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Croce’s Restaurant & Jazz Bar Hosting great nightly jazz, blues and R&B performers.

House of Blues (Map; 619-299-2583; www.hob.com; 1055 5th Ave) What you think it is.

Classical Music & Opera

The accomplished San Diego Symphony (Map; 619-235-0804; www.sandiegosymphony.com; 750 B St; tickets $15-60) presents classical as well as family concerts in the Copley Symphony Hall. In summer, it moves to Navy Pier (Map; 960 N Harbor Dr). There are summer and winter pop concerts and the Symphony Exposed series lets you explore classical favorites in depth.

High-caliber performances of small orchestral works are the hallmarks of the San Diego Chamber Orchestra ( 888-848-7326, 760-753-6402; www.sdco.org; tickets $20-35), whose season runs from October to April. Venues include St Paul’s Cathedral (Map; 2728 Sixth Ave) on the western edge of Balboa Park to the La Jolla branch of the Museum of Contemporary Art.

San Diego Opera (Map; 619-570-1100; www.sdopera.com; Civic Theatre, 3rd & B St; tickets $28-192) is ranked among America’s top 10 opera companies. The SDO presents high-quality, eclectic programming under the direction of Maestro Karen Keltner. It occasionally draws international guest stars such as José Carreras and Cecilia Bartoli.

For light opera, musical theater, movies and musical extravaganzas, the reasonably priced Lyric Opera San Diego ( 619-239-8836; www.lyricoperasandiego.org; ticket prices vary), stages shows at the Birch North Park Theater (2891 University Ave) in the North Park section of town.

Cinemas

Check local papers or call theaters for show times. The main Downtown cinemas are the Regal United Artists Horton Plaza 14 (Map; 619-234-8602), at Horton Plaza, and Pacific Gaslamp 15 (Map; 619-232-0400; 701 5th St, cnr G St). Both show current-release movies.

In Hillcrest, Hillcrest Cinemas (Map; 619-819-0236; 3965 5th Ave) is in the colorful, boxy postmodern Village Hillcrest Center. See also the shopping malls of Mission Valley (opposite) for multiplexes.

Cinema Under the Stars (Map; 619-295-4221; www.topspresents.com; 4040 Goldfinch St) screens classic and contemporary American films on a heated patio in Mission Hills, a few nights a week from mid-May to October. See also the summer series Movies before the Mast at the Maritime Museum.

Theater

Theater thrives in San Diego and is one of the city’s greatest cultural attractions. Book tickets at the box office or with one of the agencies listed in the introduction to this section.

Worth a special mention are Balboa Park’s Old Globe Theaters (Map; 619-234-5623; www.theoldglobe.org; tickets $19-62), where visitors to the 1935–36 Pacific–California Exposition enjoyed 40-minute renditions of Shakespeare’s greatest hits. Saved from demolition in 1937, the theaters became home to a popular summer Shakespeare festival, though nowadays it performs non-Shakespearean plays as well. In 1978 the complex was destroyed by arson, and then rebuilt in the style of the original 17th-century Old Globe in England and reopened in 1982, winning a Tony award in 1984 for its ongoing contribution to theater arts. Between the three venues here – Old Globe, Cassius Carter Stage and the outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theater – there are performances most evenings and matinees on weekends.

Other venues:

Horton Grand Theatre (Map; 619-234-9583; 444 4th Ave)

La Jolla Playhouse (Map; 619-550-1010; www.lajollaplayhouse.com; UCSD)

Lamb’s Players Theater (Map; 619-437-0600; www.lambsplayers.org; 1142 Orange Ave, Coronado)

National Comedy Theatre (Map; 619-295-4999; www.nationalcomedy.com; 3717 India St, Mission Hills)

San Diego Junior Theatre (Map; 619-239-8355; www.juniortheatre.com; Casa del Prado, Balboa Park)

San Diego Repertory Theatre (Map; 619-231-3586; www.sandiegorep.com; Lyceum Theater, 79 Horton Plaza)

Spreckels Theater (Map; 619-235-9500; www.spreckels.net; 121 Broadway)

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A VERY FINE VINTAGE

From hipsters to drag queens, everyone shops for vintage and thrift-store clothing in Hillcrest. Shoe fetishists swear