Photos by Annika Cline
The Phoenix Hostel on Ninth and Portland streets offers more than beds and breakfast. There’s culture and community there, too.
On a recent Tuesday night, they had a musical performance and play reading in the front garden. Both performances focused on Arizona-Mexico border issues.
The hostel has been around since the early ’90s, but the cultural events really kicked off a year and a half ago, when current hostel owner Mary Stephens decided to not only point visitors to outside events but began integrating events into the space.
Stephens said she was influenced by a phenomenon in Mexico called Casas de las Culturas, or culture houses, with libraries, cafes, performances and more.
“So I thought, wait a minute, I own a hostel. It’s a house. Let’s turn it into this culture house,” Stephens said.
So the hostel became Phoenix Hostel and Cultural Center, and Stephens began booking musicians, performers and poets for the front garden.
Stephen’s father, Keith Stephens, has worked at the hostel on and off since his wife first opened it. He remembers how different the area was back then.
“We were on the edge of gangland here and we were quite aware of it back in the ’90s,” he said.
Today, Keith Stephens can easily point people to different places around downtown for music, food, art and more. He said sometimes people aren’t too sure about Phoenix when they first get here, but he encourages them to stay at least two nights to give it a try.
“You stay in Phoenix two nights and you start looking at some of the places we tell you to look at, you’ll see there’s a lot going on in Phoenix,” Keith Stephens said.
Seattle musician Ron Bone said he has stayed at the Phoenix Hostel five times. He comes for the city’s music venues.
“I mean, the music scene compared to Seattle … It’s off the hook,” Bone said. “This place is blowing up.”
And the hostel itself has developed as a music venue, too. It’s hosted big names in Latin music, such as Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux and Spanish-French musician and activist Manu Chao. Keith Stephens said Chao actually stayed at the hostel for a week while he was in town in 2011. His signed poster hangs in the front room.
The hostel also has other gems. A section of the front room ceiling is covered in colored-pencil drawings of people’s faces, drawn by a couple of visitors in 1996. Another corner of the room is occupied by different instruments, including a piano and a hand drum.
Keith Stephens said the hostel has accumulated a bunch of interesting bits and pieces of art and culture over the years. And Mary Stephens said they hope to keep expanding the cultural events in the future, with more socially engaged plays and music.
“That’s what the hostel is really good for, because it brings all those different perspectives together and we have seen some amazing things happen with our guests at the hostel.”
Contact the reporter at annika.cline@asu.edu
