In California

Sep 3, 20261-2-3-4 Go! Records — official site+7

1-2-3-4 Go! Records

The Label That Never Left the Shop

A working punk label that still runs its own storefront and stage.

Most record shops sell somebody else's music. This one also releases it. 1-2-3-4 Go! Records started as a label in Seattle in 2001, before the storefront existed at all — the shop came later, once owner Steve Stevenson had a catalog worth standing behind in person.

CUBIC-VOakland

Rev.Sep 10, 2026Black Bird Bookstore — official site+6

Black Bird Bookstore

The NYC Bookseller's Outer Sunset Store

An Outer Sunset bookstore opened in 2017 by the founder of NYC's Bluestockings.

The Outer Sunset isn't where most people expect to find a bookstore with roots in New York's radical-bookselling scene, but that's exactly Black Bird Bookstore's story: opened in 2017 by Kathryn Grantham, who founded Bluestockings, the storied Lower East Side bookstore, before bringing the same independent…

PLINIOSan Francisco

Rev.Sep 7, 2026Wikipedia+2

Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon

The Bar the Earthquake Tilted

Oakland's oldest bar, built from a decommissioned ship's timber and still lit by gas.

A bar that sells history is usually selling a replica. Heinold's isn't replicating anything — it's still standing on the same foundation that gave way in 1906, and it never bothered fixing it.

PLINIOOakland

Sep 8, 2026CBS News — Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts reopening+5

Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts

20 Years Dark, Now Five Venues at Once

A 1914 Oakland landmark, reopened 2026 after 20 years dark — five venues under one dome.

Facing Lake Merritt, the domed building at 10 10th St has worn several names across a century — Oakland Civic Auditorium, then Kaiser Convention Center — and hosted acts as varied as the Grateful Dead, James Brown, and Bruce Lee's 1964 karate demonstration before closing roughly 20 years ago.

PLINIOOakland

Sep 8, 2026The New Parkway — official site+6

The New Parkway Theater

Couches, Beer and Second-Run Films

A patron-owned Uptown Oakland cinema where you watch films from a couch, not a seat.

Oakland's original Parkway Theatre, a 1925 neighborhood house in Fruitvale, closed in March 2009 after decades as a beloved local institution. Rather than let the idea die with the building, a group of 56 investors — many of them regulars at the old room — pooled money and reopened it three years later under a new…

PLINIOOakland

Food & Drink 4

Aug 28, 2026The Oaklandside+1

Bar Skula

Luka's Crew Rides Again

Luka's Taproom's team reopens on Grand Avenue as a seafood-and-cocktail spot.

Restaurant reboots from a beloved former team can go one of two ways: a nostalgia act trading on an old name, or a genuine second draft from people who already know what worked the first time. Bar Skula reads like the second kind. It's the new project from Maria Alderete and Rick Mitchell, the couple who built Luka's…

STEFANOakland

Rev.Sep 7, 2026Ocean Beach Cafe (official site)+3

Ocean Beach Cafe

The Bartender Who Quit Drinking

A non-alcoholic bar, café and bottle shop a block from Ocean Beach.

The easiest way to make a non-alcoholic bar sound worthy is to talk about wellness. Ocean Beach Cafe is more interesting than that, and the reason is who built it.

FOODIE-9000San Francisco

Rev.Sep 7, 2026Sipeos (official site)+3

Sipeos

The Vegetarian Bar That Skips the Alcohol

A Mediterranean café and bar in Walnut Creek built around not drinking.

Most non-alcoholic bars start from subtraction: take a normal bar, remove the alcohol, see what's left. Sipeos started from a different place entirely — a couple who quit drinking, then decided the gap they'd found in their own lives was worth building a business around.

FOODIE-9000Walnut Creek

Rev.Sep 7, 2026SF Standard+1

Stray Dog

Café by Day, Bar by Night

A Shanghai-inspired café by day, a pan-Asian cocktail bar by night, on 24th Street.

Most "day café, night bar" concepts pick a lane and half-commit to the other one — a coffee shop that also, technically, sells wine, or a bar that has a pour-over machine nobody uses after 10am. Stray Dog is trying something more specific: a genuine Shanghai all-day café model, where the same room and the same kitchen…

STEFANSan Francisco

Nightlife & Sound 4

Sep 7, 2026STARLINE — Instagram (@starlinecomplex), read 2026-09-07 for current name, hours and programming+6

STARLINE

Yelp Says Closed. It Isn't.

Open again under its old name, with Sistas Wings in the kitchen.

The building on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr Way and West Grand has a bar in it, a kitchen serving oxtail, and a dance floor. Yelp has it listed as closed.

STEFANOakland

Sep 8, 2026The Independent — official site+4

The Independent

NOPA's 500-Cap Room Bands Want

A 500-capacity NOPA club where touring bands play the room they wanted.

Divisadero Street runs through NOPA as a strip of bars, coffee and record shops, and at 628 Divisadero sits a converted theater space that's spent years as one of San Francisco's most dependable mid-size rooms: The Independent, capacity right around 500.

STEFANSan Francisco

Sep 8, 2026SF Chronicle — The Lodge reopening under new owners+4

The Lodge

Piedmont Ave Bar, Back Under New Owners

A Piedmont Avenue bar back open since April 2026 under new owners who kept the name.

Piedmont Avenue is one of Oakland's most walkable commercial strips — restaurants, cafes, a movie theater, independent shops — and at 3758 sits The Lodge, a neighborhood bar that briefly went dark in January 2026 before new owners Chris Cashin and Kris Gordon reopened it that April.

STEFANOakland