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| TOP OAKLAND AREA ATTRACTIONS |
| Chabot Space and Science Center |
| Oakland's gateway to the wonders of the universe is an 86,000-square-foot sci-fi playland operating one of the largest public telescopes in the United States, a space flight simulator, the Megadome theatre, and a 250-seat Plantarium. The closest thing to NASA in Oakland, Chabot hosts expert astronomers and hands-on space and science exhibits year round.
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| Children's Fairyland |
| Folklore and fable come to life at downtown Oakland's magical 10 acre park, where children can create, imagine, play, and learn. With colorful exhibits, fanciful rides, and hands-on crafts, Oakland's Fairyland is the place where families with young children can relax and enjoy their stay. |
| Chinatown |
| Enjoy Oakland's thriving Asian cultural enclave. The 15 square blocks hustle and bustle with shops, street markets, and a wide panorama of casual and fine Asian cuisine. Be sure to check out the Pacific Renaissance Plaza and stop by the nearby Oakland Asian Cultural Center. Every September, Chinatown's Chamber of Commerce puts on a block party and hosts the largest Asian festival in the Bay Area.
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| Gondola Servizio |
| Oakland's Lake Merritt is alive with the amorous sights and sounds of Italy. Take a cruise on an authentic hand-made gondola, once reserved for Venetian royals, and relax to the affectionate crooning of a real-life gondolier. |
| Jack London Square |
| Oakland's revamped waterfront arts and entertainment district has dining, shopping, historic pubs, live music, and serene perches for seagull-watching. Catch local and national blues and jazz acts, a ferry ride under the Bay Bridge, a movie, or just take a walk along the perpetually sunny Boardwalk.
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| Joaquin Miller Park/Woodminster Amphitheater |
| Thriving in the Oakland Hills, Joaquin Miller Park is home to one of the only Urban Second Growth redwood groves in existence. Named for the poet and environmentalist who made his home and planted thousands of trees in Oakland's hills, the 500-acre forest boasts miles of trails, sweeping vistas of the entire bay, and equestrian areas. As forest and city rub shoulders, see first-rate musicals every summer at the park's Woodminster Amphitheatre.
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| Morcom Amphitheater of Roses |
| Pack a lunch and let your nose be the guide in Oakland's 8-acre municipal rose garden. Since the 1930s, Oakland's Morcom Amphitheatre has been home to over 6000 immaculately-tended varieties of roses from all over the globe. Smell the roses in full-bloom from May through September.
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| The Oakland Columbarium |
| Host to a challenging series of simultaneous 20th-century music performances every year, the labyrinthine, echoing halls of the Oakland Columbarium house thousands of little glassed-in shelves from floor to cavernous ceiling. Each shelf holds a little bronze urn or book-shaped canister, and each of these in turn holds the ashen remains of family members gone to that great human-heaven in the sky. The Columbarium, with its many mosaic tiled fountains, rounds of gardened greenery and sandy stonework arches, is arguably one of the most serene and lovely places in the Bay Area to wander alone. It's not bad for a daytime date, either--that is, if you're both fans of Harold and Maude. |
| The Paramount Theater |
| Golden, brassy, one of the best-kept (and best-restored) works of Art Deco architecture is Oakland's Paramount Theater. Designed by Timothy Pflueger, the same man who gave San Francisco the eerie Alhambra and its kitschier cousin, the Castro, it is renowned internationally for its swooping steep balconies and shimmering, Moderne fixtures. Originally built in 1931, it languished late during the Cinemascope boom and hobbled into the 1960s until the Oakland Symphony designated it for resoration 25 years ago. Now a tour of the multi-purpose dance-rep-film-orchestral space shows the high fly-space, the enormous rising curtain mechanism and the backstage catacombs. On the way, the guide may even hip you to a few phantom stories, par for the course in these buildings, however gilded. Ultimately, Oakland's Paramount Theater is the closest thing to Radio City Music Hall the West Coast has got. |
| The Parkway Theater |
| The early-'90s trend of "micro-cinemas"--dens like the Casting Couch, where yups and yuppettes could guzzle merlot and (Williams-) Sonomize each other on Italian sofas during Merchant-Ivory flicks--finds an earthy opposition in Oakland's pizza-beer-house wine cinema hall. Reincarnating the spirit of SF's smelly valhalla of second-run, the unmourned Strand (now a XXX-tra funky hole), The Parkway offers wider, weirder film menu than any other Bay Area theater. A moppet in the morning's Iron Giant kids' show may pick up a stick of eye-liner from the previous night's Rocky Horror performance. But risk not, want not--one glance at the strange Parkway calendar is enough to defibrillate a cinemaddict.
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| McAfee Coliseum |
| McAfee Coliseum is a stadium located in Oakland, California, United States that is used for Oakland Athletics baseball and Oakland Raiders football games. Commonly referred to as The Oakland Coliseum, or simply The Coliseum. It was formerly known as Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum and Network Associates Coliseum.
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| Oracle Arena |
| The Oracle Arena, also known by its former name of the Oakland Coliseum Arena, is an indoor arena in Oakland, California, United States. It was originally constructed as the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena in 1966. Over the years though, the arena became increasingly outdated, lacking the luxuries of newer ones. Rather than building a new arena in Oakland – or, for that matter, in San Francisco or San Jose, as some wanted – the decision was made to proceed with a $121 million renovation that tore down much of the old arena, leaving the external walls, roof and foundation, along with a few other features, intact, and then building a new seating bowl within the older confines, similar to what was done to the Key Arena in Seattle. The renovation began in mid-1996 and was completed in time for the Golden State Warriors to return in the fall of 1997. (They played the intervening season at the San Jose Arena). The new arena seats 19,596 for basketball and 17,000 for ice hockey. It hosted WCW SuperBrawl 1999 and the 2000 NBA All-Star Game. |
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