Get Away From the News This Summer With These 7 Bay Area Diversions

Be sure to check out our full 2025 Summer Arts Guide to live music, movies, art, theater, festivals and more in the Bay Area.

You, reading this: put your phone down! (After you read this, that is.)

Our phones are full of stimulating images, sounds, news and entertainment, all packaged in apps and sites strategically designed so we’ll scroll until the world ends or our batteries die — whichever comes first.

Research shows that the average person in the U.S. spends an accumulated 36 days per year scrolling. We’re constantly inundated with advertisements, updates from friends and news to make you fear the world outside your door. Even checking the weather app is a walk on the wild side.

Well, it’s summer, and in the Bay Area, you already know what that means: brisk foggy mornings, warm afternoons and memorable nights. So stop scrolling. Start seeking adventure, in-person friendships, and solo time. Craft making, sunset chasing. New scars and healthy ways of healing old wounds.

Here are some ways to get your palms on plans that are worthwhile.

Glass-Blowing Classes

Glass-blowing is a craft that takes time, concentration and strength. While photos of the process look cool, you won’t want to hold your phone up for a selfie while you’re juggling a glob of liquid glass near an extremely hot oven. Inherent dangers abound, but luckily, safety guides and instructors can guide you along the way. If you’re interested in glass blowing, check out The Crucible in Oakland, The Bay Area Glass Institute in San Jose, Art Escape in Sonoma or Glass Hand Studio in Alameda. (San Francisco’s Public Glass is closed until June 8 for a furnace rebuild, but will resume operations afterward — including classes for kids.)

Ceramics and Pottery Workshops

The thing about throwing clay is that it takes core strength. It takes focus. And it’ll cover your hands with so much clay that you won’t want to pick up your phone, no matter how insane the latest push notification about Washington D.C. might be. Plus, you’ll leave the class with a new piece of tableware, a new lamp or the classic: an ashtray. With locations in San Francisco, Oakland and San Mateo, The Clayroom offers 6-week classes running from May through June. San Francisco’s Clay By The Bay has classes starting May 12, and San Jose’s Higher Fire Studios offer a continuous schedule of classes. Meanwhile in El Cerrito, Mudworks Studios has classes all summer.

DJing

Into stitching things together, but tailored for people’s ears? Try your hand at DJing. In the Mission District, San Francisco fixture DJ Lamont leads a collaborative summertime “each one teach one” DJing workshop at Fingersnaps Media, with classes July 9–Aug. 13. Other spots with lessons on the turntables are San Francisco’s Blue Bear School of Music and Washburn Studio and Music School, as well as Oakland’s women-led collective, Her DJ Club. It takes two hands and deep concentration — a perfect combo to keep you off your phone.

Sewing, Embroidering and Quiltmaking

What’s a better way to reclaim your screen time than making your own summer clothes?! At Oakland’s Community Fits, you can “sip and stitch” with the collective or take solo lessons to learn how to hem your new cutoffs. The East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse also offers sewing classes, lessons on embroidering and even a Sashiko mending workshop. And if you’re really looking to invest in the art of threads, Maura Ambrose hosts a day-long quiltmaking event in Oakland on June 13.

Public Art

Ok, maybe you’re more of a passive observer. (That’s why you’re scrolling constantly.) We’ve got you covered: outdoor art exhibitions. Out in the Presidio, you can see flowers in bloom, artwork by Favianna Rodriguez and, if fog permits, the Golden Gate Bridge. Across town, Yerba Buena Gardens has become home to eight different 22-foot tall Alebrijes and Nahuales designed by seven different artists, on view through June 22. Across the bridge at the Marin Gateway Shopping Center and at bus stops in the surrounding area are images depicting Marinship, the WWII-era shipbuilding company that once called that town home. And in downtown Oakland on Webster between 14th and 15th, there’s a mural inspired by the Bay’s newest professional sports franchise, The Valkyries.

Gardening

Here’s a way to enjoy the Mediterranean climate of the Bay Area: play in some dirt! Just about every community hosts a community garden, and programs like the Vallejo People’s Garden and Guadalupe Community Garden in San Jose give first-timers an opportunity to get their hands in the dirt and learn about horticulture. In the East Bay, there’s Planting Justice and The People’s Garden, where you can volunteer to work the land, and the UC Berkeley College of Agriculture and Natural Resources offers a series of lectures and workshops to help anyone looking to grow an even greener thumb.

Just Get Out of the House

You can remove yourself from the rat race by attending a Free Burnout and Overwhelm Workshop in San Francisco on May 24. Or dive even deeper into the matrix and have some say about the interwebs at a Bay Area Wikipedians Workshop, with meetups in May, June, July and August.

You can make mixed media pieces and collages at Oakland’s Mighty Mighty Studio. You can learn all about Assemblage at SCRAP, a creative reuse center in San Francisco. You can build your own Scraper Bike in Deep East Oakland as the Scraper Bike team hosts a week-long workshop at Arroyo Viejo Park in early June. Hell, you can learn to print photos on plants at Vallejo’s Autonomous Gallery. Even the UC Berkeley Art Studio has everything from calligraphy to printmaking, with summer classes that run from June 2 until Aug. 3.

Lastly, if nothing else speaks to you? Check out your local library. They have giveaways, events and these things called books … which are kind of like phones! They’re informative, entertaining, and some have images — and they never require charging.