A cocktailing, controversial, Christmas tradition

The Arizona Republic

A restaurant known for its stylish crowd, modern, minimalist decor and eccentric art installations is an odd place to create a Christmas tradition.

But AZ 88 is just that kind of place.

It’s where friends drag those who’ve never been, saying “I can’t really describe it. No, really, you just have to see it.”

Because every November since 1992, Valley artist and interior designer Janice Leonard transforms the venerable Old Town Scottsdale bar and restaurant into a holiday destination.

It’s not Christmas-y, per se. There’s no Santa. No Jesus. No angel on top of a tree, either.

Leonard has commemorated the season of peace on earth and goodwill toward men with Christmas trees made from hand-chipped glass, ’70s-era shoes, electrostatic balls and Barbies jarred in colored water.

These towering trees dominate the 13-foot-tall dining room each year, creating an unexpectedly intimate aesthetic experience for patrons and servers, as they can get right next to, and even touch, the art.

Leonard said she feels like it’s the restaurant’s holiday gift to customers.

“I consider myself a fine artist, a serious artist, and these are more about display,” said the graduate of Parsons the New School for Design, who also designed the restaurant. “But people like them and they’re fun and they get people talking. It can be political, or it can be just fun. It’s often not politically correct and we get all kinds of feedback. But that’s the great part about working for the owner, he doesn’t care. He’s happy to spark up conversation and interaction between people.”

The art, which Leonard starts planning in September, is deeply interactive.

Years ago, customers’ hair stood on end when they touched the electrostatic balls. The dining room was abuzz last year when a tree made of purses and coated in paint referenced petrochemical consumption. And everyone was smitten with the slightly demented dolls in colored water, like a little girl’s prized possessions preserved in formaldehyde.

One of her first, the shoe tree, got the most feedback.

“People just really loved that one,” she said. “They remembered wearing shoes like that or seeing them. It was something familiar to them, but displayed in a new way.”

Leonard rotates the installations between AZ 88’s sister restaurants, Elsa’s on the Park in Milwaukee, Wis., Bar 89 in Manhattan, and the recently finished Hanny’s in downtown Phoenix.

AZ 88’s art this year is related to excess, according to Leonard, and it went up in late-November, the culmination of five weeks of work.

But I’ve seen it and think it’s just excessively beautiful.

The restaurant’s lights are turned low and in the center of the room shimmers a massive Christmas tree of broken wine and martini glasses, lit white from within.

The effect of all those broken glasses and twinkling lights is impossibly romantic, both in the sense that it makes you want to kiss the person nearest you, and also that it speaks to ideas of mystery, remoteness, idealized beauty and grand gestures.

It’s enchanting because Leonard has created something gorgeous from broken things. And that is reassuring, because people can be like that, too. It makes you feel like everything, everyone, is redeemable, that something glorious can come from something fractured.

My friend Jay is a server there and said Leonard has been collecting glasses for four years from AZ88 and Bar 89 in Manhattan. After a second, I realized I must have a glass or two up on that tree.

And the thought delighted me as I sat in the dim glow, sipping my Pimm’s Cup, feeling all sparkly myself, like I was reflecting back the glow of the tree. It was one of those moments when the night cracks open, and you can see that the world is secretly covered with glitter. But maybe that was just me.

Go see it. Take a date. Or take someone you’d like to date.

And if it doesn’t work out, you can just think of that glittering tree of broken glasses as a metaphor for your heart: beautiful even with—or because of—the damage.

Details: 7353 Scottsdale Mall, Scottsdale, 480-994-5576, az88.com