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One of Hollywood’s biggest icons is not an actress, singer, or model. She’s Angelyne, the self-proclaimed “Love Goddess of Hollywood,” famous for showing off her gravity-defying physical attributes on giant billboards. Occasionally spotted driving around town in her pink Corvette, Angelyne enjoys a worldwide fan club and has been featured in movies and countless articles.

If the sight of freeze-dried ducklings gives you the creeps, you should probably avoid this “little shop of horrors.” Budding sorcerers and those in search of decorations for their own haunted mansions will find delightfully macabre stuff to buy.

Dennis Woodruff is best known for being a non-celebrity. The “world’s most famous unknown actor” can be seen maneuvering around Hollywood in his outrageous vintage car decorated with lines such as “Buy my movie” or “Actor Awaiting his Break.” Woodruff’s elusive quest for fame was featured in Angelo Guglielmo’s documentary Idling Brando .

LA lays claim to the rather dubious title of “World Capital of the Adult Entertainment Industry.” Its biggest legends of lust, including John Holmes and Linda Lovelace, have left their hand-and footprints in the sidewalk outside the former Pussycat movie theater. Renamed the Tomkat Theater, it now shows gay porn.

Fancy a beach towel with a dead body outline? A coffee mug featuring a skeleton dressed up like Sherlock Holmes? A toe tag key chain? You’ll find all these and more at this tongue-in-cheek gift shop operated by the LA County Coroner and located right above the morgue. Proceeds benefit a county-run youth drunk driver alternative sentencing program.

The aisles of this bizarre “pharmacy” are packed with potions and powders said to cure many ills, mostly of the aching heart variety. Wiping your floors with a vile liquid will banish evil spirits, while lighting a strange-smelling candle will bring you good fortune. They also have voodoo dolls, complete with an instruction leaflet, should you feel really wicked.

It takes a morbid sense of humor to cover a sausage factory with a giant mural of verdant pastures with happy, frolicking pigs. But that’s just what the Cloughertys, the family behind the Farmer John meat empire, did when they hired Les Grimes, a Hollywood set painter, in the late 1950s. Tourists have gone “hog-wild” ever since.

Ken Bannister is so bananas over the yellow fruit that he has collected 17,000 banana-themed items and even earned an entry in the Guinness Book of Records . Arranged in a rather haphazard fashion in his tiny storefront “museum” are bananas made of plastic, glass, plus toys, T-shirts, tobacco, and even a petrified banana!

The doors of this bizarre museum open up a parallel universe where the seemingly mundane becomes extraordinary. Exhibits include Cameroonian stink ants and American trailer park populations alongside an uncanny likeness of Pope John Paul II in the eye of a needle. Give in to this strange world and prepared to be mesmerized.

Venice’s origins as an amusement park live on along the Venice Boardwalk. An endless parade of poseurs and eccentrics, from wiry street performers dancing on broken glass to steroid-enhanced musclemen, it remains a place where true freedom of expression reigns (see Venice Boardwalk Attractions).