Rusty Nail Tavern to close Friday

The Rusty Nail on North Flowing Wells Road will serve its final beers Friday night.

Last call is midnight Friday, Sept. 30, and once they clear the tables and lock the doors, the 44-year-old tavern will be no more, said longtime owner Susan Compton.

This is the second Tucson bar that had been around more than 40 years to close this week. After a 46-year run, the Boondocks Lounge on North First Avenue closed for good Thursday.

Compton early this week finalized the sale of the Rusty Nail property at 4415 N. Flowing Wells Road, near West Wetmore Road. She notified her three part-time employees and posted a note on Facebook: “The Rusty Nail Tavern would like to thank everyone for all the great years! We regret to inform everyone that we will be closing our doors forever at close on Friday. Come in and say bye this week.”

The Rusty Nail has been a fixture in the Flowing Wells neighborhood since 1972 and was a popular early-morning drinking hole for shift workers from the mines. Compton, a South Dakota native who moved to Tucson to attend the University of Arizona, bought the bar in 1989, nearly a decade after earning a business degree.

It was Compton’s second bar in Tucson; she bought the nearly 70-year-old Bay Horse Tavern, a popular UA-area bar on East Grant Road, two years after graduating.

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Compton described the Rusty Nail as a quintessential blue-collar corner bar, where miners, plumbers, masons and others sat shoulder-to-shoulder enjoying a cold one after work. Business dropped when the mines closed; it dropped again when the state banned smoking.

“People now get a 12-pack and go home and drink a beer and smoke a cigarette on the patio,” Compton lamented.

She said she had considered for a while the idea of selling the bar, but didn’t really act on it until six weeks ago. A friend introduced her to a real estate specialist who convinced her the property could be sold quickly. Five days later, they identified a buyer.

Compton said it is almost certain the new owner will not open a tavern on the property. The sale included the land and the building, but she has not heard what will become of the building.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Oct. 4, Compton will open the tavern at 6 a.m. to sell all of the memorabilia that has been collected over the past 44 years including posters on the walls. The sale will run through noon. She said she has to have the building empty for the new owners on Oct. 6.

The Rusty Nail will be open from noon to midnight Friday.