The Best Bars on 6th Street & West 6th

Last updated August 2026

Our party bike stops at 6th & Trinity. I've unloaded something north of 1,098 groups onto that corner over eight years and then watched where they went — and, more usefully, watched which ones came back to the bike grinning and which came back forty minutes later saying "that place was a rip-off." This guide is the accumulated result of that.

Two streets share the name and they are not remotely the same night out. East 6th — "Dirty 6th" — is eight blocks of neon between Congress and I-35. West 6th is a tidier, patio-heavy strip out past Lamar. Same street name, twelve-minute walk apart, completely different bars for completely different people. Pick wrong and you'll spend $80 being miserable in a room built for someone ten years younger or ten years older than you.

The short version

If you only read one section:

• You want live music without a ticket. Maggie Mae's for three stages and the biggest rooftop on the strip; Blind Pig for a band every single night on an open-air deck.
• You want an actual show. Pete's Dueling Piano Bar. It's the one bar on Dirty 6th where a group of twelve strangers ends up singing together. Worth the cover; book a table.
• You want a real cocktail. Midnight Cowboy if you planned ahead, The Dead Rabbit if you didn't, Marlow if you want the version locals go to.
• Your group needs something to do besides drink. Kung Fu Saloon (free skee-ball, fifteen-plus arcade cabinets) or Bull & Bowl (duckpin lanes, a mechanical bull, private karaoke rooms).
• You're 28–40 and want a patio and a conversation. West 6th, before 10pm. Star Bar or Little Woodrow's.
• You want the greasy 1am cheeseburger that fixes everything. Casino El Camino. Kitchen runs till 1:30am. Order at the bar, then wait — it takes a while on purpose.

The honest headline: Dirty 6th is better than its reputation between 8 and 11pm and worse than its reputation after 1am. The bars that are genuinely good there — and there are more of them than in 2019, thanks to a $500–750 million restoration of thirty-plus historic buildings by Stream Realty — are good early. The shot-and-a-shove crowd arrives late. Time your night around that one fact and Dirty 6th is a great night out.

Quick picks

If you want	Go here	Why
Best all-rounder on Dirty 6th	Maggie Mae's	Live bands, a pub, a courtyard and the strip's biggest roof under one roster
Best group experience, period	Pete's Dueling Piano Bar	Two pianos, request slips, everybody sings. Undefeated for birthdays
Best cocktail on the street	Midnight Cowboy	Reservation-only, eight-person cap, tarot-themed menu, a 2026 top-10 bar in town
Best pint and a place to sit	The Dead Rabbit	Opened July 2024 in an 1870s row house; five different Irish coffees
Best bar for people who hate 6th Street	Marlow	Far east end, punch bowls, mezcal, a taco truck and no wristbands
Best free entertainment	Kung Fu Saloon	Three skee-ball lanes that never take a quarter
Best patio on West 6th	Star Bar	Three of them, thirty years deep, opens at 11am on weekends
Best big-crew landing zone	Rustic Tap	Two bars, a stage, life-size beer pong, room for twenty without booking

The full comparison table

Every bar below is one I've personally sent groups to and heard back about. Hours are as posted in mid-2026; the last hour of the night on this street is always a little theoretical.

Covers on Dirty 6th generally run $5–20 on Friday and Saturday after about 9pm and are free most weeknights. West 6th almost never charges one. Nothing here requires a ticket except Pete's and a show at Esther's.

Dirty 6th, block by block

Visitors treat East 6th as one undifferentiated wall of noise. It isn't. It's four distinct blocks, and knowing which is which is most of the skill.

The 200 block (Congress to Brazos) is the quiet, handsome end — limestone facades, the oldest buildings, the least foot traffic. This is where The Dead Rabbit sits. You can hear a person speak here at 10pm on a Saturday. Almost nobody realizes that.

The 300 block (Brazos to San Jacinto) is the heart of the live-music side: Maggie Mae's, Blind Pig, Shakespeare's, and the unmarked door to Midnight Cowboy sandwiched between them. Best density of "actually good" per square foot.

