This story is the main story on azcentral.com right now. Jordan gets a mention near the end!
Coach House décor is magical
It’s the epicenter of the Valley’s cheer this time of year
Megan Finnerty
Metromix
December 8, 2008
At The Coach House (Credit: Megan Finnerty/Metromix)
The glow inside is warm and bright. Every surface twinkles with lights, tinsel, garland and ornaments. Candy canes hang everywhere. Wrapping paper covers the walls and ceiling. It feels like the inside of a Christmas tree.
Only people are drinking beer. And there’s a jukebox.
This time of year, the Coach House, a tiny wooden bar on the corner of Indian School Road and Goldwater Boulevard in Scottsdale, glitters with Christmas joy. Each year around Halloween, owner Jim Brower, 56, and his team dedicate close to 500 man hours over two weeks to decorating the patio and the less-than-900-square-foot bar. And he does it when the bar is closed, between 2 and 6 a.m. most days. The decorations cost about $5,000.
Brower’s parents, Bob and Mary, opened the bar in 1959, making it only a year younger than the city’s oldest, the nearby Rusty Spur Saloon. Brower says the Coach House is a place where people come to feel good, and it’s up to him to make it special for them. So at 8 a.m. on a Saturday, he’s decorating. “This is my job, to hang bulbs and drink beer,” he says, gesturing with a cup of Bud Light.
Strings of blinking blue icicle lights and yards of gold tinsel drape everything from the videogame machine to the jukebox. More than a dozen wreaths hang on walls and around beer taps. Mistletoe hangs from ceiling beams. Inflatable decorations perch on the roof, giant light-up snowflakes hang from eaves and colored lights twinkle on exterior walls.
The building dates to about 1920, and once served as a home and a dress shop. But now it’s a destination for those seeking a little Christmas kitsch. It’s also become a treasured old-fashioned hangout in a city filled with an ever-increasing number of glossy shops and Las Vegas-like clubs.
Scottsdale’s Scot Asher says the Coach House is “as close to Cheers as you’ll find,” year-round. But at Christmas, the place is particularly special. “In Arizona, sometimes you don’t get a lot of the feeling that it’s the holidays,” he says, “but I’d be hard-pressed to find a place where it’s more evident.” Last year, Asher snuck one of the ornaments off the wall, just to have a little piece of the Coach House on his own Christmas tree. This year, he’ll hang one of his own ornaments on a wall, adding a piece of himself to the bar’s tradition.
It’s the kind of place where patrons are encouraged to take the flavored candy canes off the walls. Where fellow drinkers understand and appreciate a light-up, blinking Rudolph sweatshirt. Where the signature Christmas cocktail is actually a red or green Jell-O shot.
Scottsdale resident Patrick Tarkowski has been going to the Coach House for years and takes his dad every time he visits at Christmas. And when he notices the first decorations going up, Tarkowski even stops in every few days to check the progress, and to have a beer, of course. “It’s the best dive bar you can find in Old Town,” he says. “And the lights are spectacular . . . they just go above and beyond anyone else. It’s definitely jaw-dropping.”
And having done it for “more years than I can count,” Brower’s perfected the process. Last year, he installed wooden strips studded with small nails along the pitched ceiling so he can just wrap light strands around the nails rather than staple-gunning them. He also uses a giant wrapping-paper roll cutter so he can tear off wall-covering sheets easily.
But the traditions at the Coach House almost weren’t. In 1981, Brower was installing an attic air conditioner when sediment fell on a water heater, sparking a fire that closed the bar for five months. And in 1999, Scottsdale widened Indian School Road and developer Richard Funke proposed demolishing the bar and building shops like the ones that stand there now. “We didn’t meet with Scottsdale’s general plan . . . until we convinced them that old was good,” says manager Leigh Adams, who’s been with bar for 12 years. This was just one year after then-Mayor Sam Campana had called the Coach House a “Scottsdale landmark.”
But Brower hired zoning attorney Jordan Rose to help finesse meetings with the mayor. Signatures were gathered, editorials written, letters sent and about 1,200 pro-Coach House citizens showed up at a City Council meeting in November 1999. Even the late Monsignor Eugene Maguire of Scottsdale’s Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church made a plea, saying it was where he’d once regularly sent newcomers to find jobs and places to stay. It was, he wrote in a letter at the time, one of the city’s last great gathering places.
And, it still is, particularly this time of year.
Details: 7011 E. Indian School Road, Scottsdale, 480-990-8010, coachhousescottsdale.com.
http://phoenix.metromix.com/bars-and-clubs/article/coach-house-decor-is/822798/content
from: Cassie Sims, attorney 
