Shot in the Dark Cafe’s location on Broadway will close Jan. 25. Credit: Shot in the Dark Cafe Facebook

Shot in the Dark Cafe announced that on Jan. 25 its always-open doors will close.

One of Tucson’s last standing 24 hour cafes, this longstanding Tucson establishment attributes their closure to increased rent and gentrification of downtown. They wrote on Facebook:

While their location on Broadway will close, Shot in the Dark hopes to open a new location in Tucson to keep their business going. The new location has not yet been announced.

The announcement of the cafe’s closure has stirred up a mix of emotions online, from fans and haters both. While many are sad to see the cafe close, others are happy to see it go and applaud the continual development of downtown.

Shot in the Dark is one of many recent closures of small businesses forced out by rent hikes and new development, including The Flycatcher and Revolutionary Grounds.

This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2019.

7 replies on “Shot in the Dark: An Always-Open Cafe Closes its Doors”

  4. This is so sad, 400% rent hike? Disgusting. All of Downtown will soon be exclusively corporate commercial businesses aka the only ones who can afford ridiculous rent.

  5. Can’t something be done about such things? Can’t progressively higher rents be regulated in the effort to keep Shots in the Dark or Revolutionary Grounds type places open and keep Starbucks at bay? Just how powerful IS that buy local phrase anyway. I live downtown, am happy with the development, but see it slipping into anywheres-ville as local places are pushed out and corporate places come in. Seems to me that it doesn’t have to be that way–downtown can develop without gentrifying if greedy landlords are limited. But I suppose that curbing greed is not really the American Way, is it?

  6. How come Tucson can be snobby all of a sudden were not allowed to be snobby we will never let ourselves be snobby as Tucsonans. Understood.

  7. I remember when they started to entering from the cities best and most like the caf to being a side joint for seedy activity and see people and I remember when they changed ownership like three times in the course of one year or something crazy then I knew it was no longer the same Cafe Q.

Comments are closed.