A Barbary Coast watering hole built into a Gold Rush shipwreck.

Not merely a museum – but a whirring powerhouse that offers a subterranean peek into the heart and soul of cable car operations.

A collection of memorabilia from the Beat era in the back of a San Francisco bookstore.

The randomness of this wall of lava lamps helps encrypt up to 10 percent of the internet.

This concrete tangle of square pipes has stood as a proud thorn in the city's side since the '70s.

This shop and studio is dedicated to the art of the book, from letterpress to bookbinding.

San Francisco's oldest surviving monument and meeting place for 1906 survivors.

San Francisco's urban bison herd has persisted in the face of extinction, development, and disease.

A still functioning vaudeville carousel that has operated for over a century boasts a colorful menagerie and past.

A hidden subterranean installation offers a view of the sky.

The remains of a ruined mansion memorialize the 1906 earthquake.

A 300-ship graveyard, with a few still visible at low tide.

Nestled in the heart of San Francisco’s bustling Financial District stands a unique homage to the Mayan and Beaux Arts.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

Big gun installations, built over a massive cemetery, now abandoned & hidden in trees.

In this century-old literary safehouse, print is alive and well.

A modern mechanical planetary system, part of a 10,000 year clock.

Visible below the waves are memorials to the city's Gold Rush dead.

The tea room that pushed the boundaries of adorable straight into...we can't find the words.

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.

A nondescript building that's been functioning as a speakeasy for nearly a century and a half.

A shop full of natural curiosities, carnivorous plants, and costumed taxidermied mice.

Tiki luxury on Nob Hill.

Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.