The Best Places to Drink and Do in the United States

Books hang from a clothesline in the backyard, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Oak Cliff bar and coffee shop tucked into a charming old house at the edge of Bishop Arts. It doubles as a bookshelf-lined indie bookstore, with foreign titles and small-press finds sharing space with your pint. Shakespeare in the Bar happens here, as do concerts and readings. Bring the dog.

A dark, cozy cocktail bar in Oak Cliff with a faint old Hollywood atmosphere inside and a sprawling dog-friendly patio out back that leans more Sunday afternoon than Saturday night. Happy hour runs seven days a week, which is either generous or a cry for help, and the classic cocktails are priced accordingly. A tight food menu punches beyond bar snacks, with scratch-made pastas showing up alongside the usual suspects.

A small Bob Ross shrine materialized organically behind the bar here, one piece at a time, and nobody stopped it. That sets the tone for this cocktail bar just west of Bishop Arts, where the drinks are serious but the attitude is neighborly. The classics menu leans on genuine pillars of the canon, and happy hour runs deep into the week. Weeknights feel like catching up; weekends feel like something else entirely.

A massive patio bar tucked off Lowest Greenville where the menu is deliberately short: Philly cheesesteak, a sandwich, nachos, and that's the whole argument. The beers on tap include brews from their own By The Horns brewery in Mansfield, which gives the place a little more personality than your average outdoor bar. It draws the kind of crowd that would rather eat outside on a Tuesday than anywhere fancy on a Saturday.

The smoked meatloaf plate, with house-ground beef, gravy, mashed potatoes, and mac and cheese, tells you everything about what this downtown Dallas dive bar is up to. Hockey on the TVs, whiskey and craft beer behind the bar, and a menu that takes bar food more seriously than its gritty room suggests it will. The fancy bologna sandwich is a standing option; the pork tenderloin shows up Friday through Sunday for those who plan ahead.

A "birds of a feather read together" mural greets you at this queer-, woman-, and veteran-owned indie bookshop in Brentwood, where the vibe is cheerful and the selection is deliberate. Regular programming runs from local author readings to Banned Book Drag Queen Story Time, which tells you pretty much everything about where this shop stands. Families with kids who should be in rooms where books are celebrated, not side-eyed, tend to find their people here.

A nursery built around the fact that some plants eat things. Carnivero grows carnivorous and tropical rarities in custom greenhouses west of Austin, with a conservation mission focused on species that are quietly disappearing in the wild. Pitcher plants, flytraps, and stranger things fill the space, priced from beginner-friendly to serious-collector auction territory. Their Instagram is worth a scroll before you visit, so you know what you're getting yourself into.

A former church that never quite stopped being one, Cherrywood Center now holds Sunday services and indie rock shows in the same reverberant sanctuary. The vibe is deeply DIY, the acoustics are a happy accident, and the crowd skews young enough to have no memory of what the building used to be. Austin's The Austin Chronicle named it Best Church-Turned-DIY Stage.

A bookshop and cafe tucked into Hyde Park's old post office building, First Light keeps a well-curated shelf of fiction and a staff that actually reads the stock. The kids' section pulls in neighborhood families, while the sidewalk tables out front turn into a slow-afternoon situation: cortado, a novel, neighbors you didn't mean to talk to for forty minutes. Readings with local and touring authors fill the calendar regularly.

Every item in this Midtown thrift shop costs $3, no exceptions, no asterisks. The founder started Heartening after watching quality clothes disappear into dumpsters, and the mission has stayed blunt: get clothing back into the community as cheaply as possible. A free outdoor clothing stand extends the idea for anyone who needs it. You can leave with an armload for less than you'd spend on lunch, which is either depressing commentary on lunch prices or a very good Tuesday.

Rows of abandoned trailers and sprawling walls serve as the canvas at this open-air graffiti park near the airport, where spray paint is both the medium and the curriculum. Weekly demos and hands-on classes make it less spectator sport than working studio, and a gift shop stocks stencils and cans for anyone ready to stop watching. The cafe handles the lattes while the walls handle everything else.

The doorman at this South Congress honky-tonk doubles as librarian, keeping a bartop lending shelf stocked with Stephen King, political memoirs, and science fiction, each copy embossed with his own face. Rod Gator, self-described rock-and-roll Mr. Rogers, curates the whole thing between metal gigs and solo sets. It is a deeply specific cultural artifact, and Sagebrush would not have it any other way.

A newsstand painted in bold royal blue on West Fifth, TOMO Mags stocks curated print titles spanning style, design, sport, and cultural niche-ery that most algorithm-driven feeds would never surface. The founder road-tested the concept at markets and pop-ups before landing a brick-and-mortar, so the selection already has a point of view. For anyone who still believes a magazine is an argument worth having on paper.

Betty Boop memorabilia, kitty cat pillows, and lipstick lamps make up the decor at this South First vintage shop, which is itself half the shopping experience. Very Cherry Vintage specializes in the pink-and-red end of retro femininity, the kind of stuff that used to take serious thrifting to track down. Owner Ashley curated a room that looks like a mood board came to life, in the best possible way for anyone who prefers their secondhand finds with a little theatrics.

