Places MitchHellman Wants to Go

Slyly buy a shake in the Parker Meridien lobby.

A Pythagorean funhouse that tries, successfully, to prove that math is the coolest thing ever.

New York's oldest magic store.

Dodge prohibitionists and slide through the telephone booth in Crif Dogs.

The world's oldest hologram gallery and the labyrinthine laser laboratory of a holography pioneer.

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

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.

This shop for all your super spy needs hides an educational secret.

Destructive children, start your engines.

Texas's oldest bakery serves authentic German pastries, including legendary strudel.

Flashy signs from Las Vegas’s past find their final resting place at this unusual graveyard.

Elevated freight railway turned wildly successful urban park.

In the middle of a desert subdivision, there is supposedly an impact crater site from Kcymaerxthaereal times.

A half-acre utopia in the New Mexico desert features a graveyard, a game of horseshoes, a library, and a mailbox.

This is one really big nut.

Martha's Vineyard's most beloved speakeasy sells late-night pastries.

Owned by Native American women, this brewery is a celebration of indigenous culture in the American Southwest.

At this 1940s-era neighborhood favorite, you can still drink a cherry phosphate.

A bar, burger joint, and arcade housed in a late 19th-century church building.

This family-owned bakery is one of the last places in Brooklyn to sell the Nation of Islam–inspired bean pie.

An Italian restaurant became a rock-and-roll hangout and the lair of the "Hollywood vampires."

All that remains of the once-booming chain is a single orange-roofed restaurant.

A gorgeous mural outside a beloved D.C. restaurant pays homage to famous Black Americans.

This unique museum cafeteria showcases the history and regional diversity of African American cuisine.