California Guide and Deals

A charter member of the MLS, the San Jose Earthquakes played their first four seasons as the Clash before claiming the MLS Cup in 2001 and 2003. Though the team moved to Houston in '05, the franchise was reinstated in '08, bringing professional soccer back to the Bay Area. Buck Shaw Stadium serves as the team's current home, though a new stadium will shoot skyward in 2014, complete with luxury suites for fans and exhausted referees alike.

Use your VCR to tape over old workout tapes with cherished episodes of AfterMASH. With today's Groupon, $50 gets you two private Pilates lessons and one mat group class at Bella Forma Pilates (a $145 value). Located above Borders at the Carlsbad Forum Shops, the sumptuous studio takes a personalized approach to toning, the kind rarely seen since the legendary Golem of Prague was blessed by his creator with rock-hard abs.

Why stay in a hotel in your own city? The sheets are freshly laundered, milkmen can't knock on the door, and you won't have to face daily household routines that feel acutely bleak, dull, and dreary-bleak. Book a night on Santa Monica Beach to see Southern California in all its colors (Southern California has more than half of the colors on the ROYGBIV spectrum). Today's Groupon gets you a clean and comfortable garden view room (a $229 value) at the Bayside Hotel for $99, making it the perfect weekend getaway, romantic getaway, or getaway to watch the Charlie Sheen movie The Getaway.

Led by co-owners with backgrounds in professional dance, the experienced instructors at Pilates Studio City cultivate carved torsos with exercises that target the core. During personalized private sessions, pupils to bend into Pilates poses or the shape of their own initials atop a mat and sliding equipment such as the Reformer, Cadillac, and Wunda chair. Teachers also divide their attention among students of all levels during group classes, which range from Level 1 mat sessions to dynamic Nia workouts. Nia blends elements of dance, martial arts, and the healing arts into a series of 52 movements that rotate from session to session to keep muscles from getting bored.

Fitness blooms at three locations, which together host more than 130 classes each week. The Studio City location surrounds exercisers in rustic wooden walls, in contrast with the floor-to-ceiling mirrors and undulating modern lines of the Porter Ranch studio's décor. Mat classes at The Annex stretch and bend beneath a large photo mural of a forest so that students can draw inspiration from branches' ability to hold themselves indefinitely in plank pose.

Under the guidance of certified Master Trainer Armone Sullivan, students will be introduced to, and become firmly acquainted with, trademark Pilates positions that reawaken bodily potential and may even spawn a photographic memory. Armone is a local Pilates champion whose cycling and dance background has helped her create intense workouts famed for their rigor and clear-cut results. Your limbs will rise to her challenges, defining muscles and building the core endurance needed to scale art-deco skyscrapers and wrestle entire mountain ranges.

A former gymnast and collegiate diver suffering from a stress fracture in her lower back, Cassidy Farwell sought a total-body workout that would strengthen her core and alleviate her lower back pain. Around the same time, all-around fitness enthusiast Syd Shelton became curious about Pilates's growing popularity, and took her first class. Though they sought out Pilates for very different reasons, it made such an impact on them that they decided to open their own studio together to share the total-body toning techniques with others. As certified instructors, Cassidy and Syd now lead classes designed to tone the body from head to toe, with emphasis on strengthening the hips, thighs, core, and vestigial tail.