Places zydeko Wants to Go

This mountaintop beacon is only lit three times a year but shines like some kind of all-seeing eye.

A ruined hotel with an unlucky history and an eerie present.

In a forgotten Central Valley industrial park lies the busiest railroad junction in California.

Visit a remnant California's Gold Rush, which locals claim is haunted by spirits from the past.

A plaque and memorabilia collection mark where A&W got its start.

Pillars made of 700 pieces of luggage climb to the ceiling of Sacramento Airport's baggage claim.

This former boomtown "island" is now submerged below Folsom Lake.

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

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

Antiques by the Bay.

The only place in the world where vehicles for an obsolete form of transportation are still built.

Lombard Street may be more famous, but this is the real “crookedest street in the world.”

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.

The original place where water met land in the City by the Bay is outlined in brass.

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

This 19th-century church is now a popular roller rink.

A still functioning vaudeville carousel that has operated for over a century boasts a colorful menagerie and past.

A garden oasis filled with flowers mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare.

A rococo retro-futurist future-rustic vernacular between yesterday’s tomorrow and the future that never was.

The neighborhood church casts a breast-shaped shadow that locals have come to call the “two o’clock titty.”

The remains of a ruined mansion memorialize the 1906 earthquake.

This tall and trim architectural oddity is one of the skinniest buildings in San Francisco.

These six walrus head statues harken back to a time when this area wasn't far from the oceanfront.

Home to one of the world’s largest collections of model yachts.