Places trishmcdonald Wants to Go

Giant scissors seemingly stabbed into the side of a hair salon leave no question about the vocation of the owners.

Educational foundation that teaches the powers of fourth dimensional physical properties.

An enormous illuminated figure dances on the Las Vegas strip.

This San Diego museum is dedicated to preserving women’s historic achievements.

This beautiful ridge-top trail is dotted by tiny homes apparently built by a group of itinerant fairies.

This rare tortoise skeleton has been hanging around the downtown Los Angeles museum for over a century.

Though tiki culture has gone in and out of fashion, the Tonga Hut has always been flying the flag in Los Angeles.

A sudden forest of traditional Papua New Guinean art works is hidden in a corner of Stanford University.

First LEED-certified gas station in the United States.

Two men, two visionaries of Venice Beach, one little hotel that smells like cookies.

The randomness of this wall of lava lamps helps encrypt up to 10 percent of the internet.

This midcentury LA bar was the birthplace of tiki culture.

A private home built to resemble the shape of a microscopic creature.

A burnt orange monolithic dome structure perched on a hillside near Interstate 280.

An extensive collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts and mummies.

The abandoned personal amusement park of the King of Pop.

These delicate buggers are some of the rarest fossils that have bubbled up from the Tar Pits.

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

Historic funicular railway, believed to be the shortest railroad in the world.

"Looks so real, it's scary!"

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

America's most famous piece of self-built architecture.

This iconic L.A. bookshop is housed in an abandoned bank—both symbolic and chic.

A Bronze age settlement on the Greek island of Santorini might have been the inspiration for Plato's Atlantis.