What it’s actually like
Main Street runs from the collector galleries at the west end to the Western storefronts at Scottsdale Road, and Sunrise Jewelry & Gallery sits where the two meet. The storefront at 7254 East Main is a friendly, well-stocked room of Native American jewelry and Southwestern art, and it has been on the street since the 1990s — family-owned and run since 2006 under Raed Abdeen, who picks the stock himself.
That hand-picking is the shop’s character. Rather than buying by the tray, the owner selects authentic work from artists across the region and can tell you about most of it. The price range sits in the middle: genuine handmade silver and turquoise that starts well below the museum-grade rooms a few doors west, with Southwestern art and gifts around it for the buyer who did not come for jewelry.
There used to be a second Sunrise on Fifth Avenue; it has closed, and the business now lives entirely here. That suits it. The east end of Main Street gets the walk-by traffic from the Rusty Spur and the Brown Avenue blocks, and a store that welcomes the browser rather than intimidating them is exactly what that corner needs.
It is the shop for the person who wants a real piece, wants it explained, and does not want to feel underdressed asking the price.
What to buy
A turquoise ring or pendant. The bread and butter, hand-picked from regional makers, in a range that starts at gift money and climbs to real-piece money.
Silver earrings or a chain. The lighter, more wearable end of the trade, where a mid-priced shop with a careful buyer does better than a gallery.
A piece of Southwestern art. The gallery half of the name: prints, small works and crafts that give the non-jewelry buyer something honest to carry home.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
Sunrise is on the block of Main Street between Scottsdale Road and Brown Avenue — the Western storefront block that leads west across Scottsdale Road into the Main Street Arts District gallery row. Main Street parking is short-term and scarce; the free Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard is a five-minute walk and the Old Town on foot note covers the route. Everything in the Old Town core is within ten minutes of the door.
Thursday’s ArtWalk runs the length of Main Street from about sunset, and the east end of the street is where the crowd thins out and the pace slows; it is a pleasant time to stop in. In high season, January through April, weekday afternoons are quieter than weekends. In summer, mornings.
Do the street in order. Start here at the accessible end, cross Scottsdale Road and walk west past Waddell Gallery to the collector rooms at 7100 East Main, and you will understand exactly what each tier of the Native jewelry trade costs and why.
Eat while you’re there
The Rusty Spur Saloon, in a 1921 bank directly across the street, is live country and cold beer with no cover. The Sugar Bowl at Scottsdale Road and First Avenue, pink since 1958, is the sundae a block away. Across Scottsdale Road, Malee’s Thai Bistro has anchored the gallery end of Main since 1987, and Craft 64 at the far west end of the street does wood-fired pizza and Arizona beer if the walk goes that far.
How it got here
By the 1990s Main Street had been a gallery street for a generation. The ArtWalk had run every Thursday since 1975, the Western bronze and landscape rooms held the blocks west of Scottsdale Road, and the Native jewelry trade that had grown up on Fifth Avenue in the 1950s had spread into the Old Town Western blocks. Sunrise Jewelry opened on Main Street in that decade, on the Western storefront block east of Scottsdale Road where the galleries give way to the saloons — the natural spot for a shop pitched between the two.
The ownership that defines it came in 2006, when Raed Abdeen took over and made it a family-owned, family-run store. The model he built is the small-dealer model: hand-pick the stock from artists across the region, know every piece, and sell it with a conversation rather than a pitch. It is the opposite of the volume approach the bigger Old Town names use, and it is what has kept a mid-priced shop viable on a street where the rent assumes gallery margins.
For a stretch the family ran a sister storefront on Fifth Avenue as well, putting the Sunrise name on both of Old Town’s jewelry streets. That store has closed. Consolidating on Main Street is the right call for a business built on the owner’s eye; one room the proprietor can stand in beats two he has to split.
What Sunrise represents on the Main Street Arts District is continuity at the accessible end. The street’s top tier — the museum-lending dealers, the contemporary Native fine-art rooms — gets the press. The shop on the Western block that sells a real turquoise ring to someone on their first trip to Arizona, and explains why it costs what it costs, is doing the trade’s other essential job, and it has been doing it on this block for thirty years.