The Tuesday crowd at the Bashful Bandit doesn't venture there the rest of the week. Casey Cox, 25, says the place is not that inviting unless it's packed with a college-age crowd.
"I drive past here, and I see 15 Harleys out front, and you know it's like old men who'd be hitting on you. You don't want the hassle."
Brenndon Scott, one of two new owners of the venerable biker bar at 3686 E. Speedway, concedes that the place may not be appealing to University of Arizona students most nights.
But he notes that Tuesday, when the bar usually reaches capacity and a line forms around the building after 11 p.m., is the only night he needs to hire five bouncers to keep the peace.
"We have more trouble on Tuesday, when the college students are here," co-owner Scott says. "It's the testosterone."
This past Tuesday, only one of the Bandit's regulars was at the bar after 9 p.m. as the students began to arrive.
"I just wanted to check it out," says Mike Johnson, 40, who wears his Hopi name of Kotutwa on his leather motorcycle jacket.
He likes the Bandit on weekdays when the leather-clad crowd fills the bar stools. "This is a good bar, as long as you have respect for people. You can't come in here and run your mouth," he says.
Johnson is especially pleased that the new owners of the bar — Scott and partner Brian Pracko — let him access their wireless Internet. He can sit at the bar with his laptop and write papers.
Johnson is pursuing his doctorate in natural resource studies at the UA after receiving degrees from Cornell and Pepperdine universities.
"I'm here like five days a week. The crowd here, they'll always back you up, man. It's all about respect."
Tonight his crowd isn't here. A bouncer politely asks him to move his motorcycle, which is parked right by the back door.
"When we have a problem, we like to run 'em out in a straight line, and I don't want to be running somebody into your bike," the bouncer explains.
College night at the Bandit was instituted in 2005 shortly after UA business major Joe Stapleton, son of the previous owner, took over running the place. It's the bar's biggest night, says Scott — a chance to quadruple the daily take.
But the place does a good business on other days as well, says Scott, and he doesn't want to do anything to alienate the bar's mainstays.
The college crowd's attachment to a particular bar on a particular night is fickle, he says, and other college-area bars are always trying to snare a spot in the rotation.
"There's like a different bar for each night," says Casey Cox. She and a friend, Craig Decker, rattled off a list: "Tuesday, the Bandit; Wednesday, Cactus Moon; Saturday, Champions; Friday, the Cat House; Monday, the Nugget."
Kelli Eaker, 22, says the Tuesday crowd at the Bandit is constantly changing.
"Back in the day, it just used to be my peeps here," she says. "Now it's all ghetto crowd or frat boys."
Asked how long ago "back in the day" was, she responds: "Oh, like July."
Eaker doesn't come in on nights other than Tuesday, but her friend Zoie Huddleston says she's been in often.
"When my dad comes down here, I hang out with him," she says. "He's got a Harley."
Driving up on a motorcycle, preferably a Harley-Davidson, is still the easiest way to fit in at the Bandit, though many of the bar's regulars don't ride motorcycles.
Running a biker bar was never his dream, says Scott, a 32-year-old commercial real estate broker, but when the deal came across his desk he was impressed by the numbers.
"I tried to be outside that notion of wanting to own a bar for fun. From a strictly business standpoint, it was a good deal," he says.
He has a few plans for the place. Music six nights a week, a patio, a kitchen so he can serve food five nights a week "to soak up the liquor." He's already bringing in pizzas on Fridays.
"I can't change the interior," he says. The shot-up beer kegs, motorcycle club flags and other decorations hanging from the ceiling will stay.
They're part of the place's quirky charm and history. Scott doesn't like the noose and the Confederate flags, but he's not taking those down either.
The front parking lot, of course, will remain reserved officially for motorcycles, and unofficially for just Harleys.
"The front door has to stay open so they can keep an eye on their bikes. It affects our heating bill, but it's tradition," Scott says.
Scott had never set foot in the bar before he became interested in buying it. He says he's becoming more comfortable there.
"These guys are some of the nicest, most giving people you've met," he says.
Part of the bar's allure to the college crowd, he says, is that they can brag they danced or sang karaoke in a biker dive with a reputation for roughness. It's darker and dingier than the university-area bars.
