Friday, September 4, 2026

The Top 100 Things to Do Near The Dubliner Irish Pub






  1. A museum with over 15,000 instruments drawn from nearly every country on earth, where the displays sense your approach and pipe the corresponding music through wireless headphones. It sounds gimmicky and it works beautifully. The Artist Gallery leans into celebrity worship without apology, and larger nations get subsections drilling into folk and tribal traditions. The cafe handles global food at reasonable prices, which is not a given for a museum this size.




  2. A mile-and-a-half paved path cutting through the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, Dreamy Draw is where the city comes to jog, bike, and pretend the heat is fine. Boulders break up the trail for anyone who needs a dignified excuse to stop, and drinking fountains appear often enough that you won't have to choose between cardio and survival. It opens at five in the morning, which makes it a genuinely good place to catch the sunrise before the desert decides to cook you.















  3. The Praying Monk formation on the southeast face is the shot everyone posts, but the ridge routes above Echo Canyon are where the real character shows. Camelback is a hiking and climbing destination right in the middle of the Valley, accessible enough that you can squeeze it into a morning, challenging enough that you'll feel it the next day. The rock gets called "choss" by the purists, which just means more routes for everyone else.


  4. A neighborhood dive bar that fully commits to the bit: vintage furniture with backstories, a cigarette machine, free arcade games, and a jukebox that always has Marty Robbins on deck. The drinks are cold, the Old Style is colder, and the backyard patio with lawn games fills up with the kind of crowd that looks like they've been regulars for years, even if they just discovered it last week.






  5. The lounge here is comfortable enough that you could forget there are lanes out back, which is either a design triumph or a problem depending on how serious you are about bowling. This Sunnyslope alley has been independently owned forever, and the bar leans into the Big Lebowski energy hard enough that ordering a White Russian feels basically mandatory. Plush seating, warm lighting, geometric walls, and plenty of beer on tap round it out.
























  6. A rusted steel and glass aquatic center building that people apparently stop and stare at instead of swimming. The complex packs in a lap pool, diving well, tube slide, lazy river, and a splash pad, all framed by McDowell Mountain views and a public art installation that, yes, belongs to the pool. Non-Scottsdale residents pay a modest surcharge for the privilege of wondering why their city's public pools don't look like this.







  7. A gallery-shop in northern Phoenix where the inventory changes constantly because everything is made by hand and no two makers work the same week. Forged knives, blown-glass tumblers, ceramic oil pourers, and natural-edge cutting boards share shelf space in proportions nobody can predict. It's the kind of place where you come in for a gift and leave reconsidering your kitchen entirely.





  8. A cutlery shop for people who find Shun a little pedestrian, Phoenix Knife House stocks premium Japanese brands serious enough that you may not recognize the names until you're already pulling out your wallet. Beyond the blades, you'll find sharpening stones, knife rolls, and chef jackets, and the staff will talk you through all of it without making you feel like a tourist. Bring a dull knife for sharpening and leave with something embarrassingly sharp.











  9. A live music club on Indian School Road that's been the Valley's home for blues, jazz, and roots acts for as long as anyone can remember. Owner Bob Corritore, a serious figure in the blues world, has put Pinetop Perkins and Sanford Clark on that stage. Local and touring rock acts fill the gaps. The bartenders are half the reason to stay, apparently able to match any set with a story.














  10. The DJ here plays real saxophone solos during your Motown number and rosins up an actual fiddle when someone calls "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." This folksy Scottsdale bar and grill runs karaoke every night of the week, which already puts it in rare company in the Valley. The live accompaniment means no one has to endure a slide that reads "Instrumental Break, 16 Bars" while the singer reconsiders their choices.














  11. An art gallery that holds an open call every two years, gets over 500 submissions, and sometimes picks exactly one artist. That's the curatorial standard at Lisa Sette Gallery, an old-school institution in the Phoenix arts scene representing a tight roster of Arizona painters, photographers, and mixed-media artists. The work tends toward the serious and the strange, in the best possible, completely non-graded sense of that phrase.




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