The New Parkway Theater

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 name and a new roof: a converted sheet-glass factory on 24th Street in Uptown.

Watching a movie from a couch

The New Parkway kept the format that made the original a local legend rather than just another cinema. Traditional theater seats are gone; in their place are couches, armchairs and bean bags, and a full menu — beer, wine, pizza, sandwiches, salads, vegetarian dishes — gets delivered to wherever you're sitting mid-film. PETA ranked it the second-best movie theater in the country for vegans, a category most cinemas don't even compete in.

The two screens run second-run, independent and new-classic titles at prices well under a first-run multiplex, and the theater is open 360 days a year. On nights without a film worth building an evening around, the New Parkway still gives Uptown somewhere to be: Open Mic on the first and third Monday, Bingo & Beer on Tuesdays, Drink & Draw on Wednesdays, Team Trivia on Thursdays, all free. Its Karma Cinema program sends a cut of ticket sales to local nonprofits, which is very on-brand for a theater whose whole existence traces back to patrons refusing to let it disappear.

For more of Uptown and downtown Oakland's after-dark options, Bar Skula and the century-old Heinold's First and Last Chance are both worth folding into the same night out.