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Check out the Willow House in Phoenix, featuring art, coffee, and culture. This coffeehouse located on the southeast corner of 3rd Ave and McDowell serves up a variety of art works and entertainment, along with quality coffee drinks and deli style food.
As you approach its charming green-roofed, white-stucco, and red-trimmed exterior, note that the parking lot is often full on a Friday or Saturday night. You can always park in the lot across the street. As you walk in, you can check on the scene of this hangout, voted Best Place to People Watch in 1999 by the Arizona Rep. A buzz of energy envelopes you as you climb the cement stairs of the converted house, originally built in the early 1900s.
As you enter, you note the wide array of coffee and specialty drinks available, along with deli sandwiches, specialty sandwiches, salads, and baked goods. You can combine a casual dinner or snack with a browse through the work from many local artists available for sale. As you explore the nooks and crannies in the connected side rooms, you find a variety of interesting work and crafts for sale.
A large painting of Oscar Wilde, for instance, oversees a shelf of handmade frames, just across the way from the stunning Chicano art of "Los Mestizos". Purses of various funky designs compete for your budget, along with the books in "Ed's Well Read Books". Will you buy a clock made out of an album cover, the Brady Bunch or Happy Days lunch boxes, or a handmade tie-died shirt? Maybe you will be enchanted by the Mexican Oxacan imports from "Poco de Mexico" or the custom-made petrographs and pictographs from "Ledford's Rocks".
Even going to the bathroom is an artistic experience in this cove. Enter the "Fish Bowl" as the restroom is called. The tub is decorated with a canvass painted with sea scene and paper machete fish hang from the ceiling. A mermaid, some fishes, and a lobster grace the walls, and one little fish is labeled appropriately "bottom feeder", in case you didn't know. A large "Big Mouth Billy Bass" hangs above the toilet, but thankfully does not work.
In the nonsmoking middle room settle to wait for your sandwich. You might notice paintings by Dominique with traumatic themes and sweeping brush strokes. Beware those of you who like sauerkraut on your Rueben; the Willow House is a coleslaw Rueben purveyor. You might want to stick with the delicious and nutritious Tuna Salad or even the Peanut Butter and Jelly.
Moving through to the front room, you can sit in an armchair next to the rarely used fireplace, adorned with Kokopeli tiles. Around the ceiling, you can use a template to identify what you are feeling now; as cartooned black marker faces present in alphabetical order a wide array of emotion. Are you curious, disapproving, disbelieving, frightened, or frustrated? You might be in awe of the work of Alexander Hughs, who painted the aforementioned Oscar Wilde in the front and whose self portrait "Unsung" hangs above the mantle. In a solid red background a man screams with red eyes. More of the work of that artist hangs next to the porch door.
You might also be amused and intrigued by "Coffee Art" by Karl Knelson. Small "teaser" canvases of a few inches square present small "samples" of the concept.
The door to the porch is adorned with paintings of flowers. On the porch you can smoke and read the local zines. Throughout the place, people are clumped in groups conversing and laughing. The entertainment may begin and may be inside or outside, by the picnic tables and umbrellas. The Willow House "Little Theater" in the back is mostly used for 12 step meetings of various types.
The entertainment includes a regular Thursday evening poetry reading, advertised as "one of the most popular poetry venues in the Valley". Live entertainment includes a variety of local musicians (Chad and Val, Eddie Detroit, Frog, and Ant Farm are some examples) and is offered every night of the week at 8 p.m. with no cover.
So whether arriving by subcompact, Harley, pickup truck, luxury vehicle, or foot, join the crowd of diverse folk converging on the Willow House on any day or night of the week. The hours are from 7 a.m. to 12 a.m. Monday through Thursday, 7 a.m. to 1 a.m. Friday, and 8 a.m. to 1 a.m. Saturday, and 8 a.m. to 12 a.m. Sunday. Willow House offers a happy hour from 4 to 7 p.m. every Monday through Friday with coffee drinks at two for one.
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