Oakland is a culturally diverse city that has held on to it's honest, blue collar roots. Easy to navigate around but a wrong turn from being in trouble, Oakland offers many locales representing the world's people. Some of the best views of the Bay Area are in the Oakland Hills. We look at great joints in Oakland, Berkeley and other points in the East Bay.

Lost Weekend Lounge
Billy Wilder’s Lost Weekend is a dark film based on a five day bender by a struggling writer. The Lost Weekend Lounge may be a place to lose a few hours, but hardly takes itself as seriously as the classic movie.

McNally's
The local was a term used for the neighborhood pub where locals go and swap opinions on politics, sports, or neighborhood issues almost always with pint in hand. Few places like that exist today, primarily because there are so few neighborhoods left. McNally’s remains a local. It's the perfect bar for a crisp, foggy day.

Hotel Mac
Richmond, California is often thought of as the scariest part of the San Francisco Bay Area. Scarier than Hunter’s Point. Scarier than East Palo Alto. Scarier than the Black Hole at a Raiders game. Even scarier than a Men’s Bathroom in the Castro District. Yet somehow, in this charming, hidden bayside enclave known as Point Richmond sits the Hotel Mac. It is a place that time, and today crime, seems to have forgotten.

Brennan's
Normalcy and Berkeley go together like morals and Bill Clinton. Or elegance and Roseanne Barr. Let’s face it. Berkeley is wackier than Paul Rubens at an adult movie theater. But there is something strangely normal about Brennan’s, a popular Berkeley hangout for over 40 years at the foot of University Avenue.

Townhouse Bar and Grill
Surrounded by Oakland with the opportunity to block Berkeley’s view of San Francisco sits Emeryville: 25 years ago an industrial town noted for crooked politics whose motto could have been “where the bog meets the bay.” As Emeryville has evolved into the, gulp, center of East Bay retail, so too has evolved the Townhouse, a once crooked place that has also gone straight.

Heinhold's First & Last Chance
“THERE IS A PLACE in Oakland that leans into the water like the bourbon leans in my glass, occasionally stirring but primarily standing if not tall, upright. A bright sun pleases as it peaks through the fog that clouds the sky and my thoughts.” Okay, so I am no Jack London. But Heinhold’s First and Last Chance in Oakland’s Jack London Square is tribute to an American classic, while it has become a classic onto itself.

Montclair Golf Course Restaurant
There is a small bar and restaurant in the Oakland hills that may be the only of its kind in America. It is a place that actually encourages drinking and driving.

Crogan's
When most people think of Oakland, they refer to the sprawling flatlands, where most of the crime and industrial commerce takes place, and the Coliseum Complex where the Raiders, A’s and Golden State Warriors call home. Those in the know, however, realize that there is a charming district of hills, trees, expensive homes and small proprietorships in the Oakland Hills called Montclair. The anchor bar/restaurant of Montclair is a place called Crogan’s.

Club Mallard
Club Mallard has gone through quite a transformation over the last 25 years, much like the town it resides in. Despite the changes, the first rate establishment remains one of the East Bay’s great watering hole-in-the-walls.

The Fat Lady
Situated in an old building that was reputed to be a brothel at one time, the Fat Lady rests on a corner just a few blocks from the water in Oakland’s Jack London Square. Named after a painting of a plump pro that had taken up residence there in the late 1800’s, today the place is a bustling bar and restaurant packed with a different kind of professionals.

Lost Weekend Lounge
Billy Wilder’s Lost Weekend is a dark film based on a five day bender by a struggling writer. The Lost Weekend Lounge may be a place to lose a few hours, but hardly takes itself as seriously as the classic movie.