You begin your journey on Oracle Road. The sun is so bright the dried rain on your windshield is catching all the light, until it’s almost opaque.
You should have parked in the shady part of the Tucson Mall parking lot, but, disoriented, you pulled into the treeless, empty expanse in front of the abandoned Sears. Google Maps insists: your destination, a hidden bar, is right inside.
Crossing the threshold into the mall, you’ll feel the immediate relief of air conditioning and shelter from the sun. It has that special mall smell of distant food court aromas mixing with generations of accumulated body sprays and store perfumes. Maybe you haven’t been in here for a while, and you’re surprised when there are escape rooms and RC car racetracks next to the American Eagle, instead of whatever was there before. I don’t remember.
You walk up the escalator to get there faster. You’re about to be launched into another world. Squishmallows of cartoon wizards and three-headed beasts guard the entrance.
If you know what you’re looking for, you’ll follow the dragon tracks to the back right corner, past the tables of players rapt in the middle of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. One might be wearing a silk collared shirt with a full-back illustration of Cthulhu on it. DMs (Dungeon masters) are tucked behind low folders to protect the secrecy of their missions. We’re in another world.
Tucson Games and Gadgets is also home to Short Rest Tavern at the Tucson Mall.
The place we’re here to talk about is in the way back, untouched even by the mall’s skylights. Lamps dangle from the ceiling framed by decahedron fixtures. Mead is on tap, along with local beers and cider. For $100, you can drink it out of a custom mug, with mug club privileges like discounts on games and drinks, but also street cred.
It’s the Short Rest Tavern, the board game speakeasy in the back of the Tucson Games and Gadgets store where you can get 25 different varieties of mead and play a Dungeons & Dragons campaign at the same time.
They have a vibrant social calendar, with “Tucson’s toughest trivia” on Friday nights, B-movie Mondays, and Board in the Bar meet-ups on Tuesdays where you can choose from a wide selection of demos or learn a new featured weekly game.
They have a couch straight out of your best friend’s living room, flanked by maps of Middle Earth and Greyhawk, the first-ever world in Dungeons & Dragons. The soundtrack is immersive, and diverse: one day you might be listening to the game soundtrack of Zelda, another might be seagulls’ caws on repeat.
You can choose to roll a big die to get $1 off the random drink it lands on, off a list of 20.
A group of patrons play the card game Fluxx at Short Rest Tavern at Tucson Games and Gadgets at the Tucson Mall.
The Short Rest Tavern's name comes from Dungeons & Dragons lore, a game that owner Mark Kadow has played for over four decades. When he’s in a campaign, he plays the Burly Bard, the comic relief of the table whose primary function in battles is distracting enemies with the “vicious mockery” move, making them more susceptible to attack.
Kadow is able to cultivate an immersive atmosphere thanks to his years of experience in the entertainment industry. He got his start responding to a call for actors in a haunted house at Old Tucson. By age 21, he worked his way up to writing and producing the stunt shows.
When in the shows himself, Kadow was a stuntman, which at Old Tucson meant being a gunslinger. Over his career, he put together stunt shows internationally in China, Jakarta, Germany and Belgium, and did a stint in Los Angeles before getting burned out and coming home to Tucson.
Kadow looked at his career and thought, “What else do I know how to do?” he said.
He returned to the Dungeons & Dragons of his childhood. “The Short Rest” is a D&D term for a little break to regain stats if you’re in a dangerous place, like a dungeon, and can’t risk a long rest that might restore your health more.
Amber Dietz, a bartender at Short Rest Tavern, serves drinks to patrons at the bar located within Tucson Games and Gadgets at the Tucson Mall.
At the Short Rest Tavern, he’s made a home for Tucson’s board game community. Always, for a $5 table fee, you can rent games from the store: classics like Settlers of Catan or new releases like the pirate "4X" game Dead Reckoning. You can even play Monopoly. The fee can be spent on drinks, food or to bring a game home for good.
Kadow has his regulars, the people who come in daily for their D&D campaigns or weekly for Friday trivia. “We get everyone here, from Raytheon engineers who design missiles to kids on Saturdays,” he said.
The Short Rest boasts one of the largest mead rosters in Tucson, with special billing from Arizona’s Superstition Meadery. They have $6 cocktails made with wine-based spirits, chemically infused to mimic liquor like whiskey and gin. You can get French 75s and Moscow Mules with a lower ABV — all the fun of a cocktail, and most of the kick, while still encouraging a gentle, game-friendly atmosphere.
The menu, which also features snacks like personal pizzas and chicken (“griffin”) nuggets, is notated in “gp,” short for gold pieces, the currency of Dungeons & Dragons. While you can pay in dollars without a conversion fee, one group elects to pay only in golden dollar coins.
“This is a safe place for a lot of people in the community,” said bartender Amanda Murray.
Find the Short Rest Tavern inside Tucson Games and Gadgets at Tucson Mall, 4500 N. Oracle Road, on level 2 near Sears.
