The 24 Best Things to Do in Mesa

An 80-minute narrated cruise around Saguaro Lake, which feels like a minor miracle given how thoroughly the Sonoran Desert surrounds you. Desert Belle runs sightseeing tours on a two-deck boat, with an air-conditioned lower level and an open-air top deck where mountain goats occasionally materialize on the canyon walls. The schedule also includes live music, craft beer, and wine cruises for anyone who needs the excuse.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Boat Ride · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Boat Ride · Best of Phoenix

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Place to Buy a Band Shirt · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Band T-Shirts · Best of Phoenix

The Chicago dogs are the tell: a poppy-seed bun, the full Chicago lineup of toppings, and a strict no-ketchup policy enforced by peer pressure alone. Sloan Park is the Cubs' spring training home in Mesa, built with green steelwork and red brick that quietly impersonates Wrigley in the desert sun. There's a rooftop bar, a lawn in the outfield, and food trucks in the Citrus Grove, so the game is almost secondary.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Place to See a Spring Training Game · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Place to Watch a Spring Training Game · Best of Phoenix

Tucked into a Mesa industrial park, this retro arcade runs on a flat admission fee covering unlimited play, no tokens required. Classic cabinets like Galaga and Tempest line the floor alongside over a hundred pinball machines, while '80s soundtracks play under projections of Star Wars and Back to the Future. Vintage toys and memorabilia fill the gaps. Regular pinball tournaments mean the serious players have trophies to prove something.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Arcade · Best of Phoenix
2. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Arcade · Best of Phoenix

Wall-to-wall shelves of retro cartridges, rare consoles, and reproduction carts fill this strip-mall game shop in Mesa, where the vibe runs closer to a friend's basement than a retail floor. Staff will happily disappear into a thirty-minute conversation about a 1994 JRPG without once making you feel like a tourist. Prices are honest, the selection is deep, and nobody here is gatekeeping anything.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Video Game Store · Best of Phoenix

A B-17G Flying Fortress sits on the tarmac at Falcon Field, and you can climb inside it, which is either thrilling or deeply clarifying about how uncomfortable the war effort was. This aviation museum at Mesa's working airport spans WWI through Vietnam, mixing warbirds like a B-25 and an F-4 Phantom with artifacts and memorabilia. The 30,000-square-foot hangar floor disappears fast once you're standing next to a MiG.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Airplane Museum · Best of Phoenix

A massive antique mall in Mesa where you can lose an entire afternoon without noticing. The stock runs from vintage furniture and jewelry to old maps, cookware, and the kind of tchotchkes that somehow feel essential in the moment. Prices stay low and the inventory turns constantly, so repeat visits rarely feel redundant. Bring comfortable shoes and no particular agenda, and expect to leave with something you cannot explain.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Antiques Mall · Best of Phoenix

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.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Place to Get Spooked · Best of Phoenix

Rows of rolling racks packed with leather jackets, deadstock tees, and secondhand oddities fill whatever space Flipside Flea takes over for the weekend. This roaming vintage clothing market moves between downtown Phoenix bars and event spaces, so the shopping comes with a DJ set and a Modelo. Follow them on Instagram to track where they land next.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Thrift Market · Best of Phoenix

A Korean skincare shop tucked into a Mesa strip mall, Populus Beauty stocks face masks, eye creams, and serums, most of them labeled entirely in Korean, which is where the staff earns their keep. The selection runs deeper than what the usual online algorithm surfaces, and the team can point you toward what you need. The return policy is strict, so asking before buying is the move.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Place to Buy Korean Skincare · Best of Phoenix

A 140-acre outdoor shooting facility east of Mesa, Rio Salado Sportsman's Club runs one of Arizona's more serious junior marksmanship programs, with .22-caliber rifle training for ages 10 to 20 and coaches certified through the NRA who point to a spotless safety record. The grounds include covered benches, a pistol range, silhouette ranges, and an indoor rifle range, so there's room to progress well past the basics.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Outdoor Gun Range · Best of Phoenix

Wild horses actually wander the Salt River banks here, which tends to catch first-timers mid-float. This is classic Phoenix summer activity: rent an inner tube, pick either a two-hour run or a longer five-to-six-hour drift, and let moving water do the work while the desert bakes around you. Otters show up too, unbothered. The shorter route draws a crowd; the longer one is quieter. Sunscreen is non-negotiable, and the rapids prefer a rigid body over a relaxed one.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Way to See the Salt River · Best of Phoenix

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.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best Preservation of Local History · Best of Phoenix

Midcentury decor and nods to Mesa's past set the look, but the 400-capacity concert hall books metal, punk, hip-hop, and indie acts on a proper stage. Beyond shows, the room leans hard into being a genuine community space, with record swaps, DJ workshops, open-format dance nights, and yoga sessions on the calendar. It's the newest piece of a local empire that already runs a beloved theater, a basement venue, and a record store nearby.