The 400–500 blocks (San Jacinto to Red River) are the ones the photographs are of. Pete's, Casino El Camino, The Jackalope, Coyote Ugly, and a run of shot bars whose entire business model is a $5 sign and a doorman with a clicker. This is where the concrete barriers went in, and where the sidewalk gets genuinely impassable at 12:30am.

The 600–700 blocks (Red River to I-35) thin out fast and then get interesting again right at the end, where Marlow sits in what feels like a different neighborhood entirely. Most tourists never walk past Red River. That's the whole reason the far end is good.

1. Maggie Mae's — the one that's outlasted everything

Nearly fifty years on the same block is an absurd achievement on a street where the average tenancy is measured in single-digit years. Maggie Mae's has done it by refusing to be one thing: there's an English-style pub room, a New Orleans–ish courtyard, a sports bar, and the rooftop — the largest one on 6th, and the single best place to stand and watch the street work itself into a lather below you.

The music is the point. Three stages means you can walk from a country trio to a rock cover band without paying twice or leaving the building, and on a busy Saturday all three are going. It's not the venue where you discover your new favorite songwriter — that's over on Red River — but it is the venue where a group of ten with wildly different taste all find something they'll stay for.

What to order: beer. This is not a cocktail room and pretending otherwise gets you a sad margarita. Order a can or a draft and put your energy into finding a rail spot upstairs.

Verdict: The default first stop on Dirty 6th and the one I recommend most often. Get there by 9:30 if you want the roof without standing in a stairwell.

2. Pete's Dueling Piano Bar — the highest hit rate on the street

If I could only send groups to one bar on Dirty 6th, it would be this one, and it isn't close. Two pianists trade off all night taking written requests, roasting the room, and dragging everyone into the same song. It works on people who swore they weren't going to enjoy it. I've watched groom's parties who spent the whole bike ride complaining about the cover come out three hours later hoarse.

The practical detail nobody tells you: book a table. Standing room and drink rails exist, and the staff genuinely will try to squeeze you in, but a party of eight with a reserved table has a completely different night than a party of eight orbiting the bar. Bring cash for the tip jar on the piano — that's the currency that gets your request played.

Verdict: The best-value cover charge in downtown Austin. Book the table, bring tip cash, arrive by 8:30.

3. The Blind Pig Pub — a band every night, and the biggest open deck

The Blind Pig is what a 6th Street bar is supposed to be: unglamorous downstairs, a scuffed staircase, and then a genuinely enormous open-air deck at the top with a band playing under the skyline. It's the largest uncovered roof deck on the street, and unlike Maggie Mae's you can usually walk straight up to it without a cover or a queue.

It's also one of the few places on the strip open in the afternoon. A 3pm beer on that deck on a Wednesday, with the street empty below and one guy soundchecking, is one of the most underrated hours downtown — and it costs about nine dollars.

Verdict: Best free rooftop on Dirty 6th, and the best golden-hour photo on the street. Go up before dark.

4. The Dead Rabbit — the room that changed the block

When a bar that spent a decade being called one of the best in the world opened a second address, and picked Dirty 6th for it, everybody in Austin hospitality raised an eyebrow. Two years on it's clear they were right. The Dead Rabbit is a big, bright, wood-and-brass pub with roughly 400 pieces of original art on the walls, and it single-handedly gave the 200 block a reason to exist after dark.

Order from the Irish coffee menu — there are five versions, and the standard one is the best argument for the drink you'll ever taste. The Texas-exclusive cocktails are worth reading; the food is the weak spot. Reviewers have been consistently lukewarm about the kitchen and pointed about the prices. Come to drink, snack lightly, eat elsewhere.

It was named among CultureMap's top ten Austin bars for 2026, and it's the only place on the strip where a party of six can get an actual table, at an actual table height, and hear each other.

Verdict: Start here at 7pm before the street turns on. Two Irish coffees and you're properly calibrated for the rest of the night.

