Trivium Games

Back in the roaring '20s, Emeryville was notorious as a place of vice; its speakeasies, racetracks, card rooms, and brothels made it "the rottenest city on the Pacific Coast". A federal raid in 1932 even found hundreds of gallons of illegal alcohol inside the police garage! Nowadays Emeryville has a more sterile reputation, but this card club for Texas Hold'em players dating back to the 1890s is still open, "the last vestige of Emeryville's gaming past" according to the local historical society.

There are no public tours offered of the Pixar studios; to get in you will need to know someone who works there and arrange a visitor entry badge in advance. Without it, all you can do is take a picture of the sign and try to spot the statues of the iconic ball and lamp through the fence. But if you are able to obtain access, the campus is impressive. Steve Jobs oversaw much of the early design, going so far as to hand-select brick colors for the main building and insisting that bathrooms be placed far enough away from offices to force employees to walk through the building to create random connections with others. Animators are given great freedom with their cubicles, and some have built elaborate huts, tiki structures, or other individualized creations for their workspaces. The newer building, built by Steve Jobs, hides a lounge within its fireplace that pays homage to Jimmy Claxton, the first black athlete to play in an organized baseball league. Beyond these hidden gems, visitors will appreciate the company store, vast amounts of Pixar memorabilia, numerous screening rooms, and company cafeteria.

The Bay Street mall, now Emeryville's nicest shopping area, was once the site of a prehistoric shellmound, or midden, a mound of shells and other food waste left by the area's indigenous inhabitants in generations past. People lived at the site from about 2,800 years ago to 600 years ago, leaving behind the shells and other artifacts as well as a cemetery. In the 20th century the mound was leveled and paved over, and in the process hundreds of bodies were exhumed; some of them were reburied and others were brought to the Hearst Museum of Anthropology in Berkeley. Though modern Bay Street shows little sign of the archeological site that still lies beneath it, there is an interesting outdoor memorial consisting of a large sculpture that evokes the ancient shellmound, two big stone doorways, and a series of informational panels about the area's history and native Ohlone culture.

The bayside park circling the marina has stunning views of San Francisco and the greater bay. You can see all three of the bay's main bridges from here: the Bay Bridge to the south, the Golden Gate Bridge to the west, and the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge to the northwest. Also lots of birds, including pelicans, egrets, ducks, hawks, shorebirds, and yellowthroats.