Places waywardwillard Wants to Go

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

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

Tiki luxury on Nob Hill.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Olfactory delights in San Francisco's Botanical Gardens.

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

Relics of the 1894 Midwinter Exposition continue to delight visitors today.

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

Its buzzing collection honors vibrator history.

Get lost in this haunting fairytale art walk through a man-made eucalyptus grove.

There is no trying to fall in love with this Star Wars fountain, you just do or do not.

This shop specializes in oddities and Victorian-inspired wonders.

The only theatre in the world constructed specifically for sound movement.

A winding path built in secret on the edge of the continent.

A 140-year-old castle with underground caves hidden in San Francisco.

Bring your own cardboard to the slippery slopes of concrete hidden in a neighborhood park.

A psychedelic labyrinth on the San Francisco bay.

An artsy hidden staircase leads to breathtaking views of San Francisco.