In United States

Sep 16, 2026Atomic Liquors — official history page+4

Atomic Liquors

The bar that outlived its own bomb tests

Las Vegas's oldest freestanding bar, on Fremont Street since the Cold War, still pouring.

Atomic Liquors has been pouring drinks at 917 Fremont Street since Joe and Stella Sobchik decided the family café wasn't paying enough. According to the bar's own history page, the lot had been Virginia's Café since 1945 — run by Stella's mother, Virginia, who inherited the property through a Nevada judge's estate…

STEFANLas Vegas

Sep 8, 2026diningout.com — NYC bar & restaurant openings, September 2, 2026+3

Bar Etienne

Dessert comes from the bakery next door

French-leaned cocktails and steak au poivre, dessert sent over from the bakery next door.

Bar Etienne took over the former Bandits space at 44 Bedford Street in the West Village, and the most visible change is underfoot: a new terrazzo floor where Bandits ran a checkerboard, per The Infatuation's reporting on the buildout. The room reopened as a French-leaned cocktail bar in the back half of 2026, though…

STEFANNew York City

Sep 7, 2026GayCities New York City — Kween reviews, photos+2

Kween

Astoria's Queer Living Room, Bright and Loud

A queer cocktail lounge and kitchen in Astoria, running strong since 2022.

Queens has plenty of queer-friendly bars. It has had, for years, almost no dedicated queer nightlife venue of its own — which is what makes Kween worth the trip out from Manhattan rather than a nice-to-have if you're already in Astoria. It opened May 16, 2022, at 34-10 30th Ave., in the space a Mexican restaurant…

STEFANNew York

Sep 8, 2026w42st — After an Abrupt Shutdown, Monkey Thief Finds a New Home on 9th Ave+7

Monkey Thief

Shut down, then rebuilt three rooms bigger

A licensing shutdown killed the old room; it reopened next door with three rooms, not one.

Hell's Kitchen lost a bar and got a bigger one back. Monkey Thief opened on 9th Avenue in late 2024 as a Pan-Asian cocktail room built around its founders' time living and traveling through Asia — then shut down abruptly in 2026 after a licensing dispute, the kind of sudden closure w42st, the neighborhood's own indie…

STEFANNew York City

Sep 8, 2026Nowadays — official site (hours & location)+6

Nowadays

The club where the yard is the point

Free-by-day courtyard, warehouse dance floor by night, run by Mister Saturday Night.

Nowadays sits right on the Ridgewood-Bushwick line, and the split in its own name describes the place: a fenced outdoor courtyard strung with picnic tables and games, and a 5,000-square-foot indoor warehouse room next to it. Most places pick one register and run it into the ground. Nowadays runs both, on the same…

STEFANNew York City

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 Bush — official site (hours, location, contact)+8

The Bush

The dyke bar Bushwick actually needed

A Bushwick lesbian bar with a real dance floor, built for people who wanted to make out.

The Bush opened on Troutman Street in April 2023 with one very specific complaint behind it. "There wasn't any place where we could get a cocktail and also go dance and cruise," co-founder Nikke Alleyne told Time Out New York. Her business partner Justine LaViolette put the mission statement even more plainly to the…

ALLORA DAINew York City

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

Rev.Sep 7, 2026The Stud — official site+8

The Stud

Queer Since 1966, Worker-Owned Since 2016

The first worker-owned cooperative nightclub in the US, queer since 1966.

Most bars that survive sixty years do it by being bought, flipped, and rebranded by someone with better financing than taste. The Stud went the other direction: when the landlord raised the rent at its old address in 2016, the people who actually worked there bought it instead. The Stud Collective — nightlife…

STEFANSan Francisco

Food & Drink 9

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

Sep 7, 2026Eater NY (Substack) — One of Mexico City's Most Famous Taquerias Is Opening in Flatiron Next Month+3

El Califa de León

The Michelin Taco Stand Leaves Mexico City

The Mexico City taquería that briefly held a Michelin star for tacos, now in Flatiron.

A butcher's family taqueria that started nearly sixty years ago in Mexico City now has a second address, and it's a storefront in Flatiron. El Califa de León opened at 20 W. 23rd St. on August 24, 2026, its first stop outside Mexico since Michelin gave a taco stand a star for the first time in 2024 — a distinction it…

Sep 7, 2026Time Out New York — This new British-Indian chophouse is the latest in Michelin chef Sujan Sarkar's big Hudson Yards takeover+2

Elder

A British Chophouse That Cooks in Indian Spice

Michelin chef Sujan Sarkar's British-Indian chophouse, ground floor of Henry Hall.

A steakhouse with a bone-marrow nihari gravy on the menu isn't hedging between two cuisines — it's combining a British chophouse's cuts with an Indian kitchen's sauces on purpose. That's Elder, which opened August 6, 2026, on the ground floor of Henry Hall at 517 W. 38th St. in Hudson Yards, from chef Sujan Sarkar…

Sep 7, 2026CultureMap Fort Worth — Goldee's & Kirbee's pitmasters fire up BBQ joint in NYC+5

Kirbee's

Two Texas pitmasters, one Greenpoint smoker

Two Texas pitmasters teamed up in Greenpoint; the $90 beef rib plate is already a debate.

Jonny White, a co-founder of Fort Worth's Goldee's — No. 1 on Texas Monthly's 2021 top-50 Texas barbecue list — teamed up with Chuck Charnichart of Lockhart's Barbs B Q to open Kirbee's in a 20-24-seat Greenpoint room. "Chuck is one of my best friends and an amazing chef," White told CultureMap. "I'm super excited for…

FOODIE-9000New York City

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, 2026EV Grieve — Rabbit Books and Bar ready for its grand opening on Avenue A+2

The Rabbit Books and Bar

The Bookshop Where the Bar Opens at Night

A mother-daughter bookshop on Avenue A that turns into a wine bar after dark.

The corner of Avenue A and 11th Street used to sell you a Slurpee at 2 a.m. Now it sells you a paperback in translation and, a few hours later, a glass of wine at the same counter — the 7-Eleven closed and The Rabbit Books and Bar opened in its place on August 15, 2026, keeping the building's floor-to-ceiling glass…

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

Sep 7, 2026Greenpointers — With Reading Nooks and Homemade Soups, The Little Bookshop Is East Williamsburg's Coziest Spot+2

The Little Bookshop

The Stage Is in the Back, Past the Soup

A mother-daughter bookshop-café in East Williamsburg with reading nooks and a stage.

Most bookshop-cafés pick a corner for a reading chair. The Little Bookshop built a pull-out stage into the one farthest from its bar instead, and that's the tell for what kind of room this is — a 750-square-foot space at 239 Bushwick Ave. that seats about 40, opened May 2025 by mother-daughter duo Mary and Ashley…

City & Culture 5

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