5. Midnight Cowboy — the reservation ritual

The building was a massage parlor of the not-really-a-massage-parlor variety, and the bar has kept the name and none of the business model. What it is now is a dim, red-lit, ten-table cocktail room hidden behind a door that thousands of drunk people walk past every weekend without ever noticing.

The ritual matters as much as the drink. You book weeks out, you find an unmarked storefront, you press a buzzer labeled with the name of a long-dead bartender, and a door opens onto silence. Some tables get cocktails made in front of you on the table. It is the single most reliable "how did you find this" moment available to a visitor in Austin.

Verdict: Plan around it or skip it. If you're two to six people and you want one perfect drink on this street, book it a month out.

6. Marlow — the far east end, where locals actually go

Marlow is the answer to "is there anywhere on 6th Street where I won't be handed a laminated shot menu." It's a low-key room with a patio, a food truck, and a back bar that takes bourbon and mezcal seriously without making a religion of it. The vintage punch bowls are the giveaway that someone here is having fun.

The geography is the real feature. At 700 East it's four blocks past where the tourist crowd turns around, which means on a Saturday at 11pm you can get a properly made drink and a seat while eight hundred people are shoulder-to-shoulder half a mile west. Weekday happy hour here is one of the better-kept deals downtown.

Verdict: My pick for the first drink of a Dirty 6th night, or the last one when you've had enough of the crowd. Cab to it, walk back from it.

7. Casino El Camino — the burger that ends the argument

Thirty-plus years of dark walls, loud punk, and a kitchen that takes its sweet time producing a three-quarter-pound burger that is worth every minute of it. The Amarillo (jalapeños, serranos, habanero, pepper jack) is the one people talk about; the Buffalo Burger is the one I order.

Two things to know. First: the wait is real and it is deliberate. Twenty-five to forty minutes at peak is normal. Order early, get a beer, play pool, be patient. Second: the back garden patio is a completely different, much calmer bar than the front room, and most people never walk through to find it.

Verdict: Put your order in at midnight, not at 1:25am. Best decision available on East 6th as last call approaches.

The rest of the east end, honestly assessed

• Parkside (301 E 6th) — the raw bar and oysters that reopened in March 2024 after a long renovation. Dinner from 5pm. It's a restaurant, not a bar, and it's the best food on the street by a mile.
• Iron Cactus (606 Trinity, right on the corner) — the third-floor rooftop dates to a 1995 remodel and it's the one rooftop here you can get a table on without waiting. Tequila list is deep. Kitchen closes 10–11pm, so it's an early stop.
• Firehouse Lounge (605 Brazos, half a block off 6th) — inside Austin's oldest standing fire station, built 1885. Entry is through a bookcase in the hostel lobby. Open Thu–Sun from noon, Mon–Wed from 5pm. No reservation needed, which makes it the easy alternative when Midnight Cowboy is booked solid.
• Esther's Follies — fifty years of political satire, sketch comedy and Vegas-style magic performed in a theater with a window onto 6th Street, so the sidewalk becomes part of the show. Thursday through Saturday, tickets roughly $20–30, and they sell out. Buy online.
• The Jackalope (404 E 6th, open since 2004) — solid dive, decent burger, open 4pm–2am daily. Fine. Not a destination, but a perfectly good place to lose an hour.
• Shakespeare's Pub (314 E 6th) — opens at 1pm, cheap, loud, unbothered. A useful place to start a crawl rather than end one.
• Coyote Ugly (501 E 6th) — here's my honest one: skip it. It's a franchise of a movie, the bartenders dance on the bar on a schedule, and it costs more than the bars either side of it. If someone in your group has always wanted to see it, give them twenty minutes and meet them next door.
• The shot bars. There's a run of them on the 400 and 500 blocks selling $5 wells behind a doorman. They are exactly what they look like. Nothing wrong with one round; there's no reason to plan a night around them.

