Saying Goodbye to AJ's Bike Night

Here I was planning on writing a witty and amusing blog but I just can't do it tonight. As you may know from prior blogs, we hold a Thursday Night Bike Night at Arizona Joe's. This is an even that we have been sponsoring for the last 3 years. There have been many times when we were personally not at the Bike Nights, but we always made sure it continued, even when we were on the road.

Tonight I am saddened to say that there will be no more Thursday Night Bike Nights at Arizona Joe's (AJ's). The restaurant and bar will be permanently closing it's doors after tomorrow evening. It feels like we are losing a close friend. We always looked forward to Thursdays and seeing all of our friends. We held free raffles each Thursday and periodically had 50-50 drawings where the proceeds would go to a different charitable organization each week. The really sad part is that we were unable to say goodbye to our friends this last Thursday. We only found out today that AJ's will be closing tomorrow, so there has been no time to thank all our loyal following for attending so many Bike Nights.

It will be especially tough to see the staff go out and look for new positions. Hopefully, they will have little trouble locating other jobs. They were a fantastic team and always went the extra mile for the customers. We are personally blessed because we did not rely on Bike Night as a source of income. Bike Night was our chance to spend time with the people we enjoy being with and not really have to work hard at it. Granted, we always had a table of our products on display for people, but Bike Night was more of an opportunity for bikers and non-bikers to get together to socialize. As I have mentioned before, this was an event that was appropriate for the whole family. Many other Bike Nights that we attended in the past were more focused on drinking, it was at AJ's where we were lucky enough to have that process changed.

AJ's served good food, and served it on the patio, where we held Bike Night. Their broasted chicken was awesome, and their ribs were cooked so well, the meat practically fell off the bones. Since many attendees did eat the meals, there was less hard drinking going on early in the evening. I can't vouch for the quantity of drinks after 9 pm, but it was nice to know that people did not overdue it prior to 9 pm. What was also a lot of fun was being able to wander into AJ's any other time of the week and meet at least one person that we knew there. This is a restaurant / bar that I would refer to as a local bar. People would come here year after year. We looked forward to the winter visitors (snowbirds) coming back and would greet those friends each year they returned. I personally do not have much experience with bars, (no comments from the peanut gallery) but really considered this one to be a place where I could call a second home. No matter what time or day we came by, we were always greeted warmly by the staff, and we would always see someone else we knew in the restaurant or at the bar.

I guess we will be looking for a new location for a Bike Night, but we won't look too hard right now. The new motorcycle rally season is just around the bend, and we don't want to start up a fledgling bike night and then leave for several weeks. If anyone out there has any ideas regarding a new bike night, or a new location, we are all ears. Our e-mail is hawgwash1@yahoo.com.

For those of you who have been attending our regular Bike Night, thank you so very much for your support over the years. Your friendship means the world to us. With luck we will have a new location, not like AJ's, but some place that is just as welcoming so we can all get together once a week and swap lies.

Until tomorrow...