The Best Places in the United States

A small Tempe shop packed floor to ceiling with single issues, trade paperbacks, manga, graphic novels, and enough indie and small-press titles to make a distributor nervous. Staff carry the kind of encyclopedic knowledge that can match a superfan or gently redirect someone who just wandered in. The wall of collectibles, including some genuinely odd merch, rewards browsing. Recent shelf finds included "Sir Charles Barkley and the Referee Murders," so the range is real.

A geodesic dome built to look like a beehive sits inside this late-night dance bar and immersive art venue in RiNo. The team behind it took Tulum and Burning Man as their starting points, then handed the space to a crew of local artists, so you get vine-covered bars and a garden courtyard that somehow make sense together. It draws the kind of crowd that dresses for the art as much as the dancing.

The shelves at this beloved Phoenix used bookstore run from paperback thrillers to vintage board games to vinyl, and somewhere in between you'll find a ukulele someone gave up on. Bookmans is a used-everything exchange, the kind of place where you drop off a box of stuff you're done with and walk out with an armful of things you absolutely didn't need. Plan for an afternoon; nobody browses Bookmans quickly.

An antique mall so large that people routinely miscalculate how long they'll be inside. Individual booths mean each seller curates their own little world, so a stretch of vintage film cameras can give way to a wall of Arizona kitsch or a case of rare Pokémon cards without any warning. Cowboy boots, obscure collectibles, mid-century furniture, and things you didn't know you needed are all here, somewhere. Clear the afternoon.

You sign a waiver, pull on safety gear, and then someone hands you a crate of breakable things and walks away. Breakthrough is a smash room, which means the activity is exactly what it sounds like: hurling bottles and retired appliances at walls until your arms give out. A splatter room handles the paint-throwing crowd. It's a surprisingly efficient way to reset, and considerably cheaper than the destruction of property charge waiting just outside.

Bruce Springsteen swung by on his last Phoenix tour, which tells you roughly what kind of store Cave & Post Trading Co. is. It's a men's clothing shop in central Phoenix that leans into classic American workwear with a Western edge, carrying selvedge denim, pearl-snap shirts, and the sort of sunglasses that feel like they belong in a different decade. The owners are music people, so touring bands stop in regularly, though most regulars are just well-dressed guys who know what they like.

Duke Ellington played this Five Points room when it was still the Casino Cabaret, which tells you something about the bones. It's a live music venue now running a wide-open booking policy: dubstep, hip-hop, bluegrass, and jam bands share the calendar without obvious contradiction. The main floor was rebuilt and the stage expanded, so the sound holds up. Crowds skew toward people who track setlists, but the room pulls in anyone chasing a late night.

Tucked below Larimer Square, this standup club has the kind of acoustics that make a room feel like it's laughing with one throat. Dave Attell recorded a live album here, and Dave Chappelle has a habit of showing up unannounced. New Talent Nights have been launching local comics toward television for years, which keeps the room feeling like something might actually happen on any given night.

The name came from an old boot shop whose sign was too expensive to replace, which tells you everything about how Cowtown operates. It's a skate shop with a lived-in feel, stocking boards, trucks, and apparel for everyone from serious park rats to people whose knees have filed a formal complaint. Staff who actually skate work the counter, and the shop runs a nonprofit keeping younger riders in the scene.

A cactus-shaped shot glass and a roadrunner onesie in the same basket is a good sign that a shop resists easy categorization. Frances is a gift and lifestyle boutique tucked into a Camelback Road shopping center, stocking menswear, kids' clothes, home goods, jewelry, and Arizona-made finds alongside greeting cards and complimentary gift wrap, so you can walk in scrambling and walk out sorted.

The art-deco interior survived a near-demolition, and it still sets the tone: ornate details, good acoustics, and a room that makes mid-sized shows feel like an occasion. The Gothic is a standing concert venue in Englewood that books the kind of acts you'll wish you'd caught before they got bigger, alongside local projects that wouldn't otherwise find a stage this good. Take the light rail; parking on Broadway is its own opening act.

Each location of this local adult shop chain gets its own decor scheme, so the Arcadia spot leans street art while the West Valley one goes full Alice in Wonderland. Groove stocks lingerie, dancewear, toys, and bachelorette supplies, and the staff are the kind of helpful that doesn't make anyone squirm. There's a rewards program for regulars, which the store describes, with admirable restraint, as benefiting frequent customers.

The low-slung stage here puts you close enough to the band that you'll question whether you're supposed to be back there. Larimer Lounge is a dive-ish live music venue in RiNo that has hosted acts like Arcade Fire and Bat for Lashes before they stopped fitting in rooms this size. The bar up front runs on beer, shots, and what appears to be structural duct tape. Westword named it Denver's top venue for both rock bands and DJs in 2024.