A 13-mile trail running through South Austin where Barton Creek's dry limestone bed meets shaded canyon walls and enough forking paths to make you genuinely question your navigation skills. The Hill Country Conservancy built it out to connect near Barton Springs, so you can walk from the city into something that feels nothing like it. Bring water, because the Texas sun is not a metaphor, and a downloaded map, because the trail markers are optimistic at best.

The Wishbone Bridge finally closes the loop on the Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail, replacing a white-knuckle sidewalk wedged between traffic and a long drop into the Colorado River with a proper pedestrian bridge over the lake. Cyclists and evening walkers now get an unobstructed sunset view where the old Longhorn Dam crossing used to test their nerves. The Austin Chronicle named it the best spot for a sunset stroll in 2026, and the case is hard to argue.

Holographic dinosaurs roam the floor at Zoocade, a family entertainment venue that bills itself as the nation's first holographic zoo. The tech, from Axiom Holographics, puts you among T. rexes, ocean depths, and African savanna wildlife without anyone getting eaten, which the movie franchise never quite managed. Classic arcade games fill out the day when the dinos get old, which, judging by the kids, takes a while.

Kirwan's is an Irish pub on the Wharf, all dark wood that wouldn't look out of place on a 17th-century naval vessel. Downstairs is for sports fans and conference lanyards pouring Guinness, while an upstairs mezzanine has a closed-off snug and a whiskey room tucked below for anyone who'd like their stout with fewer opinions shouted at it. Shepherd's pie and a spice bag are the order, entry-level pub prices apply.

An Irish gastropub in Shirlington where the full Irish breakfast runs on weekdays too, not just weekends. The owner is from Tipperary, and it shows: rashers, puddings, beans, eggs, and a potato cake with homemade brown bread on the plate. The kind of place where a pint and a proper fry-up at noon on a Tuesday feels entirely reasonable, which is really the whole point of an Irish pub.

The balcony patio goes by its own name, Carnelian Bay, which tells you most of what you need to know about this Fremont cocktail bar and diner. Margaritas come in disco balls, Jell-O shots taste like homemade jam, and pimento cheese arrives on fried saltines. The steamed burger at happy hour has a cult following among people who take their diner food seriously while pretending not to.

A tiny sake bar tucked next to Kamonegi in Fremont, Hannyatou is the kind of place where the servers will talk you through a flight without making you feel like a student. The snacks, from the same team next door, are good enough that you may accidentally eat dinner here when you came only to drink. The habanero umeshu, when available, tends to inspire the kind of enthusiasm people usually reserve for sports.

Rattan furniture, grass skirts, and cocktails arriving in vessels that would embarrass a prop department set the tone at this tiki cocktail bar on East Central. The drinks are genuinely stiff under all the kitsch, and the signature comes in a schooner glass, fuschia-hued and finished with a flaming sugar cube on a lemon slice. South Pacific camp done with a straight face, which somehow makes it funnier.

The Rock sits 1.25 miles offshore, close enough that prisoners could see the city lights from their cells, which was apparently the whole problem. A 12-minute ferry gets you there, and audio tours walk you through the cell block, laundry, and chow house. The burned-out Warden's mansion is worth finding: it was torched during a 19-month Native American occupation in 1970, a chapter the gift shop tends to underplay.

A state park sitting in the middle of San Francisco Bay, Angel Island has been a Coast Miwok home, an immigration station, and a Cold War missile base, which makes the hiking trails feel unusually layered. Rent a bike, join an open-air tram tour, or walk to the Immigration Station museum. The views of the bay and city skyline are the kind that make you forget you took a ferry to get here.

A Beaux-Arts building that used to be the city's main library now holds one of the largest Asian art collections in the Western hemisphere, spanning India, China, Korea, Japan, Tibet, and beyond. Pottery, weapons, calligraphy, snuff bottles, and a fully reconstructed Japanese tearoom share space with a standout Chinese bronze collection. The redesigned galleries organize the sprawl around 15 anchor masterpieces, which helps considerably.

A neighborhood shop in the Sunset that stocks handmade home goods, locally printed graphic tees, and vintage finds sourced from local makers and the occasional road trip. It has the feel of a very good flea market find without requiring you to actually dig through one. The shirts are designed and printed in San Francisco on US-made blanks, which is either a detail you care about deeply or proof that you do now.

A long strip of sand tucked beneath the Presidio's bluffs, with the Golden Gate close enough to feel like a backdrop someone forgot to take down. The surf looks inviting and is genuinely dangerous, so most people stay on dry land and enjoy the view, which is the point anyway. Fog rolls in more often than sun, so dress for it. The Sand Ladder at the north end connects to trails along the bluffs for anyone who wants to turn a beach walk into a hike.

A wine bar with a list that runs close to 400 bottles, anchored in Spain and Italy but wandering convincingly into South America and France. It's a chain out of Connecticut, which the lively, group-heavy room makes easy to forget. Tapas keep things going between pours. Good for a party that wants to spend a long evening working through the menu without anyone having to make too many decisions alone.