It has a roadhouse look — one big space with an L-shaped bar and about 1,800 square feet of floor space containing a jukebox, a pool table, some worn booths, a small stage and plenty of tall tales.
"It has some stories," says Scott, "some unfortunate acts of violence."
The Bandit's heyday for media attention came in the early '80s. On July 11, 1981, James T. "Big Jim" Nolan shot a guy to death in the Bandit's parking lot.
The two had argued inside because Nolan kept playing the same song on the jukebox over and over, according to trial coverage in the Arizona Daily Star.
Nolan, a leader of the Outlaws motorcycle gang, was ultimately acquitted of the crime.
The dead man, John McQuillen, had taken out a .38-caliber handgun. Nolan had a 9 mm handgun that discharged 13 shots in short order, hitting McQuillen eight times.
A week later, two other men argued in the bar, then went outside to settle it, pipe vs. knife. The guy with the pipe ended up in the emergency room, but neither man wanted to pursue charges in the incident.
In November 1983, two bikers took it way outside. One, nicknamed "Crazy Dog," stabbed another, named "Maniac," during a tussle on North Sabino Canyon Road, where they had run out of gas in a car.
All the stories on Crazy Dog's murder trial noted that they were bikers who had been drinking at the Bandit all afternoon.
Longtime Bandit bartender Gordy Crow says the guys at the bar aren't as menacing as those tales might make them seem.
"Most of the trouble comes from the people who think they want to be and they're not," he says. Crow has tended bar at the Bandit for 43 years, beginning when it was a Country Western bar called the Rio Rita.
It was no more or less dangerous then, he says. Still, the bar retains a reputation as a place to come only on a dare.
Regular Scotty McKay says he's seen fraternity pledges come through in their undershorts, stopping only for a photo to prove they were there.
Another time, some sorority pledges had to get their breasts signed by a biker, McKay says.
McKay tries to shush friend Bobbie Atchison as she expounded on what good, caring people the Bandit's regulars are. McKay prefers the darker image.
Atchison, a UA librarian who rides both a Harley and an Indian, was undeterred.
"We do benefits: Toys For Tots, the Humane Society, Ronald McDonald House, American Legion," Atchison says. Sure there are fights, she says, but there are fights at every bar.
She says the regulars, bikers and non-bikers, mostly police themselves, take care of one another in the event of illness or accident and honor those who have died.
The thing that most disturbs him, says regular Brian Davis, is the relative youth of patrons whose pictures are hung on a memorial wall at the bar.
Most didn't meet violent ends but died from the usual mix of maladies, perhaps accelerated by the bar lifestyle.
Davis, a former New York state trooper, is a theoretical physicist at Raytheon Missile Systems. He doesn't ride a motorcycle; he just likes the crowd at the Bandit.
"It's not a real biker bar where you come in here and get killed," he says. "I feel very safe here. It's also not a place where you want to (mess) with anybody. It's a cross between a neighborhood bar and a biker bar."
Miramonte, the neighborhood whose boundaries include the Bandit, has a good relationship with the bar.
When Scott applied to transfer the liquor license, the neighborhood association president wrote a letter in support.
"The Bashful Bandit has a long, colorful history at its Speedway location," read the letter from Charles Casey.
"Since 1993, when the association was formed, the association has not had a problem with the bar," Casey wrote.
"There are lots of things in Miramonte that make it a unique neighborhood, and I think of the Bashful Bandit as one of those elements," says former neighborhood association President Ruth Beeker.
DID YOU KNOW …
The stuccoed masonry building that houses the Bashful Bandit was built in 1947 and has been in continuous operation as a bar for at least 58 years.
It shows up as the Rio Rita Bar in the city directory for the first time in 1950. The year before, the address listed a restaurant.
It became the Bashful Bandit after Frank Buscemi, owner of Super City Liquors, bought it in 1980.
William "Bill" Stapleton, a biker who was also the finance director for Loews Ventana Canyon Resort, bought it in 1989, and his son took over in 2005.
Brenndon Scott and Brian Pracko bought it in December.
