Befitting its status as the biggest school, and biggest party school, in the country, ASU naturally has an awesome party scene. The epicenter of it all, where it all goes down, is Mill Avenue, a king-sized version of Franklin Street in downtown Tempe. Mill is crowded, jam-packed even during the summer; I can only imagine how it is during the school year.
Mill Avenue is where ASU parades its awesomeness. Hot girls in bump-its with orange tans, gigantic guys wearing Ed Hardy without a hint of irony – Mill Avenue is kind of like the Jersey Shore.
The hotspots include Big Bang, a dueling piano bar where they took the whole Phoenix 2010 Corps on the Saturday before Institute started as a last hurrah before the intensity began. Dueling piano bars are my new favorite; after we went to one in Kansas City and met some fun Danes, I’ve been hooked. I mean, I think my job is tough, but workers at a dueling piano bar have to know every word to every song ever! Think of the pressure.
Fat Tuesday’s is a fun Mardi Gras-themed bar on Mill, the Cue Club has more pool tables and room to chill than any other bar I’ve been to. But, besides Big Bang, my all-time favorite bar on Mill is Vintage. Oh, Vintage. It’s a no-cover dance club with $1 PBR’s on Fridays; you can just imagine what goes down there. It’s like Players in Chapel Hill, but with a sketchier clientele, if that’s possible. It’s sweaty, it’s crowded, and it’s pretty dirty. But it’s the perfect place to rage and go wild after a tough week. I went three nights in a row at the end of Induction, and I didn’t think I could stand ever again after that.
Like everything, even Mill Ave has a worst thing I hate about it. The worst thing I hate about Mill is that each bar has bathroom attendants. I hate bathroom attendants. They make me feel so uncomfortable when they try to hand me paper towels or mints or mouthwash or whatever it is their hawking. And they demand tips and I never carry around cash, and tipping is awkward for me anyways because I can never figure out how much to give, so there’s that whole aspect of it too.
Not all of the best bars in Tempe are on Mill; my second favorite is called The Vine, and if you’ve been following me at all on Twitter (PeterCPBoyle – tweet me!) over the past few weeks, you know exactly how much time I spend there. It’s THE TFA bar – we go all the time. People go to lesson plan, people go to hang out, people go to just relax or rage on Friday nights after the weekend. One of my favorite parts of every week is heading to the Vine on Friday nights to see who’s around, share war stories from a week spent in the trenches fighting the education gap, and get a ton of dollar drinks. The amount of booze imbibed during the six week of Institute and Induction at the Vine would fill Lake Mead (which is to my right as I write this crossing over the Hoover Dam!) – although the Vine hasn’t realized this yet, and only has two bartenders available to serve all 500 of us at the Phoenix Institute.
Yesterday was the first Friday of July, and on the first Friday of each month, downtown Phoenix goes crazy with a street arts and booze festival called (creatively) First Fridays. But we all went to the Vine instead – we have two years to explore First Fridays, but the Vine will only be cool for the two weeks left of TFA training. And besides, it’s so convenient – it’s literally across Apache Street from our lovely dorms at ASU.
peace and love from the border of the grand canyon state and the silver state,
pb
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