This community on a small Venetian island has taken to painting their houses in bright neon hues.

This Venice bookstore has resigned itself to constant flooding by keeping its books in bathtubs and boats.

Alleyway plaque commemorating the death of a fictional character in The Maltese Falcon, not far from the author's home.

The giant pair of sexy legs sticking out the window of this costume store have become its main draw.

A monument to the love people have for their pets.

Not merely a museum – but a whirring powerhouse that offers a subterranean peek into the heart and soul of cable car operations.

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

San Francisco's oldest surviving monument and meeting place for 1906 survivors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A massive ultra-modern church presents a science-fiction view of Catholicism's inclusive future.

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

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

An vast warehouse of everyday treasures in Berkeley, CA.

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.

Handmade treasures from around the world.

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

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