Scottsdale club rejects Wildcat fan

Tucson native and die-hard UA Wildcats fan Michael Underwood was told he couldn’t wear his Wildcats ball cap into Scottsdale’s Hi-Fi Kitchen & Cocktails just after 5 p.m. Sunday to watch the Wildcats-Gonzaga game.

But when he ditched the cap in his car, a bouncer at the door still wouldn’t let him in, citing the club’s stringent dress code that bans athletic wear, head gear, sandals, sneakers and excessively baggy clothing.

“It’s pretty crazy,” said Underwood, a 35-year-old Tucson High School graduate who has lived in the Phoenix area since 1999.

Underwood said he was wearing a black three-button casual shirt, blue jeans and black non-athletic Nike dress shoes. His gray University of Arizona ball cap had the “A” logo in red and white outline.

He took the hat off and put it in his car and decided to videotape his return encounter with the bouncer on his cell phone.

On the video, he asks the bouncer “Am I cool?” and the bouncer says “We still can’t let you in. You’ve got the shoes matching your shirt. Your shoes can’t match your hat color and the fact that you came back up here with that we can’t let you in.”

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Underwood asks the man if he came back wearing a suit would he be admitted.

“Once you come up here out of dress code everyone would be doing that. We’d be trading Jordans through the (expletive) fence. We’d be trading hats,” the bouncer responded, saying that patrons would dress up then ditch their nice clothes once inside.

As he explains this to Underwood, the bouncer let in another man wearing a logo tank top and a woman wearing a white tank top.

Underwood’s video of patrons in the patio shows several wearing ball caps and one man in the final frame wearing a ball cap and a logo team T-shirt.

A manager at the Scottsdale club said bouncers use their own discretion in enforcing the club’s dress code.

Hi-Fi is set to open at the end of April in a 6,150-square-foot space — 8,000 square feet when you add in the patio — at 345 E. Congress St., on the street level of the downtown Plaza Centro Garage. It will follow the Scottsdale location’s dress code, company officials said.