Secret Bay Area: speakeasies and hidden bars, secret-location concerts, unlisted comedy shows, supper clubs and pop-ups, with how to get in and links to the venues and original sources.
Pawn a trinket, answer a rotary phone, find the puzzle shop: here's how to get into 11 of San Francisco's speakeasy-style bars, with addresses the venues and major guides list publicly.
Oakland's hidden-bar scene has shrunk this year. Here's how to get into the speakeasies still open, Moonglow in Uptown and Clio's near Lake Merritt, and which ones are gone.
Sofar Sounds has more than a dozen secret-location concerts listed around the Bay Area through December. You get a neighborhood and a start time, and the address and lineup stay secret until shortly before the show.
Two comedy series in the Bay Area keep their rooms under wraps. HellaSecret texts you the address after you RSVP, and Oakland's Moonglow speakeasy has a free show listed Nov. 14.
Supper clubs are the Bay Area's quietest dining scene. Here's what's actually on the calendar this fall, what membership costs, and which clubs are between dates.
San Jose has its own hidden bars. Alter Ego sits behind a curtain inside a downtown vinyl bar, S Bar is tucked behind Suspiro at Santana Row, and the Bowery Room is in the back of Five Points. Here is how to get into each.
Tap In, at 2012 Shattuck Ave. in downtown Berkeley, is a self-pour taproom hidden behind a wall of bookshelves. You pour your own beer by the ounce from more than 20 taps.
On an island in the South Bay marshes sit the slumping cabins of Drawbridge, once a weekend getaway for hundreds of duck hunters. It is off limits now, but you can still see it from the train.
The trail to Point Bonita Lighthouse in the Marin Headlands opens only three hours a month. The suspension bridge to the lighthouse is closed, but the viewing platform is open.
Up a steep road above Saratoga is Hakone, an 18-acre Japanese estate begun in 1917 and inspired by San Francisco's 1915 world's fair. Winter hours start Oct. 31.
At King and Story roads, a former dairy farm has barns, rare fruit orchards, farm animals and peacocks wandering the lawns. Emma Prusch gave it to San Jose in 1962.
Many drivers on Highway 101 pass Olompali without knowing it's there. The 700-acre park north of Novato packs thousands of years of Marin history onto one hillside.
At the foot of Buchanan Street, a former landfill sticks out into the bay. Over the decades, artists have filled it with rebar sculptures, murals and driftwood art.
A retired Southern Pacific engineer rescued a small steam locomotive from a San Francisco scrapyard and gave free rides on his ranch for 25 years. Volunteers have kept it running in Los Gatos since 1970.
Two long, steep concrete slides sit in a tiny park on Seward Street. They were designed by a 14-year-old who won a contest run by sculptor Ruth Asawa. Neighbors fought for years to save the lot.
Inside a low warehouse on Sausalito’s waterfront is a working model of San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. The Army Corps of Engineers built it in the 1950s, and admission is free.
The National Park Service calls SF-88 the most fully restored Nike missile site in the country. It opens only on the first Saturday of each month, noon to 3 p.m., with veteran-led tours.
Two Golden Gate Heights neighbors started a project in 2003 to cover a 163-step stairway in mosaic. Artists Aileen Barr and Colette Crutcher designed it. It opened in 2005, and today the city owns it.
The Hidden Garden Steps were finished in December 2013, from the artists behind the 16th Avenue Tiled Steps. The garden-themed mosaic climbs from Kirkham Street. Its biggest piece is a salamander.
When the water mains failed after the 1906 earthquake, the story goes, one hydrant at 20th and Church still gave water and helped firefighters save the Mission. Every April 18 it is spray-painted gold.
Winds up to 114 mph tore off half the shutter on Lick's Great Refractor dome on Christmas Day 2025. The main building is still closed, but the observatory says visitors can tour the Shane Telescope Gallery and parts of the grounds for free.
A Rec and Park gardener assigned to Cayuga Park in 1986 began carving fallen cypress into totems, animals and portraits. The park was renovated from 2011 to 2013, and many of the carvings were saved.
Adolph Sutro's bathhouse at Lands End held seven pools under three acres of glass and took 10,000 swimmers at a time. A 1897 civil-rights case started there. It burned in 1966.
The 103-foot concrete cross on Mount Davidson is the fifth on the summit. FDR lit it by telegraph from Washington in 1934. After a 1990s lawsuit, the city sold the land under it to an Armenian American group.
At the end of a jetty past the Marina's small boat harbor, the Exploratorium's Wave Organ uses pipes set in old cemetery stone to make the bay audible. It sounds best at high tide.
Four Andy Goldsworthy works are tucked into the Presidio, and a three-mile loop connects them. Spire and Wood Line are always open; Tree Fall and Earth Wall have limited viewing.
The domed San Francisco Columbarium at 1 Loraine Court was built in 1898 for the Odd Fellows Cemetery and is one of the few burial sites left in a city that moved its dead to Colma.
Tank Hill, a 2.9-acre natural area above Cole Valley, takes its name from an 1890s water tank. Only its concrete foundation remains, along with wide views and a chert outcrop.
Behind UCSF's Parnassus campus, the 61-acre Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve has more than 5 miles of foggy forest trails, plus a history that runs from Adolph Sutro's 1886 planting to a Cold War missile site.
A wild flock of cherry-headed conures has lived on Telegraph Hill since the early 1990s. One of the best places to hear them is the Grace Marchant Garden along the Filbert Steps.
Oakland's Mountain View Cemetery, Frederick Law Olmsted's first California design, offers free docent tours, including a Mayor's Tour on Nov. 14 and a Founder's Day tour Dec. 26.
Tucked in a natural bowl off Jean Street, Oakland's Morcom Rose Garden was designed by Arthur Cobbledick in an Italian style and opened in 1934, with Depression-era SERA crews finishing the work.
Built by the WPA from 1935 to 1940, Woodminster Cascade in Oakland's Joaquin Miller Park drops 100 feet over slate below the amphitheater and was dedicated as a memorial to California writers.
A wooded canyon runs through the middle of Oakland's Dimond and Glenview neighborhoods. The Dimond Canyon trail follows Sausal Creek under the Leimert Bridge past habitat volunteers have restored.
Hockey is an indoor sport, but in March 1995 the Guadalupe River jumped its banks next to the arena. The NHL postponed the game in the interests of safety.
Mile houses were stagecoach rest stops named for their distance from San Francisco. Brisbane's is the only one still standing in its original spot.
Colma has about 1,500 living residents, according to the 2020 census, and roughly 1.5 million buried. Headstones from the old San Francisco graves still line gutters in Buena Vista Park.
Despite its name, it isn't a distillery. It's a restaurant and bar at 140 Beach Way, and a California Point of Historical Interest.