A boutique bodega stocked with natural wines, Arizona-made snacks, and objects no reasonable person needs but everyone leaves carrying. The purple psychedelic oven mitt, the artichoke candle, the butterfly dice: the inventory reads like a fever dream curated by someone with genuinely good taste. Cold drinks, eclectic merch, Baggu bags, and a hot sauce section round it out. It also hosts yoga sometimes, which tracks completely.

More than 400 Indigenous-owned small businesses share a permanent indoor market in Old Town Scottsdale, selling handmade goods that range from beaded jewelry and hand-carved pottery to soaps and sand art. The nonprofit vending program requires all participants to be of Native American descent, so purchases go straight to the makers. A seasonal outdoor market runs on weekends in cooler months for anyone who prefers browsing under the sky.

The wraparound balcony alone explains why national touring acts keep coming back to this mid-size concert venue on Colfax. The Ogden has been around forever, vaudeville and all, and a recent overhaul brought new floors and a proper sound system without scrubbing the old bones. It holds a sweet spot between arena anonymity and club intimacy, which makes the sightlines good pretty much wherever you end up.

An old movie house in the Berkeley neighborhood that survived decades of disrepair to become one of Denver's more reliably eclectic live venues. Music, comedy, circus, and things harder to categorize all share the same stage, which makes checking the calendar a worthwhile habit. The room still carries the bones of its original life, and the scale keeps it intimate enough that there isn't really a bad spot in the house.

A festival-wear shop on Mill Avenue stocked with shiny bodysuits, fuzzy sets, wild sunglasses, flow toys, and everything else you need to look properly unhinged under a light rig. Most of the merchandise comes from Arizona makers, so the sequins carry some local pride. The store has a posted zero-tolerance policy for bigotry, which shouldn't be a selling point but somehow still is. Go when your next event is two weeks out and you've convinced yourself you have something to wear.

Two 300-foot sandstone fins frame the stage at Red Rocks, an outdoor amphitheater carved by geology rather than any architect. U2 filmed "Under a Blood Red Sky" here, and the recording captures why: the acoustics are a geological accident that nobody has managed to replicate. The venue sits open most of the year for hiking and visiting even when nobody's performing, so you don't need a ticket to feel like you've stumbled onto something.

A 360-degree ocean tunnel sits at the center of this mall aquarium, and yes, it's inside Arizona Mills, which somehow makes the sharks feel more surreal. Over 5,000 species move through 161,000 gallons, including reef sharks, stingrays, jellyfish, and a tank where kids can locate both Nemo and Dory without a map. The tide pool lets you touch baby sharks, and a paid add-on gets you up close with rescued sea turtles. Cheaper than its Scottsdale rival by a wide margin.

Part antique mall, part haunted house, Terror Trader is a horror-themed marketplace where local vendors fill coffin-shaped cases with slasher memorabilia, VHS tapes, and ceramic human organs. A museum room of real skulls anchors the space, and life-size slasher villains lurk around corners for good measure. Phoenix New Times named it the best place for horror buffs two years running. The crowd, predictably, does not shop in beige.

A vast stage and a sound system loud enough to rattle the fillings out of your skull make The 44 in Glendale the go-to metal venue in the Valley, which feels cosmically correct given that Alice Cooper grew up nearby. National touring acts share the bill with tribute bands and local talent, and the bar food is cheap enough that you can eat and still afford a band tee. Bring earplugs unless you enjoy tinnitus as a souvenir.

Chandeliers and exposed rafters inside a 1930s building that now hosts 1,800 people for live music on a good night. The Van Buren is a midsize concert venue in downtown Phoenix where general admission keeps things relatively democratic and the sightlines are genuinely hard to complain about. Live Nation books the calendar, which means a steady rotation of artists big enough to matter but not yet filling arenas.

Tens of thousands of used books spread across the fairgrounds floor once a year, priced so low it feels like a clerical error. The VNSA Used Book Sale is Phoenix's annual bibliophile free-for-all, run by volunteers and drawing serious collectors alongside people who just need something for the pool. Bring a tote, bring cash, and arrive with a loose plan, because the sheer square footage has a way of dissolving any sense of time or restraint.

A vintage shop tucked into a North Phoenix strip mall, Wang's moves the kind of T-shirts that make strangers stop you on the street: old Suns gear, beat-up band tees, the Marilyn Manson shirt your mom vetoed. Stock turns over constantly, so regulars follow their Instagram like a dispatch line. Prices run fair to real money depending on the piece, though the Saturday sale bins reliably yield something good for ten dollars.

All Or Nothing is a bagel shop built around a wood-fired oven and a pun: "All" for everything, "Nothing" for plain, both sourdough. It began as a folding table and a pizza oven outside a drum shop and has since graduated to an Airstream. Order at the window, expect schmears made in-house, and watch a summer series hand the griddle to local food trucks. It has won Best New Bagel Spot and Best Chef Series from the Nashville Scene.

