Concrete strongholds stand guard over the Golden Gate.

The remains of a deserted steamboat sit rusting beside an old ferry pier and an abandoned train platform.

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

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.

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

Where a staggering 747 ships were constructed during World War II.

An "anarchical" no man's land, complete with garbage sculptures and a hobo-run "Landfillian Library."

A 90-acre park on former landfill that hosts an annual kite festival.

One of the best absinthe distilleries in the United States.

An amazing collection of fantastic reptiles, amphibians, spiders, and insects.

Spiral labyrinth hidden in the hills above Oakland, CA.

An vast warehouse of everyday treasures in Berkeley, CA.

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

The final resting place of a space program monolith.

This rare tortoise skeleton has been hanging around the downtown Los Angeles museum for over a century.

Shop selling 500 flavors of soda has something for everyone.

A fashion designer's dazzling world of Japanese collectibles is hidden in a warehouse downtown.

The house where Good Will Hunting was written is a surreal fairytale abode.

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

Historic funicular railway, believed to be the shortest railroad in the world.

The space-age building is home to one of the few remaining rotating restaurants in America, and the only one that inspired a 1980s sitcom.

Scores of vintage street lamps shine along L.A.’s Miracle Mile.

These delicate buggers are some of the rarest fossils that have bubbled up from the Tar Pits.

Common all over Japan, kōbans are small community police boxes, and now one is guarding one of L.A.’s megamalls.