As AZ Big Media reported, Janeth Moore, vice president of operations for POV Foods, the group that runs Rusty Spur Saloon on Main Street, said, "Reaching 75 years is an incredible milestone, especially in a community that has grown and changed so much." She was talking about a bar. She could have been talking about the block it sits on.
Rusty Spur had scheduled its all-day 75th anniversary party for Saturday, September 26, starting at 11 a.m. with live music running into the night, a set from Psychobilly Rodeo at 8 p.m., and 75-cent Coors Banquet beers while supplies lasted. The building at 7245 E. Main St. has earned the discount. It went up in 1921 as Farmers State Bank of Scottsdale, the city's first bank, and closed during the Great Depression. After that it housed the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce, then a real estate office, before opening as Rusty Spur in 1951. The original vault is still there. These days it keeps the beer cold instead of the town's money. Guests were also set to add dollar bills to a custom "75" display on the west wall that year, a nod to the saloon's tradition of pinning signed dollar bills that get collected every December and donated to Phoenix Children's Foundation. That collection raised $6,000 in 2024 and $7,000 in 2025.
Nine days before that party, on September 18, Vecina opened its second location a few miles north in McCormick Ranch. The original Vecina built its name in Arcadia. The new spot is significantly larger, with lake views, private dining rooms, a mezzanine, and a patio, and chef James Fox is bringing over favorites like the carne asada-marinated karaage alongside room to expand into catering. A mural by Phoenix artist Tato Caraveo pays homage to the Arcadia original. Two blocks off Main Street, meanwhile, the address at 3737 N. Scottsdale Road that used to be RnR Gastropub is getting a new tenant this fall: General Admission, a sports-viewing restaurant and bar from Los Angeles-based brothers Kamran and Kourosh Pourkazemi, who already run locations in LA and at the UnCommons development in Las Vegas.
Line those two stories up and Old Town's real pattern shows up. The building that houses Rusty Spur didn't stay a bank once banking there stopped working. It cycled through a chamber of commerce office and a real estate office before a saloon finally stuck for three quarters of a century. That makes four uses under one roof across its history. General Admission is now stepping into 3737 N. Scottsdale Road, an address with its own earlier chapter as RnR Gastropub, much as 7245 E. Main passed from one use to the next decades ago. In Old Town, staying power doesn't look like a storefront that never changes hands. It looks like an address that eventually lands on the tenant who fits.
What Restaurant Week Actually Measured
Arizona Restaurant Week ran September 18 through 27 this year, the same window as the Rusty Spur anniversary and the Vecina opening. Old Town's business district ran its own side event alongside it: a "Capture the Flavor" photo contest that asked diners to upload photos of meals around Old Town from September 9 through 16, scheduled public voting for September 17 through 23, and scheduled three $100 dinner gift cards to be awarded on September 24. The district also brought back its "Inside the Kitchen" series, with Chef Jennie Goldsberry of Luna by Giada giving a behind-the-scenes look at her kitchen.
Restaurant Week gets covered every year as a discount promotion, prix fixe menus and reservations. What it actually measured this year was turnover speed. A ten-day stretch that included a business celebrating 75 years in the same building, Vecina opening a second location, and a new tenant announced for a former gastropub space is a fair snapshot of how fast Old Town's commercial real estate moves compared to how rarely a tenant actually stays.
The Calendar Doesn't Stop at September
Old Town's fall keeps stacking dates past Restaurant Week. Bonner David Galleries is showing "Flourish," a solo exhibition of flowers, rabbits, birds and butterflies by artist Hunt Slonem, from September 10 through October 31, with a reception October 1 from 6 to 9 p.m.
The Scottsdale Fall Festival is relocating to Civic Center this year and expanding. It runs Saturday, October 17, from 5 to 9 p.m., an hour longer than in past years, with a live band and DJ, food trucks, trick-or-treat alley, a pumpkin patch, more than 25 carnival games, and a cocktail garden the festival is running for the first time. It's free.
For anyone tracking the calendar around that ten-day stretch in Old Town and the surrounding pockets of Scottsdale, the dates line up like this:
- September 24: Restaurant Week photo contest winners were scheduled to be announced
- September 26: Rusty Spur Saloon's 75th anniversary party was scheduled for 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.
- September 27: Arizona Restaurant Week closed
- October 1: Reception for Hunt Slonem's "Flourish" at Bonner David Galleries
- October 17: Scottsdale Fall Festival at Civic Center, 5 to 9 p.m.
- October 31: "Flourish" exhibition closes
Why the Split Doesn't Split the Neighborhood
It would be easy to read Rusty Spur's anniversary and General Admission's planned arrival as two different stories about Old Town, one about heritage and one about growth. The addresses argue otherwise. The same commercial district that let a 1921 bank building cycle through three identities before the fourth one lasted 75 years is the district that has announced an out-of-state sports bar concept for a former gastropub space. Neither story is the exception. They're the same mechanism, just at different points in its cycle. A saloon operating inside a former bank building isn't proof that Old Town resists change. It's proof that Old Town's commercial addresses keep changing hands until one fits, and once it fits, it can hold for generations.
That's worth knowing if you live near Main Street or Scottsdale Road and wonder why the block feels like it's simultaneously the same as it's always been and different every few months. Both things are true on the same stretch of pavement. Rusty Spur has kept its live country music going seven nights a week since 1951. The storefronts and restaurant spaces around it keep turning over on a much shorter clock, and this particular ten-day window in September just happens to be when both timelines landed on the same calendar.
If you're the kind of person who tracks which building used to be something else, Andy Berglund has been watching Old Town's addresses change hands for decades and is always up for talking through what a specific block or building has been before.
