5 Best Bars in The Bay Area, California

Long before Uptown got hot, the late Peter Van Kleef was serving stiff fresh-squeezed Greyhounds and booking live music at this funky café-bar that crackles with creative energy—there's still live music every weekend.

Arguably California's longest continuously active saloon since it opened in 1884, this watering hole, built from the hull of a flat-bottomed stern-wheeler, is where young Jack London got his start as a writer. Historic photos and artifacts hang from the crooked walls and ceilings, which have been atilt since the 1906 earthquake. Get a peek at the slanted bar, where beers on tap and bottomless stories of Oakland history abound.

This cocktail bar with a stunning brick back bar easily competes with the best in the Bay Area. Cocktails are creative and compelling, frequently incorporating atypical ingredients like Thai tea or a syrup made of pepitas (pumpkin seeds). The short food menu revolving around spruced up comfort food is less inventive than the cocktails but far more interesting than standard bar grub.

Since 1968, the Freight has been a venue for some of the world's finest practitioners of folk, jazz, gospel, blues, world-beat, bluegrass, and storytelling. The nonprofit grew from an 87-seat coffee house to a thriving, nearly 500-seat venue in the heart of Berkeley's Arts District. Many tickets cost less than $30.

Some of the most innovative, pristine cocktails in the Bay Area are at this neon-lit, energetic bar. Bar Director William Tsui previously worked at fine dining juggernaut Lazy Bear in San Francisco, and that high level of meticulous technicality and ingredient sourcing is abundantly clear here across the bay. It's almost unfair that the food menu, nodding to several Asian cuisine elements with a California touch, is so great as well. The narrow space gets packed quickly.