What it’s actually like
Every tourist town has a t-shirt shop. Old Town’s has a mascot, a print shop and a fleet of scooters. Kactus Jock is the story of a cart that sold tees of a saguaro playing sports — Kactus, who is good at all of them — and grew into two downtown stores: one at 7229 East Main on the Western block between Scottsdale Road and Brown Avenue, and one at 7121 East Fifth Avenue on the boutique curve. Who started the cart and when is not well documented, and the shop does not make a fuss about it; the character is the brand.
What separates it from the souvenir counters on Brown Avenue is that it makes its own product. An in-house graphic design team draws the tees and the shop prints them on site, so the designs are always in stock and turn over constantly rather than arriving on a pallet twice a year. Around the shirts is a genuinely local inventory: a wall of Arizona-made hot sauces the store calls the largest selection in town, licensed ASU gear for the Sun Devil relatives, metal art and home decor, and the Cactus Carlos line.
And then there are the scooters. From behind the Fifth Avenue store, Kactus Jock runs guided tours of Old Town on Rydables mobility scooters — about 5.5 miles, 90 minutes, 35-plus points of interest — which is the most efficient orientation to the district anyone offers. Next door on Fifth, sister store The Purple Saguaro handles the Arizona-made art side, so the two shops together cover the whole gift spectrum from joke tee to hand-thrown pot.
What to buy
A Kactus tee. Designed and printed in the building. Pick the sport that matches the person; the character has done all of them.
Arizona hot sauce. The wall is the best local-sauce selection downtown, from mild to unwise, and a bottle packs better than a cactus.
ASU gear or a piece of metal art. Licensed Sun Devil merchandise for the alumni, and the metal cactus-and-desert wall pieces that survive a suitcase better than pottery.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
Two stores, two parking answers, and the same one for both: the free Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard, which is a few minutes on foot from the Main Street shop and about seven from Fifth Avenue. The garage on the Fifth Avenue side near the canal is closer to the Fifth store. The Old Town on foot note plots the loop that connects the Western blocks of Old Town to the Fifth Avenue curve, and a Kactus Jock at each end is a fair way to bookend it.
Tours need timing more than shopping does. In summer, book the earliest Rydables slot and be off the scooter before the heat; in high season, January through April, book ahead because the winter crowd fills the schedule. February’s Parada del Sol and the Saturday Old Town Farmers Market put the most people on these streets and are worth planning around.
The stores keep normal retail hours and are easy walk-ins. The Main Street shop catches the saloon-and-storefront crowd; the Fifth Avenue shop catches the boutique-and-dinner crowd. Same tees, different neighbors.
Eat while you’re there
From the Main Street store, the Rusty Spur Saloon is a few doors along the same block — live country in a 1921 bank, no cover — and the Sugar Bowl at Scottsdale Road and First Avenue, pink since 1958, is the sundae. A block north, Cien Agaves on First Avenue does scratch-made tacos and a hundred-plus agave list. From the Fifth Avenue store, Citizen Public House is a few doors away for the famous chopped salad, and Cartel Roasting Co. is across the street for coffee before a tour.
How it got here
Old Town’s souvenir trade is as old as its tourism. The 1950s built the Western storefronts and the Fifth Avenue curve to sell the Southwest to winter visitors, and for decades the shops sold the same things: turquoise, Mexican imports, cowboy hats, cactus in a pot. A cart selling t-shirts of a cactus playing sports was a different idea — a joke about the place, told by the place — and it caught on well enough to become a store. The record does not say who pushed the cart or in what year, so this page does not guess; by most accounts it is a fixture of the last few decades rather than the first.
The growth was in two directions at once. Geographically, the cart became a Main Street store on the Western block and a Fifth Avenue store on the boutique curve, which put the brand on both of downtown’s tourist streets. Operationally, it brought production in-house: a graphic design team and on-site printing, which is the single decision that separates Kactus Jock from every drop-shipped t-shirt rack in the district. When the designs are drawn and printed in the building, the stock is never out and the jokes stay current.
The inventory broadened the same way. The hot sauce wall grew into what the shop calls the largest selection of locally made sauces in town, licensed ASU gear arrived for the Sun Devil trade, metal art and home decor filled the walls, and the Cactus Carlos line joined Kactus on the shelves. Sister store The Purple Saguaro opened next door on Fifth to carry the Arizona-made art and craft side that a tee shop cannot do justice to.
The scooter tours are the most recent turn and the smartest. Running guided Rydables tours of Old Town — 5.5 miles, 90 minutes, 35-plus stops — from behind the Fifth Avenue store makes the shop a starting point for the whole district rather than a stop within it. The Main Street Arts District galleries sell the art; Kactus Jock sells the joke and the map, and Old Town needs both.