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

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

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

A still functioning vaudeville carousel that has operated for over a century boasts a colorful menagerie and past.

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

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

Tiki luxury on Nob Hill.

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

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

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

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

Relics of the 1894 Midwinter Exposition continue to delight visitors today.

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

A huge musical instrument played by the ocean.

An errant donkey ushered in a new era of mining in Nevada.