crowd. The night ended on a couch on Brown Avenue, whichever rope it had started behind.
It died in the recession. SIX closed in April 2009 after a landlord fight, and on July 31, 2009 the Tribune reported that Mickey’s had closed its doors for good; New Times called it D.O.A. and could not reach Smith. The building had two more lives, as The Firehouse from about 2010 to 2014 and, since 2016, as Social Tap. The honest verdict: Mickey’s was the most useful bar in Old Town, and its absence is why the district still has no good answer to the question of where to eat at 2:30.
How a night ended at Mickey’s
Go after everything else. Mickey’s made sense at 1:30 in the morning in a way it never quite did at 9. The district’s clubs, SIX and Axis-Radius and the rest, emptied at last call, and the crowd that had paid a cover and a bottle minimum walked to Brown Avenue for a $2 beer and a plate of sliders. The kitchen was the attraction; Arizona’s last call does not move for anyone, so the 3 a.m. was food, and food was the point.
Order the sliders. The Red Neck Sliders were the signature, with cheese fries and nachos behind them, the sort of late-night grub New Times called cheap and tasty and nobody called anything else. There was a Sunday following too; a 2012 look back remembered Mickey’s as the trendy Scottsdale crowd’s go-to for Sunday food and drinks.
Expect the couches. The decor was thrift-store furniture, olive-and-orange drapes and a living-room feel that ran out onto the patio. On the anniversary night in 2004 the specials were $2 PBRs and $5 Skyy drinks, served from four outdoor bars and beer tubs. Those are not ultra-lounge prices, and that was the business plan: Smith’s two rooms split the customer’s night and the customer’s wallet between them.
Know the successor’s hours. The Firehouse, which followed, pushed the clock further, with after-hours that ran until 4 or 4:30 a.m. on weekends, lingerie nights and local DJs. Social Tap, there now, is a different animal: a sports bar with a scratch kitchen and a rooftop lounge, open late on weekends but not for a 3 a.m. plate. For where the late plate went after Mickey’s, our late-night food guide has the current map, and the dive bar guide has the rooms that still feel like this one did.
From Mickey’s to The Firehouse to Social Tap
Mickey’s belonged to the moment when the 2000s district had enough velvet rope to need an escape from it. Smith built both halves: SIX for the national magazines and Mickey’s for the walk home. When the recession and a rent dispute took SIX in April 2009, Mickey’s lasted a season longer. New Times’ explanation, printed the following April, was blunt: the bar went belly up after six years over unpaid rent and other issues. The six-year count conflicts with the 2004 anniversary, which implies nine; we read the anniversary coverage as the better evidence for an opening around 2000 and note that the exact year was never published.
The first attempt at a successor is a loose end. In April 2010 New Times reported that Mickey’s was coming back under different proprietors as simply The Hangover, with a complete remodel by interior designer Jeff Low, private seating, a DJ booth and 4 a.m. hours, aiming for mid-June. Whether The Hangover ever opened its doors under that name, we have not been able to confirm. What did open in the building, in 2010 by one New Times account and 2011 by another, was The Firehouse, a hybrid sports bar, dance club and lounge co-owned by Justin Gurian, a decade-long veteran of two dozen Old Town bars. Its DJ booth was a retired fire-truck cab, its weekends ran to 4:30 a.m., and it drew the district’s own service workers on their nights off. A Tempe Firehouse followed at Mill and University in September 2012. The Scottsdale room closed in June 2014, with a Facebook notice promising a full remodel that never came; the furniture and bar equipment were already gone.
Social Tap Eatery opened in the building in 2016 and added The Balcony, an 1,800-square-foot rooftop lounge, in 2019. It is the first tenant since Mickey’s to treat the address as a place to eat, which is the right instinct for the corner.
Honest assessment: Mickey’s Hangover was not a great bar by any measure a critic would use, and it was one of the most loved rooms in Old Town nightlife history because it did one thing nobody else did. It is on every bar and club in Scottsdale in the lost column, with a footnote that the district has been looking for its replacement since 2009.