1. Phoenix New Times 2025 · Best New Music Venue · Best of Phoenix

The Stormrider drops you roughly 70 feet into the water, which is one way to spend a Tuesday in Mesa. Golfland Sunsplash is a full-scale water and amusement park with a wave pool holding 450,000 gallons, a raft ride that starts nearly seven stories up, a lazy river, a toddler pool, miniature golf, and an arcade big enough to lose an hour in. Bring the whole chaotic family; the park has something for every age group and nerve tolerance.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Waterpark · Best of Phoenix

A specialty grocery in Mesa stocking Michigan imports that are genuinely hard to find elsewhere in the Valley: Koegel's meats, Amish cheese curds, Mackinac Island fudge, and enough Faygo flavors to fill a Detroit corner store. The staff are Michiganders themselves, so commiserating about the Lions is entirely on the table. If you moved here from the Mitten and have been quietly suffering, this is the place.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Place to Shop If You’re Missin’ the Mitten · Best of Phoenix

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.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best New Record Store · Best of Phoenix

The floor here runs 26,000 square feet, which is enough room to build up real speed before you remember you haven't skated in twenty years. Skateland is a roller rink, old-school and unashamed about it, with arcade games, a snack bar, and a lighting rig that commits fully to the bit. Kids get character glow skates on Sundays; adults get their own nights on Thursdays and Fridays where no one's kid is cutting across your lane.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Roller Rink · Best of Phoenix

A science boutique in Mesa where you can buy an actual fossilized dinosaur bone, which is either a totally normal purchase or proof that adulthood has its privileges. Tyrannostorus stocks stuffed animals, books, and specimens alongside goods for ancient Egypt, space, and shark enthusiasts, so the dino-obsessed child you once were will feel right at home, and so will everyone else who still has a favorite prehistoric creature.

1. Phoenix New Times 2024 · Best Store for Your Inner Dino Nerd · Best of Phoenix

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.

1. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Typewriter Shop · Best of Phoenix

A VR lounge in Mesa that leans hard into the basement-gaming aesthetic rather than the cold, sleek future that VR always threatens to become. You can race cars, hit the slopes, or survive a zombie cage, and an hour runs just over twenty-five dollars. The crowd spans hardcore gamers and curious first-timers, which is sort of the whole point. Phoenix New Times named it the best virtual reality lounge in the valley in 2023.

1. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Virtual Reality Lounge · Best of Phoenix

Every night in Mesa, a neon woman dives forever into a pool that isn't there, which is either poetic or just very Phoenix. The Starlite Motel's "Diving Lady" sign is a midcentury relic that got knocked out by a storm and came back after a community-funded restoration effort that cost six figures. She glows in the way old neon does, warm and slightly buzzing, the kind of thing worth slowing the car down for.

1. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Neon Sign · Best of Phoenix

A showroom full of classic cars and trucks where you can walk the floor without anyone pressuring you to buy. Streetside Classics is a national dealer specializing in vintage American iron, and the Mesa location keeps a deep inventory, the kind where a '53 Buick and a '72 Bronco might be neighbors. Even if dropping five figures on a Road Runner isn't the plan, an afternoon here passes easily, half browsing, half quietly doing the math.

1. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Vintage Cars · Best of Phoenix

A half-day on the Salt River for the price of a decent lunch is the pitch at WildHorse Paddleboards, a Mesa outfit that rents boards by the half or full day. The owner's enthusiasm for Arizona's waterways is the kind that turns a transaction into an orientation, so first-timers leave knowing more than which end to stand on. A solid way to spend a Sunday without committing to garage storage.

1. Phoenix New Times 2023 · Best Paddleboard Rentals · Best of Phoenix