West 6th: the other street entirely

Cross Lamar and the temperature drops about ten degrees. West 6th — roughly the 500 to 720 blocks — is patios, televisions, dog bowls, taco trucks and a crowd that skews late-twenties to forties. There's almost never a cover. Bars open at 11am or noon on weekends, which means West 6th has something Dirty 6th genuinely doesn't: a functioning daytime.

The trade-off is that it's a bar strip, not a music strip. If you came to Austin for a band, this is the wrong six blocks. If you came for a Saturday that starts with a beer and a breakfast taco at noon and ends at 1am without anyone getting elbowed, it's the right one.

8. Kung Fu Saloon — the best free thing downtown

Every group has one person who doesn't drink much and one person who gets bored standing around. Kung Fu solves both in a single stop. Fifteen-plus arcade cabinets, a patio, and three skee-ball lanes that have never taken a quarter in the whole time I've been sending people there.

The tactical use: it's a tiebreaker bar. When half the group wants to keep going and half wants to sit down, come here — skee-ball buys you forty minutes of consensus. Weekend afternoons from 11am it's near-empty and you can play anything you want.

Verdict: Go at 5pm or go at midnight; the hour in between is when everyone else has the same idea.

9. Star Bar — the West 6th original

Star Bar predates essentially everything around it, which on this street is the whole recommendation. It's a corner bar with three separate outdoor spaces: a front patio built for watching West 6th walk past, a middle for talking, and a back yard that turns into the best neighborhood sports bar downtown when Texas is playing.

The 11am Saturday open is the underrated part. Nine hours of daylight drinking on a shaded patio, then you're already in position when the street fills at nine.

Verdict: The most reliable West 6th bar. If your group can't agree on anything, agree on Star Bar and sort it out on the patio.

10. Rustic Tap — where twenty people fit without a phone call

Big, open, Texas-barn-ish, and built around outdoor square footage. Rustic Tap is the West 6th bar I point large groups at when they haven't planned anything, because two bars means two lines and a stage means the room has a focal point instead of just a crowd.

Life-size beer pong sounds like a gimmick and functions as an icebreaker — it's the reason bachelor and bachelorette groups that start here stay here longer than they meant to. Noon opening on Fridays and Saturdays.

Verdict: The safest big-group bet on West 6th. No reservation, no cover, no drama.

11. Buford's Backyard Beer Garden — fifty taps and a yard

Buford's is the biggest yard on West 6th, and its combination — fifty drafts, frozen drinks, BBQ, a stage, lawn games and a dog-friendly policy — is why it's the default answer when someone asks where to put a group of fifteen on a Saturday afternoon.

It reopened on March 6, 2026, five days after the shooting outside, and gave that weekend's takings to the victims' families. Protective glass has since been installed. The staff there have handled a genuinely awful year with more grace than anyone should have to, and the bar itself is the same good bar it was.

Verdict: The West 6th afternoon anchor. Start here at 4pm, not at midnight.

12. Bull & Bowl — the one that isn't really a bar

Duckpin bowling uses a smaller ball, no finger holes, and shorter lanes, which means nobody in your group is bad at it and everyone thinks they might be good at it. Add private karaoke rooms and a mechanical bull built with the Professional Bull Riders, and you've got the most reliably fun two hours available to a bachelor party downtown that doesn't involve anybody getting removed from anywhere.

The catch is that it's on the second floor with a modest street presence — groups walk right underneath it. Book lanes or a karaoke room ahead on a Friday or Saturday.

Verdict: Best structured group activity on either 6th Street. Book it as the 8pm anchor and let the night flow out from there.

The rest of West 6th

• Little Woodrow's (520 W 6th, Mon–Fri from noon, Sat–Sun from 11am) — over 100 beers, a dog-friendly patio and a taco truck on site. The most low-effort good time on the strip and the easiest place to hold a table for a couple of hours.
• The Dogwood (715 W 6th, Mon–Fri from 3pm, weekends from 11am) — the polished one. Bigger rooms, better lighting, a crowd that dressed for it. This is where the night moves after 11pm.
• Green Light Social (720 W 6th, closed Mon–Tue; Wed–Thu from 5pm, Fri from 4pm, weekends from noon) — the closest thing West 6th has to a nightclub, with a large patio and a real cocktail program attached. Sunday afternoons here are a genuine scene.

