Things to Do in Santa Clara

LeMans Karting helps visitors satisfy their needs for speed, safety, and social interaction. Nine-horsepower SODI RX 7 karts take drivers soaring at speeds of up to 42 mph across indoor and outdoor tracks as they compete for the fastest finish. High-grip track surfaces help drivers reach top speeds, and high-visibility lighting and flagmen keep everyone safe as they round corners and pass other drivers on the wide course. On certain days, the staff connects the indoor and outdoor track into a single, giant mega track that hosts extended races when it’s not busy fighting Godzilla.

LeMans Karting also offers endurance racing for drivers who want to sharpen their driving skills or land a job as Vin Diesel’s chauffer. The center also offers private parties for birthdays and bachelor parties and can help plan charity or corporate events.

City Lights is an innovative, intimate (100 seats), nonprofit theater company that produces six main-stage plays per year. Each play runs for a five-week period with four shows per week. Coming up in the current season is a production of Billy Aronson's First Day of School, a farcical look at the behavior of suburbanites in autumn (September 23–October 24); an irreverent, interactive, and totally historically accurate play titled Abraham Lincoln's Big, Gay Dance Party (November 24–December 19); and the horseplay of the drama Equus (March 17–April 17), the winner of the 1975 Tony for Best Play and a favorite of horse whisperers and hoarse whisperers everywhere.

Sick of buying expensive supplies and having to adhere to a class schedule just to create art, Jennifer Kurtz Rubin started the first of her chain of ceramic lounges in 1993. Each Petroglyph Ceramic Lounge is designed as a social and creative space, one that all customers can use to express themselves artistically while catching up with friends. The lounge throws open its doors for both kids and adults to decorate clay bisque pieces, such as mugs and salad bowls, with a bounty of colorful supplies, never worrying about cleanup afterward. Once they’re complete, the art pieces are glazed, fired, and ready for pickup in a few days. And because artists can stay for a whole afternoon or just 30 minutes, the lounge even grants a few moments of creativity to patrons with the busiest schedules. The company also goes beyond casual art making to host parties for kids and adults, in which they can bring in live music, serve food, and train scoops of ice cream to paint their own bowls.

After buying the Exclamation Point's original location in Saratoga, owner Melanie Vancil moved the studio to Santa Clara, expanding the workshop's inventory of needlepoint and cross-stitch manuals, crochet threads, buttons, and hand-painted canvases. Needlepoint, originally developed in the 16th century to create beautiful cloth tapestries without bulky looms or expensive trained spiders, draws from a proud tradition of craftsmanship, decorating household objects such as pillows, chair backs, and rugs with patterns and pictures of colorful fiber. Students of all ages learn to master this ancient form of art, as well as machine sewing and crocheting, in fun, informative classes, creating beautiful fabric keepsakes of their very own.

A Transporter Limo’s professional drivers carry passengers through the streets of the Bay Area in style. Chauffeurs take the wheel inside a range of vehicles, from all the glitz and glam of a Hummer stretch limo to the understated class of a luxury sedan or Scooby Doo Mystery Machine. The crew can scoop up riders from select areas across the Bay Area and take them on a one-way or round-trip journey to the airport, prom, or business meeting.