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In Oakland

7 places in Oakland, grouped by what you'd actually go there for.

7 places · 7 checked in the last 90 days · newest 38 days ago

City & Culture 4

City & Culture
1-2-3-4 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
City & Culture
Rev.Wikipedia+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
City & Culture
CBS 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
City & Culture
The 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

Nightlife & Sound 2

Nightlife & Sound
STARLINE — 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
Nightlife & Sound
SF 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

Food & Drink 1

Food & Drink
The 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