What is Not My First Rodeo?
For seventeen years the building at 7150 E Sixth Ave was a little piece of Tokyo: Geisha A Go Go, its walls papered in Japanese pop art, rolls coming out to birthday parties until it closed in June 2024. Six months later the same address was dressed in neon, cowhide and license plates, with cowboy hats hanging from the ceiling.
Not My First Rodeo opened on December 19, 2024, the latest concept from Ben Foreman and Justin Massey, who had opened 50 Shades of Rose and Almost Famous in 2022. The model is the honky-tonks of Broadway in Nashville: a room built for groups, country DJs and live sets, novelty shots and comfort food. The decor is half the point. A Honky Tonk Heroes mural lines up Dolly Parton, Garth Brooks, Willie Nelson and company; there is a floral “grandma couch,” a taxidermied eight-point buck, a bear skin, photos from 1970s Western television, and a row of disco-ball cowboy boots hanging over the dance floor.
What it is not is a dance hall. The bar’s own FAQ answers the question directly: no line dancing. The music runs about three-quarters country, with mashups, sing-alongs and old-school rock filling out the rest, and the crowd sings more than it two-steps. If you want lessons and a partner, our country bars and line dancing guide sends you to the right rooms.
The audience is easy to read off the website, which name-checks bachelorette parties and winter golf trips in the same breath. That is honest. This is a bar built for Old Town’s visiting groups, priced and pitched a notch below the Entertainment District clubs a few blocks north, with no cover and no dress code.
The order, the shots and the timing
Eat something real first. The kitchen does Southern-leaning comfort food better than a novelty bar needs to. The Nashville hot chicken sandwich is the house favorite; the Rodeo Burger, two smashed patties with grilled onions and pickles smothered in fondue sauce, is the one with the bar’s name on it. For a group, the Yeehaw Tots load tater tots with house chili, cheddar and jalapeños, and the walking taco comes in your choice of Fritos, Doritos or Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. There are pizzas, salads and a weekend brunch for the morning after.
Then do the shots, if you must. Rodeo built a reputation around its gimmick shots: ranch shots, Flamin’ Hot shots and a concoction called Glizzy Water, with a polaroid wall for those who finish them. The State Fair Lemonade is the signature long drink. Beer comes cold in cans, wine comes in plastic cups, and nobody is pretending otherwise.
Pick your hour. Weekday happy hour runs 2 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and that window is when the room is a restaurant with a patio. The patio is dog-friendly and has its own outdoor bars. After 9 on Thursday through Saturday, the bar runs until 2 a.m. and fills with the bachelorette and birthday parties the place was designed for. Large groups should book on OpenTable.
Know the neighbor. The other half of the building, Suite A, was announced at Rodeo’s opening as Renaissance Cocktail Club, a quieter after-dinner lounge. Today the space runs as Copy Cat Saloon, which the owners describe as Rodeo’s “naughty next-door neighbor”: a lounge booked through Rodeo’s website for private parties and bottle service rather than a walk-in bar.
Getting there. The block sits a short walk south of the canal and the SouthBridge restaurant row, with the Scottsdale Waterfront just across the water. The city’s free public garages are a few blocks away; on a weekend night, rideshare is easier. For the full shape of a night in the district, see our Old Town nightlife guide.
From Harajuku to honky-tonk
The building’s two lives say a lot about how Old Town’s nightlife moved over two decades. Geisha A Go Go arrived in 2007 from the team behind Stingray Sushi, selling sushi as a party, and it outlasted most of the scene-driven rooms of its generation. When it closed in 2024, it went out with a wave of turnover on its stretch of Sixth Avenue.
What replaced it is the dominant theme of 2020s Old Town: country. Scottsdale has always sold the West, but for decades the actual country bars were few. The Rusty Spur Saloon on Main Street has poured since the 1950s, and Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row gave the Entertainment District its country anchor in 2013. The next wave was driven less by locals than by visitors. The bachelorette calendar and the winter golf trips created demand for rooms that look like Lower Broadway and serve hot chicken and shots in a photogenic setting.
Not My First Rodeo is a clear example of that wave, and fairly frank about it. Its own website describes it as a group-trip headquarters, a place to start the night before moving on. The Honky Tonk Heroes mural, the disco boots and the polaroid shot wall are built for phones. The comfort food and the no-cover policy make it a better deal than most of the bars it feeds into.
The honest assessment: this is not a saloon, and it does not pretend to be one. For real country music and dancing, go to the Rusty Spur or Handlebar J. For a group that wants hot chicken, loud singalongs and one ridiculous shot in a room that was a Tokyo pop-art sushi bar three years ago, Sixth Avenue now has a honky-tonk, and it is a fun one.