S03E05 - 3 Califorgilicious Places in Los Angeles

Three Portals Into the Weird Soul of Los Angeles

Los Angeles has its boulevards, its beaches, its celebrity myths — but beneath all that sunshine, there are other temples. Stranger temples. The kind that don’t appear on standard travel blogs because they belong to people who collect haunted curiosities, who love kitsch, who chase the surreal. In my latest Califorgilicious episode, I explored three such places — and each one felt like stepping through a different portal.

The journey begins at Wacko Soap Plant / La Luz De Jesus Gallery, a psychedelic supermarket for the weird-at-heart. Imagine a gift shop that ate a mushroom, wandered off into a pop-culture dimension, and came back enlightened. Shelves overflow with mid-century sci-fi, horror art, novelty oddities, and the kind of collectibles your parents would have thrown out. I even left with a 25-cent, one-legged Mexican skeleton — a tiny piece of soul for the road.

From there, things turn darker at the Museum of Death, home to serial-killer letters, the infamous Heaven’s Gate room, taxidermy, and artifacts of the macabre. It’s unsettling, yes — but also strangely life-affirming. A reminder that death is everywhere, and therefore life is precious. I walked out grateful to be alive.

And then comes the strangest of all: the Museum of Jurassic Technology. A place that suspends time itself. Real science, fake science, mythology, and optical illusions blur together until meaning melts. You wander through dim corridors, watch dreamlike films, sip tea in a Moroccan-style rooftop garden, and leave wondering if the building exists outside of your memory.

If you want to live Califorgaliciously in Los Angeles, these are your gateways. Kitsch, darkness, wonder — the holy trinity of the strange.