A small vintage shop in Tucson's Grand Avenue arts district, 3G Vintage is packed floor to ceiling with the detritus of a better-dressed era: mid-90s cassette singles, old VHS tapes, back issues of Rolling Stone, troll dolls. New stock arrives constantly, which gives regulars an excuse to stop in often and call it research. Whether the decades it celebrates were genuinely simpler or just pre-mortgage is a question you can debate on the drive over.

Warm booth seating, a patio with live music some nights, and servers who can actually talk you through the list make this Evanston wine bar feel more like a neighborhood living room than a tasting room. Whites, reds, rosés, and cocktails share menu space with charcuterie and flatbread pizzas, so a glass rarely stays lonely. The kind of place where a quick drink tends to turn into a longer evening without anyone minding.

Trays of loose bricks sorted by color and size sit open on the floor so you can hunt down that one piece you've been missing since 2009. Arizona Brick Co. is a family-run LEGO shop carrying new sets, used sets, individual minifigures, and the kind of loose-brick selection that serves both the casual builder and the person who considers this a lifestyle. Price points range enough that you don't have to be a completionist to leave with something.

Somewhere between a liturgical supply house and a very niche gift shop, Autom is the kind of place that sells hanging censers and baptismal fonts alongside saint medallions, garden crosses, and yes, religious-themed Croc charms. The only retail outpost of a catalog operation that ships nationwide, it's been around forever and skews Catholic but has enough for curious shoppers of any tradition or none at all.

Every October, one wing of this sprawling family nursery quietly transforms into a Christmas wonderland, which says something about how seriously Phoenix takes its holiday seasons. The rest of the year, Berridge is the kind of plant nursery you budget an hour for and leave three hours later, having consulted the staff about desert-hardy options and wandered the greenhouse twice. An old-school Phoenix institution with acres to roam.

Neon, glitz, and gold cover every surface of this 3,500-square-foot Scottsdale nightclub, which has been an anchor of the entertainment district long enough to feel like a local institution. The format is straightforward: drinking and dancing, with aerialists and guest DJ sets keeping things from going stale. Expect a line out front and a crowd dressed accordingly.

The side-pull tap that delivers a European-style pour with an extra few inches of foam is a good signal of what kind of taproom this is. Catalyst leans into big, playful styles, including sours, imperials, and hoppy IPAs, alongside a rotating cast of more traditional options. An in-house kitchen called S.A.L.T. handles food, and there's a generous patio when the weather cooperates, which in Tempe is most of the year.

Sketch comedy and improv on South Broadway, where the Baker neighborhood's thrift-store-chic energy suits the format perfectly. Performers with roots in Chicago, New York, and LA take the stage Thursday through Sunday, and the room is small enough that a botched scene lands on everyone equally. Classes run from total beginner to working comic, so you can watch one week and embarrass yourself on stage the next.

A Clarkdale winery sitting in the Verde Valley, Chateau Tumbleweed is probably best known for Le Blend, a red that changes grape count and composition every vintage, pulling from southeastern Arizona vineyards. The current pour stacks ten varieties into something that manages to be both ambitious and easygoing, dark fruit up front, no punishing tannins at the end. Phoenix New Times named it Best Arizona Red Wine in 2024.

A foam tube "noodle forest," a pretend grocery store where kids can shop and restock, a tricycle track with a car wash: this children's museum in a beautifully restored old downtown schoolhouse keeps small visitors busy enough that they forget to argue. The oak floors date to the original building, so parents get architecture while their kids get chaos. Plan a few hours; one level is never enough.

A single-owner operation in a bare-bones space where new and unpublished plays get staged because no board exists to say otherwise. Dangerous Theatre leans into sketch, improv, and stand-up on Fridays alongside original works the rest of the week, the kind of scrappy, intimate venue where the person who wrote the show might also be taking your ticket. Westword named it Denver's boundary-pushing comedy club of 2024.

A crystal shop tucked inside a warehouse that shares a building with a storage facility, so easy to walk past that finding it feels like half the ritual. Inside, the scale surprises: room after room of crystals, including one dedicated entirely to amethyst. A resident cat roams the floor. Weekly sound healing and yoga sessions run under lighting made entirely of crystals, which is either very on-brand or a fire code conversation waiting to happen.

An outdoor amphitheater in the Denver suburbs that has cycled through enough corporate sponsors to fill a naming-rights hall of fame, Fiddlers Green is now back to its original name and hosting around 17,000 people a summer night. The fixed seats up front give way to a general-admission lawn behind, where blankets and lawn chairs fill in for anything from country headliners to metal festivals. AEG Live books the big touring acts that still fill sheds.