Rooftops, ranked

If someone sends you to HandleBar on East 5th for a rooftop, they're working from an old list — see the closures section below.

Cover charges, honestly

Here's the thing nobody explains before you're standing at a door with a clicker in your face.

On Dirty 6th, covers generally run $5 to $20 on Friday and Saturday after about 9pm, and most bars charge nothing at all Sunday through Thursday. Covers are not consistent, not posted in advance, and not always the same for your group as for the group ahead of you. The doorman has discretion. That's the system.

What's worth paying:

• Pete's. You're paying for a three-hour show. Best cover-to-value ratio downtown.
• Maggie Mae's on a good night. Three stages plus the roof for one price is fine.
• Esther's Follies. Twenty to thirty dollars for a fifty-year-old vaudeville institution isn't a bar cover, it's a theater ticket, and it's a good one.

What isn't:

• Any cover for a room with a DJ and no seating. Walk fifty feet. There's an identical room next door that's free.
• Any cover before 9pm. If they're charging early, they're testing you.

The hour-by-hour clock

What's closed that old lists still recommend

This strip churns harder than anywhere else in Austin. Verified closed as of mid-2026:

• The Chuggin' Monkey (219 E 6th) — closed. Still appears near the top of half the "best of 6th Street" lists online.
• Recess Arcade Bar (222 E 6th) — closed. If you want arcade games, Kung Fu Saloon on West 6th is the replacement.
• HandleBar (121 E 5th) — closed. Its rooftop is still listed on multiple rooftop-bar roundups.
• B.D. Riley's downtown — left 6th Street in 2020 for Mueller. Its old building at 204 E 6th is now The Dead Rabbit.

And one that hasn't happened yet: the Old 6th redevelopment. Stream Realty has assembled more than thirty historic parcels between Brazos and I-35 and is spending somewhere between $500 and $750 million restoring facades and re-tenanting them for daytime use — shops, restaurants, markets, apartments. The first signed tenant, a taqueria at 500 E 6th, isn't expected to open until the first half of 2027. So if you read a breathless article about 6th Street's transformation and turn up expecting a finished, polished promenade: not yet. What's there now is the old street with a handful of very good new rooms dropped into it.

Parking, cars and getting home

Parking. Don't try to park on 6th itself — parking is prohibited between Red River and Brazos Thursday through Sunday, 9pm to 3am. Use a garage one street off and walk ninety seconds:

• Perry Brooks Garage, 720 Brazos — typically the cheapest nearby, around $8.
• Littlefield Garage, 508 Brazos — around $11, and it's the closest to the 200–300 blocks.
• 710 Trinity Garage — around $16, drops you right at the corner where the good rooftops are.

Avoid the hand-lettered surface lots with a guy in a folding chair. That's where the tow stories come from, every single time.

Cars on the street. Since January 2025 East 6th has been open to traffic Thursday through Sunday rather than closed. Rubberized curbs went in that January between Neches and Red River; water-filled barricades replaced the temporary fencing in May; by August 2025 those became 3.5-foot concrete barriers running along both sides from San Jacinto to Neches, with the northernmost lane reserved for loading and rideshare pickup. APD now closes the street to cars dynamically — typically only when the sidewalks are so full near closing time that people spill into the road. Police report use of force down roughly half and arrests down about a third year over year under the new setup. Practically: don't step off the curb mid-block. That habit is two years out of date.

Getting home. The 1:30–2:15am rideshare surge on 6th and Congress is punishing. Walk north to 7th or south to 5th, or one block onto Lavaca or San Jacinto, before you request a car. Your pin will be found faster and the price will be lower.

Is it safe? With normal big-city sense, yes — but let's use real numbers rather than vibes. The district recorded 67 violent crimes in 2024 and 78 in 2025, so reopening the street to traffic did not, by itself, reduce violent crime. The most common thing that actually goes wrong on a visitor's night out isn't a crime at all: it's a group splitting up at 1am with three people who don't know the name of the hotel. Set a meeting point before you start. Keep your phone charged.

