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| - I love this place. I have been coming here for many years, mainly for the Saturday night Solstice party, but sometimes also for the other nights as the offerings have expanded. I really love the upstairs balcony dancefloor because you can dance under the stars and sometimes even the full moon.
The crowd (in general) is very welcoming and unpretentious. Most people come to dance and enjoy the music. You can dress up if you want to or you can just kick it. This is one of the few places that I am comfortable, as a woman, going to by myself. I don't have to worry about being groped or harassed. It might happen, but the security crew in here is on point and very protective of their (well-behaved) patrons. The drinks are well-poured and well-priced. I love the heavy-handed bartenders!
The owners of this bar expanded and own some of the surrounding properties, so they now offer even more musical choices, though BarSmith is still the epicenter. There's salsa, banda, house, techno, tech-house, hip-hop, grime, dub-step, progressive, minimal, ...even jungle and DnB at one point... I mean I can't even list them all. Plus things change, different people will run different weeklies at different times. This bar is an institution for downtown Phoenix. I remember when it was literally the only place to go. Even with new spots opening up this is still a stong hold for good music.
The parties and the type of music played here can be kind of seasonal, with the exception of Saturday nights, which is the night that started it all, and kind of the foundation that the bar rests on. Saturday night upstairs is based in deep house but genres are so fluid, so upstairs has a healthy mix of deep-house-related music. On Saturdays the downstairs is a really solid hip-hop night too. It's nice to go between the two floors, they complement each other, like wasabi for your sushi. I could go on forever about this place!
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