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

An art supply shop holds the secrets of this quiet neighborhood's raucous Barbary Coast past.

A gap in the concrete has been transformed into a miniature playground for the mind.

One of the last remnants of the city's Chinese nightclub scene is now a dive bar selling killer mai tais.

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

San Francisco's most expensive hotel suite includes a secret passageway rumored to have been used by JFK.

Tiki luxury on Nob Hill.

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

A historic hotel that made a cameo in Hitchcock's classic film has no intention of letting guests forget its fame.

The old Niles Canyon Aqueduct in the San Francisco Bay Area is a bemusing and secret trail through nature for wayward travelers.

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

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

A speck of nature and art in one of San Francisco’s most notorious neighborhoods.

A walk down memory lane in the heart of one of San Francisco's most notorious neighborhoods.

A library built during San Francisco's pioneer times is a student's retreat, bibliophile's sanctuary, and chess player's delight.

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

Collective dedicated to restoring steam engines.

A former hardware store near Yerba Buena is the official home of California's history.

These subterranean storage areas hold emergency water reserves.

Prone to disastrous fires, the city of San Francisco has the Guardian, a fireboat gifted by residents, to watch over them from the bay.

A classic advertising icon immortalized in regal bronze.

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

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

Bonsai garden in Oakland is curated by the first non-Japanese female bonsai master in the United States.