What it’s actually like
Uptown Hippie calls itself the happiest place to shop, and the Fifth Avenue store makes a good case for it. There is music playing, the staff are friendly, and the walls are stacked with the brand’s own sweatshirts, tees and hats in sun-faded desert and beach colors. It sits at 7142 East Fifth Avenue, on the eastern stretch of the Fifth Avenue curve near Scottsdale Road, and it is the brand’s flagship, the store it says started it all.
The brand belongs to two siblings. Hannah and Joe had talked about running a business together since they were kids. In 2018 they did it, combining Joe’s outdoorsy, free-spirited side with Hannah’s New York City side into a line meant to spread a little positivity. The result is apparel that reads as Arizona without a howling coyote on it: palm trees, saguaros, a coastal cowboy, and soft fabrics that people actually wear after the trip.
The give-back is part of the pitch. Every purchase funds tree planting, and the brand counts more than 55,000 trees so far. The customers are a mix of families, visitors and locals, and the price points, with featured pieces between about $35 and $84, keep it accessible on a street of jewelry cases.
What to buy
An Uptown Saguaro sweatshirt. The most Scottsdale thing on the wall, and the one that gets worn back home in January.
A trucker hat. The hat wall is the center of the room: trucker hats, dad hats, snapbacks and performance caps. Try them on, because the fits differ.
A Coastal Cowboy or Palm piece. The brand’s other two moods, Western and beach. They are a good choice for anyone who has had their fill of cactus prints.
Parking, timing and the practical stuff
The store is on the Scottsdale Road end of the Fifth Avenue curve, in the Fifth Avenue and downtown district. Use the free public garage on the Fifth Avenue side near the canal or the Civic Center garage off Drinkwater Boulevard and walk. The Old Town on foot note maps the loop, and the Old Town guide covers the blocks east of Scottsdale Road where the second store is.
Do both stores. The First Avenue shop at 7235 East First Avenue is a desert surf shop, mixing beach and Western, and its stock leans differently from the flagship’s. It is a ten-minute walk south and east across Scottsdale Road, past the Western blocks of Main Street.
Timing. Weekend afternoons in high season, roughly January through April, are the busiest, and spring-training weeks in March bring crowds. Weekday mornings are quiet. In summer, shop early and spend the hot hours indoors. Thursday’s ArtWalk brings an evening crowd onto Fifth.
Neighbors make a good loop: Leela Market at 7150 for clothing and decor, Giving Bracelets at 7122 for something handmade, and Kactus Jock for printed tees and hot sauce.
Eat while you’re there
Original ChopShop is a few doors east at 7158 for bowls, juices and a healthy lunch. Cartel Roasting Co., a few doors west, is the coffee. For a sit-down meal, Citizen Public House further along the curve is the gastropub with the famous chopped salad.
How it got here
Fifth Avenue has sold clothes to visitors since its first season. The street the burned-out craftsmen cut in 1950, as the Fifth Avenue lexicon entry tells it, filled with small owner-run shops through the 1950s, and resort clothing was part of the mix from the start. The avenue ran Saturday fashion shows for winter tourists, and dressing like a Scottsdale visitor has been part of the trip ever since.
What visitors want to wear has changed several times. The mid-century version was resort wear and Western dress. By the 2010s the avenue’s small leases were turning over to a new generation of independents: lifestyle boutiques, Arizona-made gift shops and brands that sold a mood as much as a garment. Uptown Hippie arrived at the end of that decade. Hannah and Joe founded it in 2018 with a simple idea, apparel that felt good and did some good, and a tree-planting commitment attached to every sale.
The Fifth Avenue store was the first, and the brand still treats it as the flagship. Its location on the eastern stretch of the curve, near Scottsdale Road, puts it on a busy walking stretch of the avenue, between the coffee at Cartel and the lunch counters at the Scottsdale Road end. Later a second store opened on First Avenue as a desert surf shop, carrying the beach and Western mix to the south end of Old Town.
It is a different kind of shop from the turquoise dealers and estate jewelers further along the street, and that difference reflects what Fifth Avenue has become. The avenue that started as a crafts street and grew into a jewelry street now has room for a sibling-run hat wall with music playing, which is close to the spirit of the small, personal shops the street was built for.