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

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

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

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

A psychedelic labyrinth on the San Francisco bay.

This grinning pup statue is all that's left of what was once a ubiquitous Bay Area diner chain.

Noble beasts perhaps, but not the Emperor's dogs.

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

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

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

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

This Japanese treats shop may have been the first business to mass-produce fortune cookies in the United States.

One-time winter retreats of prolific inventor Thomas Edison and his friend Henry Ford.