Kay’s Place

Awesome place with very friendly staff and locals that made me feel right at home. I was here for karaōke night and managed to get quite a few songs in — great selection of tracks.

I stopped in one night cuz I am new to Mesa and wanted to make friends. I haven’t hardly missed a night since! The bar is great, friendly, nobody jacking you. What more could I ask for?

Get place to hang out on Sunday morning. The staff was super friendly and the Bloody Marys were delicious

Gotta say I love this place. Ever one is friendly and just here to have a good time. the staff is fun and very friendly. Love the Saturday keyroke

This place was a nightmare in 2008 when I visited before, but the joint has new management who have worked hard to clean up the bar and the clientele.
The bathrooms have been recently renovated; and the rest of the bar is now consistently clean.
Great spot for happy hour due to friendly service and dirt-​cheap drinks. Lack of an established kitchen means no standing menu, but I hear they are working on getting food delivered or in-​house.

I like ‘Dive Bars’ — there I said it. It may be a reflection of my early years when my sainted father was a bartender in some of the bast parts of Chicago, but I kinda like this local dive. So, Ladies, this is not a place you might want to go to alone, bring a friend, or three. Drinks are cheap, people are very interesting, service was fast and the pool tables weren’t too shabby at all. I have never had an issue with violence, real or imaginary, but I have only been here a few times in the recent past.

ok, so at the suggestion of Anandita N, I stopped in at Kay’s place for a drink on the way home last Friday night, right before last call. I rolled in by myself, the place was still hopping, grabbed a seat between a guy that was leaned back against the bar sleeping, and some native american old timer who was about ¾ of the way through what appeared to be a whiskey and coke served in a small 32oz plastic pitcher. I could sense out of the corner of my eye that he was staring at me for what seemed like a good solid five minutes after I sat down. I did not make eye contact.
The crowd was pretty ethnic if you will, I felt a bit uncomfortably white walking in there, but nobody seemed to mind or pay attention. Seemed to be about half the crowd was folks from the reservation, rounded out by mexican, some black guys, samoan/​polynesian even. I was one of the handful of honkies there, which included on old biker dude, and two guys and a girl in their 20’s or so. Most everybody was relaxed and all smiles, just having a good time playing pool and socializing as an assortment of Nightranger tunes played on the jukebox.
The décor was indeed pretty divey, wood veneer paneling on the walls (is wood veneer paneling even manufactured anymore?), christmas lights strung about here and there, the standard dive bar issue string O’ promotional flags. The drop ceiling looked like it had been spraypainted christmas tree green. The best part of the bar IMO was what appeared to be a «karaōke corner». Imagine a corner wall mural of Monument Valley, done in the style of a black velvet Elvis painting, with glow in the dark neon colors. And a coyote howling at the moon. Truly an enchanting sight.
As far as knife fights and the propensity for violence to break out at any second, I didn’t pick up on that last night. I was thirsty so I pretty much guzzled down my $ 3 Miller Chill without attempting to make any small talk. Headed out the door, and that was that.

Hmm. seeing all the reviews on so-​called dive bars in Phoenix made me remember Kay’s Place — the diviest of all dive bars I’ve ever entered. As in, ‘wow, I might die tonight.’ Seriously. It’s next to something that resembles a scrap metal yard. I used to come here with one of my old friends who LOVED dive bars. And she loved Kay’s because the drinks were dirt cheap and you could karaōke with people ranging from the drunk homeless man to the guy who fried his brain on too much acid and drooled a little bit as he sang. I’m not kidding. I finally convinced her to quit coming after we witnessed what looked like a knife fight, spilling out of the doors as we can in one night.
I’m giving it two stars — one for being there and the second for being, honestly, the most ‘authentic’ dive bar experience I never want to experience again.