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

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.

9,000 square feet of vintage and modern mechanical toys, dioramas & sideshow curiosities.

A pier that used to act as a busy ferry dock is now a decaying favorite of local fisherman and urban artists.

Where the polar bear watches over everything, and every drink is a double.

A store that sells all manner of bones, insects, and animal curiosities.

The only museum of sake in the United States is nestled in an unlikely California college town.

An vast warehouse of everyday treasures in Berkeley, CA.

One of the best absinthe distilleries in the United States.

A shape-shifting buy-sell-trade bookstore, born to Beatnik Era spirit.

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

Julia Morgan's Moorish-Gothic labyrinth of fountains, trees, natural light and Oakland's notable dead.

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

Antiques by the Bay.

Playable, historic pinball machines fill this Alameda museum.

Oakland's beautiful monumental cemetery.

An abandoned convention space that has been left to the homeless and the radical.

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

A comprehensive collection of Pez dispensers.

Odd stone and concrete monuments in the "Poet of the Sierras" eclectic folly garden.

A New England-style lighthouse along California's beautiful Highway 1 gets a re-do.

Once close to extinction, there is no shortage of elephant seals on the beaches of Año Nuevo State Park.

Rodin's famous depiction of Dante's 'Inferno', amidst a sculpture garden of many of his other works.

Guarded by the Angel of Grief, the Stanford family tomb attracts an odd mix of halloween revelry and somber contemplation.