What is TT Roadhouse?
There is a bar in Scottsdale that a Phoenix New Times writer once located, “metaphysically,” in some dark corner of London. It is in fact on the northeast corner of 68th Street and Thomas Road, behind an unmarked green door, in the light-industrial blocks that most visitors drive past on the way to Old Town. TT Roadhouse, at 2915 N 68th Street, is the city’s best dive, and it has spent three decades making sure nobody on a resort itinerary finds out.
The TT is the Tourist Trophy, the motorcycle road race run every year on the Isle of Man, and the room wears the reference: racing flags, Union Jacks, skulls, a motorcycle hung above the lounge. New Times profiled it in June 2004 and reported that a bartender had been drinking there “since it opened nine and a half years ago,” which puts the first pour in late 1994 or 1995. The man behind it then, in the paper’s words the “papa bear,” was Brad Henrich, who also ran the Shady’s lounge in Phoenix. Nobody has published a fuller ownership history since, and the bar does not volunteer one.
What it is today is easy to describe. It opens at noon and closes at 2 a.m., every day of the year. There is no kitchen and never has been. There is a coin-fed jukebox stocked with punk, metal, ska and what the bar calls “real country.” Pool is free on weekends until 7. The house drink is the Trash Can, a can of Hamm’s or PBR and a well shot for five dollars, all day. The crowd, in the paper’s 2016 description, is bikers, punks and “other counterculture-leaning drinkers,” and in our experience also the neighborhood, which in this part of South Scottsdale means mechanics, line cooks and people who got off a plane an hour ago.
New Times has named it Best Neighborhood Bar in Scottsdale three times, in 2007, 2010 and 2011, and Best Punk Bar in 2016. The honest verdict is simpler: it is the real thing, and on our dive bar list it goes first.
The specials board, the jukebox and the parking lot
Drink what the board says. The Trash Can is $5 every hour the bar is open: Hamm’s or PBR plus a well shot. Happy hour drafts are $4.50 Monday through Friday until 7 p.m. Sundays bring $1.25 cans of PBR and Hamm’s. Monday is Industry Night, a dollar off for bar and restaurant workers; Tuesday is Bicycle Night, a dollar off every drink if you arrived by bike; Wednesday is Bike Night, the same discount for a chopper. The draft board leans local, with Arizona craft beers and ciders, seasonal taps and a few limited releases. The 2004 profile counted nine or ten taps and Harp on draft; the number has grown, the idea has not.
Feed the jukebox. It is an old machine that takes dollars and quarters, and the bar says it holds home-made mixes of punk, rock, metal, real country and local bands, plus “hidden tracks.” New Times has called it one of the best jukeboxes in the Valley since 2005 and in 2011 “the Valley’s best, hands down.” The bar’s own site admits the latest remodel of the machine “has not gone well,” so bartender playlists fill in when it sulks.
Time it. Weekend afternoons are the sweet spot: pool is free until 7, the room is quiet and the regulars are friendly. Fridays and Saturdays after 10 fill up with refugees from the clubs in the entertainment district. Occasional local bands and DJs play, never with a cover. The bartenders were described in 2010 as “wary of folks they don’t know,” and recent reviews say that has not entirely changed. Say hello first.
Eat elsewhere. There is no food, so eat before or order delivery to the bar. The late-night list has the options, and Carlsbad Tavern on Hayden is open late Thursday through Saturday. Parking is a small lot out back, mostly motorcycles and bicycles, and a bigger lot across 68th Street. The Coach House is a mile east on Indian School if you are building a crawl.
Thirty years on 68th Street
The 2004 New Times profile is the best record of what TT was built to be. Stephen Lemons described a “better-lighted, wood-paneled” version of a London rock pub, with motorcycle racing flags and drawings on the walls, a two-wheeler suspended over the lounge, a wood-burning stove, a billiards room with one table and a jukebox that ran from punk to Johnny Cash. A patron summed up the appeal relative to the rest of Scottsdale: “People aren’t lame here.” The following year the same writer called it “rockabilly, London-punk-style” and said everyone knew it had one of the best jukeboxes in the Valley. By 2007 the paper’s Best of Phoenix issue was praising a room where “tattooed arms and neighborhood drinkers far outnumber bottle blondes.”
That is the whole arc. In 2010 the paper noted the bar “likes to present itself as a quasi-biker bar, but it’s far from it,” more a British pub with a dim, wood-heavy interior; in 2016 the Best Punk Bar citation found the same Union Jacks and the same unhurried room. The specials changed, DJ nights came and went, and the bar did not move an inch toward the city around it.
The city did move. The blocks between Scottsdale Road and 64th Street south of Indian School were, in the 1990s, auto shops and light industry, and TT opened as a bar for that neighborhood. Since the 2010s the corridor has filled with apartments, and the entertainment district a mile east now imitates it: Mother Tucker’s Tavern was built in 2024 to look like a bar that TT simply is.
Two things we could not pin down. Online listings and local lore say the building has housed a bar since long before 1995, and that the Roadhouse has lately changed hands; we found no published source for either, and the bar’s own site, which still carries a 2020 copyright, says nothing about ownership. Call it a bar with an unwritten history, which is the right kind for a dive.
Honest assessment: TT is not for everyone, and the bartenders will not pretend otherwise. It is dark, loud when the jukebox works, and the only food is whatever you had for lunch. It is also the one bar in Scottsdale where nobody has ever asked what you do for a living. Most rooms on the list of every bar and club in Scottsdale are trying to be something. This one is just open.