Places Michael Barera Wants to Go

Two Ming Dynasty lion statues guard the entrance to the journalism school.

This recently restored timepiece has stood all around Kansas City.

This spot in St. Louis, marked with a simple sign, has seen more pro baseball than just about anywhere else in the world.

Undone by Prohibition, this abandoned brewery-turned-flour mill is now ready for its third act.

The first car-centric shopping plaza in the U.S. brought a little bit of Spain to downtown Kansas City.

This giant green head remembers one of America's jazz giants.

One of few surviving standpipe water towers in the U.S.

What was meant to be a temporary exhibit is now a permanent fixture at the St. Louis Zoo filled with beautiful birds.

Thousands of small machines line the shelves of this personal collection which definitely delivers on its name.

University City's quirkiest resident lives in a park named after its first.

Over 600 vacuum cleaners stack the shelves of what may be the cleanest museum in America.

This art deco masterpiece was once a miracle spring mecca but is now simply a government office building.

This otherworldly church spire reaches up toward the heavens.

This pristinely abandoned filling station on the edge of a graveyard is populated solely by unsettling mannequins.

A chessmaster's dream destination.

The fastest mail service in the west is tracked and memorialized along this 1,400 mile trail.

An abandoned factory along the Mississippi coated by a giant mural.

The red brick house where the father of rock 'n' roll wrote some of his classic hits.

Speak to a companion on the other side of the room loud and clear through this architectural anomaly.

A museum dedicated to man's boldest venture.

Where the author wrote her beloved "Little House" books.

This historic motel standing at the "crossroads of America" offers a radio in every room and was saved by local protesters.

A big museum full of little worlds.

An urban forest overtakes what was the greatest failure of utopic urban housing.