Insider tips

• Do East 6th early and West 6th late, not the other way around. Everyone does it backwards. Dirty 6th is at its best from 8–11pm and deteriorates after; West 6th is fine right up to close.
• The 200 block is a secret. Congress to Brazos is a thirty-second walk from the loudest sidewalk in Texas and it's practically quiet. If your group needs a reset, walk west, don't walk out.
• Book the two bookable things first. Midnight Cowboy and a Pete's table are the only two reservations that meaningfully change your night. Everything else you can walk into.
• Get your Casino El Camino order in an hour before you want it. The kitchen runs to 1:30am but the wait at midnight is long. Order, then go drink.
• Ask about the roof before you pay a cover. Rooftops close for weather and for private events, and the doorman won't volunteer it.
• Weeknights are a completely different street. Tuesday or Wednesday on Dirty 6th: no covers, no lines, the same bands, a third of the people. If your trip is flexible, this is the cheat code.
• Bring a card for the doors and cash for the tips. Pete's admission is card-only; the piano tip jar is cash-driven. Carry both.
• Line up your group transport before the night, not during it. Twelve people trying to summon three cars at 1:40am on Congress is how good nights end badly.

Mistakes to avoid

• Arriving on Dirty 6th at 11pm and wondering why it's awful. You missed the good three hours.
• Paying a cover at the first door you reach. There are forty of them within four blocks and most are free.
• Assuming West 6th and East 6th are interchangeable. Twelve-minute walk, entirely different night. Choose deliberately.
• Trusting a list written before 2024. Chuggin' Monkey, Recess and HandleBar are gone; the Dead Rabbit, Marlow and a reopened Parkside are new. Half the top-ten lists you'll find are describing a street that no longer exists.
• Walking in the road on East 6th. Cars are on it Thursday through Sunday now and there are concrete barriers where you used to wander.
• Booking Midnight Cowboy for ten people. The cap is eight and it is not negotiable.
• Trying to park on 6th Street. Garage one block off, every time.
• Driving after the crawl. Obvious, and still the most common mistake made downtown every weekend.

Who each bar is best for

• Bachelorette party: Pete's at 8pm, Maggie Mae's roof at 10:30.
• Bachelor party: Bull & Bowl then Rustic Tap.
• Birthday, mixed ages: Pete's. Nothing else on the street works this well for a 24-year-old and a 54-year-old simultaneously.
• A date: Midnight Cowboy if you planned, The Dead Rabbit if you didn't.
• Live music, no ticket: Blind Pig, seven nights a week.
• Day drinking: Star Bar or Little Woodrow's from 11am.
• Non-drinkers in the group: Kung Fu Saloon — free skee-ball gives them something to actually do.
• People who hate 6th Street: Marlow, or a show at Esther's Follies.

The part where I tell you what we do

The single hardest part of a 6th Street night with a real group isn't picking bars. It's moving eight to fifteen people between them without losing three of them, and without anybody driving.

Austin Bar Bike is a 15-seat, fully electric, BYOB party bike. You bring your own cans — no glass, no liquor — meet us at 1108 Rose St where street parking is easy (metered, always spots), and we pedal your whole crew through downtown with two to three bar stops built in. Stop 2 puts you at 6th & Trinity, which is a thirty-second walk from the Blind Pig deck, Maggie Mae's, Midnight Cowboy's unmarked door and the Iron Cactus rooftop. The whole bike starts at $275 for up to 15 people, and it's the only version of this night where nobody has to be the designated driver or the designated group-herder.

Planning the rest of the trip? Our guide to things to do in downtown Austin covers the other districts — Rainey, the Warehouse District, Red River — and the best BBQ in Austin handles the daytime half of your Saturday.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best bar on 6th Street in Austin?

