San Francisco's urban bison herd has persisted in the face of extinction, development, and disease.

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

The grand, column-fronted, sculpture-adorned home of the ambitious digital library.

Guns that have been defending San Francisco since 1904.

Beneath the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge is the “Gibraltar of the West Coast,” a fort built to protect the San Francisco Bay from naval attack.

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

A huge musical instrument played by the ocean.

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

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

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

A playground built by the kids that is a child's wonderland, and a helicopter parent's nightmare.

An vast warehouse of everyday treasures in Berkeley, CA.

A storybook European village in Berkeley.

A Berkeley sidewalk etched with 128 cast-iron poems.

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

This subtle Berkeley paving stone actually marks off a lawless tube of air that extends into space.

The century-old bell and clock tower at UC Berkeley is the third-tallest in the world, and has fossils.

The Laureates here get something even more coveted than a Nobel Prize: free parking for life.

Where the alchemists dream of transmuting base metal into gold was actually achieved.

A gathering of green robots at the Googleplex.

This giant shopping mall still holds signs of its automotive past.

San Francisco Bay's ghost town.

From the sky, a kaleidoscope of color brightens the grey landscape of the San Francisco Bay.

This quaint archive of the silent era preserves and pays homage to a seminal moment in film history.