Things to Do in Meriden

At City Steam Brewery Cafe, the owners concoct some of the area’s finest beers, scoring “best of” awards from Hartford magazine and Connecticut Magazine. They also brew potent batches of laughter inside their 200-seat comedy show-room theater. Ensconced in the historic Brown Thomson and Co. building, which was the state’s largest department store in 1877, Brew Ha Ha once was known as the Last Laugh Comedy Club, where fledgling unknowns such as Ray Romano and Kevin James vied for laughs in the smoky rathskeller of a restaurant.

Reborn in 1997 under a new moniker, the standup speakeasy keeps its calendar packed with nationally touring comics and local joke slingers. During shows, guests can toast with mugs of handcrafted beer and make edible sculptures of their favorite comedian using menu’s custom burgers, pizzas, and omelets.

Inflated structures, slides, and games fill the climate-controlled environs of the numerous BounceU locations that speckle the nation. At each site, staff members closely monitor all activities as little ones traverse obstacle courses or pull on oversized inflatable boxing gloves. The crew also invites parents to join in on the fun, letting them bounce alongside their kids or make sweeping edicts from atop a bouncy-castle throne.

In addition to open sessions, the indoor-play haven sets the stage for Pre-K and Play Classes, where instructors lead games and activities. Special events include Create and Bounce, which lets kids bounce and paint the day away so their parents can do grownup things, such as eat marshmallows with a knife and fork.

Shelves stretch across the walls of The Pottery Piazza Studio, abounding with more than 1,500 bisque mugs, plates, and figurines in need of decoration. Beside them sit stencils, brushes, bottles of paint, and more than 100 types of glaze. At the tables, clients adorn their blank bisque canvases with paint while sipping from their favorite home-brought wine. Staff members stroll up and down the store, eagerly awaiting their chance to offer advice on the best ways to design a piece, perform artistic techniques, or accidentally drop incriminating evidence into the kiln. During fairer weather, painters lay claim to the tables on the front patio, painting, snacking, and socializing alfresco style. Throughout the year, the shop hosts special events, including private parties, kids' summer camps, and BYOB ladies nights.

Once the site of an alfalfa field, the original Oakdale sprang up during the theater-in-the-round craze of the 1950s. Its spinning stage drew stars such as Harry Belafonte, The Who, and Led Zeppelin, who all serenaded the open-air crowds of the ‘60s while simultaneously completing their gyroscope training for Apollo shuttle missions. In 1997, the Oakdale Theatre was made over into its current, 4,600-seat arrangement, which has ushered in a new generation of entertainment stars ranging from Barney to Britney.

For those who prefer standing up and shaking it during live concerts, the adjoining concert space known as The Dome mixes the comfort of a suburban theater with the energy of a downtown club as revelers revel beneath its wooden steeple.

Founded in 1903, New Britain Museum of American Art was designated the first museum in the country to be dedicated exclusively to American artwork. Upon its founding, wealthy industrialist John Butler Talcott endowed the museum with a hefty sum of gold bonds and bottled phoenix tears with which to purchase modern oil paintings. The collection blossomed to include other artistic media over time, and it now consists of more than 10,000 works spanning more than three centuries of American creative endeavor. The museum's permanent collections showcase works by noted American artists ranging from Norman Rockwell to John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt to Georgia O'Keeffe. Along with rotating exhibitions and borrowed collections, the museum showcases work by emerging artists.

A gigantic gumball machine. It’s not the first place one expects to see children ricocheting about. But when it’s inflated and part of Jump n Jammin Play Gym’s 13,000-plus-square-foot fun house, it makes a lot more sense. Inside their climate-controlled facility, parents chase after their sock-clad kids as they race from air-filled obstacle courses to inflated trains and circus tents during open-jump hours. After all that exercise, kids lope into the game room to hone hand-eye coordination playing Wii games such as Mario Kart on 47-inch LCD-screen TVs. They can also twist handles at foosball tables, smack a puck during air hockey, and bang drums during games of Rock Band, a video game that fosters rhythm and an appreciation for feathered hair. The kaleidoscopically colored facility can also be a birthday kid’s personal wonderland with party packages, and during the summer, Jump n Jammin’s team adds slip ‘n’ slides and splash pools to parties and organizes summer camps.