From revamped icons, FOMO-inducing bakeries, and booze-fueled workouts to legendary local athletes, mega retail openings, and ways to get your kids out of the house, here’s our annual guide to the best of the best in the city, according to us and you.
Click the photos below to see our full list in each section.
Best of Arts & Culture
Best Chance to Discover Your New Favorite Album
Future is Color Studio & Cafe
Tucked in the heart of Barrio Logan, Future is Color Studio & Cafe is cultivating community through clothing, conversation, coffee, and music. Focused on collective liberation, the space explores cultural tensions through dialogue; creative workshops; and Studio Sessions, weekly events like jazz nights, DJ sets, and album listenings. Swing by Fridays and Saturdays to browse the latest collection, dig into the reference library, or vibe in the Hi-Fi Listening Space. (The best part? It’s free.) Tuesdays offer intimate, ticketed listening sessions, and you can visit on Sundays with a reservation.
Best of Food & Drink
Best Cocktail With an Ingredient We Had To Google
The Stache at Bar Kamon
Hidden behind the matcha-maximizing Asa Bakery in East Village, Bar Kamon is a speakeasy inspired by Japan’s 1920s Taishō era of bold transformation. Owned by cousins Ayaka Ito and Masaki Yamauchi, who hail from Nagoya—Japan’s fourth-largest metropolis—this intimate spot crafts cocktails that are imaginative and daring without losing their balance (and, at $16, are not overpriced.) The Stache stuns with rum, apricot liqueur, pistachio orgeat, honey, lime, and cheese foam and is brightly garnished with kinome—a numbing Japanese herb from the prickly ash tree that we definitely had to look up.
Best of Retail
Best Spot to Source Century-Old Doorknobs
Architectural Salvage
Egyptian doors from the Napoleonic era, North Park street lamps from the early 1900s, and 100-year-old Hungarian workbenches are just a few of the eclectic treasures you’ll find at Architectural Salvage. Walking into the home and building materials shop feels like stepping into a real life I Spy book—a world of whimsy packed with storied relics. Formerly located in Little Italy, the beloved store reopened this past November in a new Barrio Logan location. Whether you’re giving an antique a second life or hunting for a hidden gem, this spot delivers surprises you didn’t know your home needed.
Best of Health & Outdoors
Best Place for Athletes To Go Clubbing
Club House Encinitas
Need to baby your muscles after a marathon or sweat out the bad decisions you’ve made in the last decade? Club House is your spot. A 50-minute session at this wellness destination in Encinitas gets you access to tools like red light therapy, compression technology, vibration plates, an infrared sauna, and cold plunges (for the really hardcore types unafraid of freezing). The space also offers rotating workout classes from Pilates to HIIT, plus a lounge to continue your recovery with tequila and shopping.
Best of Sports
Best Proof That San Diego is a Sports Town
2024 Summer Olympics
Last year’s Olympics in Paris delivered plenty of unforgettable moments—a metal band performing alongside a headless Marie Antoinette in a 13th-century castle, breakdancing’s short-lived debut (sorry, Raygun), and even Snoop Dogg serving as a torchbearer. But some of the most memorable concerned our own hometown heroes. Sixty San Diegans competed for Team USA, earning 25 medals across eight sports, with gold medalists including then-Wave FC players Naomi Girma and Jaedyn Shaw, basketball star Kelsey Plum, and cyclist Jennifer Valente.
Encinitas’ own Jagger Eaton hit the street park as one of only three Americans representing the country in men’s street skateboarding, nabbing a silver medal finish. And while TikTok-famous local “rave horse” Suppenkasper and his rider Steffen Peters, beloved for their EDM-fueled dressage routines, didn’t make it to the finals, the 17-year-old gelding had audiences eating out of the palm of his, uh, hoof from the very first beat drop.
Best of Kids & Family
Best Way to Convince Your Kids to Get Outside
Mellano Farm Stand
Spend a screen-free afternoon with fun activities like pick-your-own strawberries, blueberries, and wildflowers; tractor rides; and animal encounters with pigs, goats, and chickens at Mellano Farm Stand in Oceanside. The family-owned locale also holds weekly farmers’ markets, plus festival weekends that bring bounce houses, lawn games, and rock-mining activities onsite. Mellano is celebrating its 100th anniversary as one of San Diego County’s largest flower and foliage growers—it’s even part of the farming team behind The Flower Fields in Carlsbad.
