What was SIX Lounge?
In 2001 Scottsdale had resort lounges, saloons and a few big dance clubs. SIX was something else. Nightlife entrepreneur Randy Smith opened it that year on Stetson Drive, in the blocks that were becoming the Entertainment District, and gave Scottsdale its first ultra-lounge.
That meant a small room, about 5,000 square feet, built to be looked at and to look out from. It had neon light, servers who could have been models, a drinks list priced for people who did not ask, and the detail everyone remembers: a unisex bathroom with glass doors that turned opaque when they closed. Esquire, InStyle and Elle all named it among the best bars in the country. Celebrities came through, the A-list parties made the columns, and the Valley’s best DJs played it.
For about five years it was Old Town’s see-and-be-seen room. Then the district filled up with competitors, the novelty thinned, and the recession arrived. SIX closed in April 2009 after a dispute with its landlord.
One of its original proprietors, Steve McDonald, took the space back and announced in July 2009 that SIX would return. It reopened instead as Revolver (later reported as Red Revolver), and then as another lounge called Ellure; neither caught on the way SIX had, and the space is now a hair-salon suite. The bars around it on Stetson, Kill Club and Goodwood Tavern among them, are where that block drinks now.
The ultra-lounge, explained
Small on purpose. An ultra-lounge was the opposite of the big clubs a block north on Indian Plaza, the 14,000-square-foot Sanctuary and the twin club Axis-Radius. Its scarcity was the product. A room of 5,000 square feet with a door policy meant that getting in told you something about yourself, which is what a certain Scottsdale customer in 2003 was paying for.
The look did the selling. Neon ambiance, a staff hired partly for appearance, and design gimmicks that people described to friends the next day. The glass bathroom doors were a gag that only worked once per guest, and every guest told someone about it.
It was expensive and everyone said so. When New Times reported SIX’s planned comeback in 2009, the writer’s one wish was cheaper drinks, citing an $8 Rockstar vodka. In 2009 money that was a statement.
Its owner had a second act around the corner. Smith also ran Mickey’s Hangover near Stetson and Brown, the district’s deliberately trashy late-night dive, open until 3 a.m. with Red Neck Sliders, cheese fries, thrift-store furniture and olive-and-orange drapes. One was a velvet rope; the other was where you went after the velvet rope. Mickey’s closed in July 2009, three months after SIX, and the corner is now Social Tap.
2009, the year Old Town’s first nightlife boom ended
SIX was one casualty of a bad year. By July 2009 New Times was keeping a roll call of Scottsdale nightspots that had died since January: Sugar Daddy’s, the New Orleans-themed bar from the Dos Gringos empire, whose former owner was headed to prison; Barcelona, the 19,000-square-foot supper club; Lyte Lounge; Maloney’s; Pink Taco; and SIX, which had closed in April after a dispute with its landlord. Mickey’s Hangover joined the list at the end of July. The 2000s boom that Martini Ranch and Axis-Radius had started was over.
SIX’s own decline had started before the recession. The ultra-lounge was a format built on being new, and by the mid-2000s Stetson, Saddlebag and Indian Plaza had many rooms selling the same exclusivity, including Suede, which the Corieris opened across from Axis-Radius the same year SIX opened. New Times’ later summary put it in three parts: the recession, more competition, and a lounge that was simply less popular than it had been, which left Smith short of the rent.
The aftermath shows how sticky a nightlife address is. Steve McDonald, one of SIX’s original proprietors and the former operator of Geisha a Go Go, took over the space in the summer of 2009 and, by December, was finishing a dark, turn-of-the-century-styled lounge called Revolver in it. Later came Ellure. Neither matched SIX, in New Times’ judgment, and eventually the address left nightlife altogether. Smith went on to co-found the cannabis dispensary chain Sunday Goods.
Honest assessment: SIX was more important than it was good. It taught Scottsdale the ultra-lounge, the format that the Old Town nightlife of the 2010s, with its bottle-service rooms and door lists, was built from. The people who stood in its line were not there for the cocktails. They were there to be inside, and for a few years SIX was the inside.