Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.

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

"Looks so real, it's scary!"

Quite simply the largest tree in the world (by volume).

Rainbow-hued local gem in Venice.

Aqueducts have dramatically changed this old lake, now home to tufa towers and its very own species of tiny brine shrimp.

World-famous, Pink's still manages to keep its prized cult fetish status.

A look into the Church of Scientology's deeply unfavorable view of psychiatry.

Established in the '60s, a family-owned tropical drink bar founded by Ray Buhen, bartender to the stars.

A pair of slides and a tree-lined stair corridor have been an urban oasis for nearly 40 years.

Carved by a waterfall in a hard-to-reach rock formation, this heart-shaped rock has inspired romantics for decades.

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

A castle that was built stone by stone by an eccentric journalist.

The private clubhouse for the members of the Academy of Magical Arts.

Gift shop offering toe tags and chalk body beach towels tucked into a coroner's office.

A favorite haunt of dinosaur loving children and hallucinogen loving hippies alike.

A tiny theater hidden in an alley plays a constant stream of short silent films for anyone willing to peer through the peephole.

Behind this beachfront shop lies a spectacular, colorful sea cave with an equally colorful past.

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

Left untouched since a double murder-suicide in the 1960s, Los Feliz murder mansion remains a neighborhood mystery.

A library of rare occult books in Los Angeles.

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

Panorama exhibition hall in old silent theater with a beautiful backyard garden.

A museum befitting the city responsible for supplying the majority of the world's LSD.