The Best Things to Do in Downtown Mesa
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Psychic readings, lights-out museum tours, and Victorian seances hosted by a local spiritualist named Flitter Mouse: East Valley Paranormal runs a haunted museum and ghost-hunting operation in downtown Mesa that treats October as a suggestion, not a deadline. Neighborhood ghost tours go by way of Day of the Dead-themed rideable animals, which is a sentence that shouldn't work but does. Open to skeptics, believers, and everyone still deciding.
The awards
- Phoenix New Times Phoenix New Times: 2025 · Best Place to Get Spooked · Best of Phoenix
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Five vintage signs from vanished Mesa businesses glow outside The Post, an open-air neon garden that doubles as a love letter to the city's midcentury Main Street. Watson's Flowers, a porcelain Dairy Queen cone, and a Bill Johnson's bull head share the garden with a 15-foot Diving Lady, a replica of the last animated neon sign in Arizona, restored by the local artist who fixed the original after a storm took it down.
The awards
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The shop stocks tour merch from acts that recently played the Nile Theater down the street, so if you missed the show you can still walk out with the shirt. It's a small record store inside The Greenbelt building, selling vinyl, tapes, CDs, and apparel, with a tightly curated mix of rock, country, punk, indie, and hip-hop. The selection runs new and used, and the rotating band merch gives it a reason to check back in that most shops can't offer.
The awards
- Phoenix New Times Phoenix New Times: 2024 · Best New Record Store · Best of Phoenix
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The clack of a Remington or an Olivetti fills this old-school typewriter shop, which has been around forever and looks every year of it. The shelves run from clunky pre-war workhorses to sleek midcentury portables, and the staff will sell you one, rent you one, or fix the one gathering dust in your closet. Ideal for anyone who's decided that a glowing screen is the problem and a ribbon-inked page is the solution.
The awards
- Phoenix New Times Phoenix New Times: 2023 · Best Typewriter Shop · Best of Phoenix