12 Sept 28th–Oct 4th, 2023 phoenixnewtimes.com phoenix new Times | music | cafe | film | culTuRe | NighT+Day | feaTuRe | NeWs | OPiNiON | feeDBacK | cONTeNTs | be open some places till late nights until 2, 3 or 4 in the morning,” he says. When Hu visited New York after the pandemic, the same spots had dialed back their hours in the wake of COVID. “I asked the owners, ‘Why aren’t you open late nights?’ They said after COVID, they’d let go a lot of employees and had struggled to reopen,” Hu says. “It wasn’t as easy as saying ‘OK, let’s open everything back up again.’ They’d had some major issues, some of it with staffing, some of it with money or having enough business.” Phoenix’s nightlife scene, including its late-night spots, grapples with similar issues. Making cuts after COVID Veteran club owner Steven Rogers has experienced his fair share of late nights. His landmark mid-’90s Scottsdale dance joint The Works was a landmark after-hours spot. Many of his other establishments also operated late into the night, including now- defunct clubs Crowbar (now DWNTWN), Sanctum and Amsterdam. One of his most recent creations is The Grand, a 15,000-square-foot space in down- town Phoenix that operated as a coffee- house, restaurant, bar and hangout with a 24-hour kitchen after debuting in 2018. After COVID hit, Rogers had to down- size operations at The Grand, starting with its hours. “After the pandemic, I saw my mistakes at The Grand. When I reopened, I limited my kitchen and coffee service and turned it into mostly a bar. We still have a little food, but I was seeing people come in for coffee and camping out for hours,” he says. “You can’t make money if people sit around all night using your air conditioning and elec- tricity after [buying] a cup of coffee. It’ll bankrupt you.” The Grand wasn’t the only downtown coffee spot making course corrections after COVID. Jobot Coffee & Bar along Roosevelt Row began closing earlier after operating nightly until 2 a.m. for years. Owner John Sagasta says financial concerns were among the reasons. “Staffing is a big part of it. Labor’s more expensive now with [wages] going up. So that’s a big increase,” he says. “If you close at 10 p.m., you definitely have less insur- ance to carry, which means you have less premiums to pay.” It’s not the first time Jobot changed its closing time. At its original home inside a Fifth Street bungalow from 2009 to 2017, the coffeehouse operated as a 24/7 cultural hub and hangout. Sagasta says it felt safer those days than at their current location along RoRo. His feelings about operating hours are rooted in tragedy. In October 2018, Jobot employees David Bessent and Zachary Walter were shot to death outside the busi- ness after leaving work at 3:30 a.m. “A lot of it is safety concerns. When we’d stay open until 2 and a lot of times (Jobot employees) didn’t feel safe, ’cause some- body would walk in and they’d have a situa- tion on their hands,” Sagasta says. “I’ve thought about doing all nights on the weekends a few times, but I feel a little more vulnerable than I do on Fifth Street.” Chilton says the pandemic changed everything for late-night businesses. “Pre-COVID, there was definitely an atti- tude of ‘If you can be open, you should be open,’” he says. “But with staffing problems and how tight it’s gotten for entertainment bars and restaurants since then, a lot of people now look at it like, ‘It doesn’t make sense to be open at 1 a.m. on a Tuesday.’” A late-night rebound? If there was ever a golden age for all-night fun in Phoenix, it was likely in the late ’90s and early 2000s. After-hours joints like now-defunct Mickey’s Hangover in Scottsdale were thriving. Coffeehouses like Tempe’s Gold Bar Espresso were open 24/7. Rave culture was at its zenith thanks to the popularity of EDM and MDMA. Comedy Central even filmed an episode of its late-night travelogue show “Insomniac with Dave Attell” in the Valley. Rogers says the popularity of after- hours at the time was due to Arizona cutting off liquor at 1 a.m. “The driving force in after-hours was bars closing at 1 a.m. People weren’t ready to go home,” Rogers says. “It also created a market for people under 21.” Things changed in 2004 when the Arizona State Legislature extended last call to 2 a.m. Chilton suspects that’s as late as it will ever go, noting “there’s no energy or interest in Arizona to change it,” he says. If Phoenix becomes a true late-night city, it will be by other means. Sagasta believes as the nightlife scene The Late Show from p 11 After-hours dancing at Karamba Nightclub. (Photo by Benjamin Leatherman)
