The seawater playground of gilded-era San Francisco burned to the ground in 1966.

The key to turning shifting dunes into the green oasis of Golden Gate Park.

Carnivorous plants, medieval aphrodisiacs, and the largest original wood structure glass conservatory in the western hemisphere.

Bring your own cardboard to the slippery slopes of concrete hidden in a neighborhood park.

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

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.

This private residence was the template for one of the most beloved television homes of all time.

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

In all of the 29 years it was in operation, no prisoners ever escaped successfully... or so they claim.

A collection of 20th-century automata, penny arcade games, and musical contraptions.

San Francisco's newly reopened hands-on science museum.

An enormous illuminated figure dances on the Las Vegas strip.

A man-made island in scenic San Francisco Bay.

Condemned US Navy seaplane control tower turned officers’ club sits atop Yerba Buena Island.

An vast warehouse of everyday treasures in Berkeley, CA.

One of the best absinthe distilleries in the United States.

A decommissioned Naval base now rents itself out for people who want to blow stuff up.

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.

Dive bar built out of the remains of a whaling ship.

This mysterious series of teeny guerrilla installations sheds a whimsical light on street art in Oakland.

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.