38-story baroque tower reflecting Detroit's rise, fall, and possible rise again.

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

A man-made island in scenic San Francisco Bay.

An "anarchical" no man's land, complete with garbage sculptures and a hobo-run "Landfillian Library."

One man's prolific, decade-long quest to turn trash into artistic treasure.

A 90-acre park on former landfill that hosts an annual kite festival.

A pier that used to act as a busy ferry dock is now a decaying favorite of local fisherman and urban artists.

An amazing collection of fantastic reptiles, amphibians, spiders, and insects.

This subtle Berkeley paving stone actually marks off a lawless tube of air that extends into space.

A shape-shifting buy-sell-trade bookstore, born to Beatnik Era spirit.

Antiques by the Bay.

Oakland's beautiful monumental cemetery.

A hardware store Buddha statue installed to deter vandalism wound up attracting Vietnamese immigrants who came to pray.

A crumbling Beaux Arts monument to the Bay Area's age of rail.

An art collective teaching the more fiery, metal-y art forms.

An abandoned convention space that has been left to the homeless and the radical.

A massive ultra-modern church presents a science-fiction view of Catholicism's inclusive future.

With statues of Nelson Mandela and Harvey Milk this monument has been called the Mount Rushmore of California.

The nearly 200-year-old building displays a perplexing grammatical error.

Abandoned former poorhouse, bible college, and haunted house in an Ohio hamlet.

An office built to look like a giant basket.

A monument to a Native American leader who was known for never breaking a promise and met his end after signing a deal with white settlers.

A bronze of the man in all his sinewy glory celebrates his longtime connection to the Ohio city.

A single handprint, which, according to Ohio State University legend, cannot be scrubbed off.