The hotel room where Janis Joplin tragically died has now become a makeshift shrine to the singer.

Behind legendary Meltdown Comics is a marker for an engineered musical roadway of the Tehachapi, the great road builders of Kcymaerxthaere.

The dramatic upward-curving roof is one of the most iconic examples of Googie architecture that still stands today.

Perhaps the most unique of any Frank Gehry design for one simple reason: Gehry himself actually lives here.

Somewhere between an art studio and a print shop, this artists storefront is a house of worship devoted to type.

A lonely Gondola stuck on a traffic circle sits in a spot where it once would have floated down the Grand Canal.

Remants of foundations, streets, and streetcar tracks inhabit the cliffs where a landslide occurred in 1929.

This iconic L.A. bookshop is housed in an abandoned bank—both symbolic and chic.

A tiny theater hidden in an alley plays a constant stream of short silent films for anyone willing to peer through the peephole.

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

A pair of mutilated bronze octopuses slump at the base of the monument honoring California's admission to the U.S.

Over 315,000 preserved amphibians and reptiles in jars.

The stones that traveled from Spain to eventually become a holy place for San Francisco's nature worshippers.

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

This turn of the century masterpiece has a mysterious goaty interloper.

A hidden subterranean installation offers a view of the sky.

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

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

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

A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

A psychedelic labyrinth on the San Francisco bay.

A huge musical instrument played by the ocean.

You can spend the night as an honorary lighthouse keeper in this quaint, historic beacon.