For most groups, Pete's Dueling Piano Bar at 421 E 6th — it's the one bar on the strip that reliably turns a group of any age into a good night, and you can reserve a table. If you want live bands and a rooftop instead, Maggie Mae's at 323 E 6th has three stages and the largest roof deck on the street. For a serious cocktail, book Midnight Cowboy.

What's the difference between Dirty 6th and West 6th?

Dirty 6th is East 6th between Congress and I-35: young, loud, cheap, live cover bands, weekend covers of $5–20, and it peaks between 11pm and 2am. West 6th runs roughly from Lamar to Lavaca: patios, televisions, games, a late-twenties-to-forties crowd, almost never a cover, and it opens as early as 11am on weekends. They're a twelve-minute walk apart and they suit completely different nights.

Do 6th Street bars charge a cover?

On East 6th, commonly $5–20 on Friday and Saturday after around 9pm, and usually nothing Sunday through Thursday. West 6th bars almost never charge one. The exceptions worth paying are Pete's Dueling Piano Bar, which is card-only at the door, and Esther's Follies, which is a ticketed theater show at roughly $20–30.

Is 6th Street open to cars now?

Yes. Since January 2025 East 6th has been open to vehicle traffic Thursday through Sunday instead of closed. The city added rubberized curbs, then water-filled barricades, and by August 2025 installed 3.5-foot concrete barriers along both sides between San Jacinto and Neches, with the northernmost lane set aside for loading and rideshare. Police still close the street to cars case by case when sidewalks get dangerously full near closing.

What time does 6th Street get busy?

East 6th's sweet spot is 9 to 11pm and its peak crush is 11pm to 2am. West 6th fills earlier, roughly 6pm onward, and peaks 9pm to 1am. Almost nothing on East 6th is worth visiting before 7pm except the Blind Pig, Casino El Camino, The Dead Rabbit and Marlow, all of which open in the afternoon.

Where should I park for 6th Street?

A garage one street off, not the street itself — parking on 6th between Red River and Brazos is prohibited Thursday through Sunday from 9pm to 3am. Perry Brooks Garage at 720 Brazos is usually the cheapest nearby at around $8; Littlefield Garage at 508 Brazos runs about $11; the 710 Trinity garage is about $16 and closest to the rooftops. Skip the hand-lettered surface lots.

Is 6th Street safe in 2026?

Generally yes, with standard big-city caution, but be clear-eyed. The district recorded 67 violent crimes in 2024 and 78 in 2025, and on March 1, 2026 a gunman killed three people and injured fifteen outside a bar on West 6th before police stopped him. The city responded by adding a second APD public safety zone on West 6th, staffed every Friday through Sunday. The riskiest hour on either strip is 1 to 2am, and the most common problem groups actually have is splitting up without a meeting point.

Which 6th Street bars have rooftops?

Three worth your time: Maggie Mae's has the largest rooftop on the strip and usually a weekend cover; the Blind Pig Pub has the biggest fully open-air deck with live music and typically no cover; and Iron Cactus at 606 Trinity has a third-floor patio with table service and margaritas, best before 9pm. HandleBar on East 5th, which still appears on rooftop lists, has closed.

Which bars on 6th Street have closed?

As of mid-2026, The Chuggin' Monkey at 219 E 6th, Recess Arcade Bar at 222 E 6th and HandleBar at 121 E 5th are all closed, and B.D. Riley's left downtown in 2020 — its old building at 204 E 6th is now The Dead Rabbit. Meanwhile Stream Realty's Old 6th redevelopment has assembled thirty-plus historic buildings for a $500–750 million restoration, but its first announced tenant isn't due to open until 2027.

What's the best 6th Street bar for a big group?

On East 6th, Maggie Mae's absorbs fifteen people across four buildings without trouble, and Pete's will seat a booked group properly. On West 6th, Rustic Tap and Buford's Backyard both handle twenty people with no reservation, and Bull & Bowl is purpose-built for groups with duckpin lanes and private karaoke rooms. If the logistics of moving that many people between bars is the real problem, a party bike crawl solves it in one booking.