Weird California

Weird California
Author: Greg Bishop
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company Incorporated
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2006-03-01
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1402733844

THE WEIRD SERIES What’s weird around here? That’s a question Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman have enjoyed asking for years—and their offbeat sense of curiosity led them to create the best-selling phenomenon, Weird N.J. But why should they stop at New Jersey when there’s so much that’s peculiar, odd, and utterly nutty across the whole U.S.? So the two Marks—along with several other writers with a taste for the strange—have focused on some key locales, giving each of them the full “New Jersey” treatment. Spanning the breadth of the country, from New York to California, these are travel guides of a sort, but to the kind of places voyagers will never find on their everyday maps. Instead, they’re chock-full of local legends, crazy characters, cursed roads, and bizarre roadside attractions. So come along and join the fun: Some of what’s out there is disturbing, some hilarious, but all of it is unforgettably…weird. Praise for WEIRD N.J.: “They are the chroniclers of the creepy, bards of the bizarre…From abandoned asylums to colorful real-life characters past and present, to folk stories of ghosts, monsters, and aliens, Mr. Sceurman and Mr. Moran have created a journal of New Jersey’s unwritten history.”—The New York Times. “Enough with the head-severing mobsters of Jersey. The state is packed with far more evil than TV could ever invent—from satanic Klan rallies to time-traveling tree farmers. And Weird N.J. has the pictures to prove it.”—Rolling Stone. “Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran see their native state as others do not. For them, it is a demented Disneyland of worldly, and otherworldly, delights.”—The Boston Globe. “If it’s the offbeat, paranormal or downright weird that you crave…there could be no better place”—USA Today. Praise for Weird U.S. “Weird U.S. is delicious armchair reading. Who can resist an ax-wielding man in a bunny suit, a home shaped like a giant shoe, cannibal albino villages, midget colonies, passages to hell or close relations of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster?”—San Francisco Chronicle. “Weird U.S. is a marvelous work of entertainment and the basis for a truly unique vacation.”—Library Journal. “Kudos to Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman…This is the book by which future explorers will chart their road trips in pursuit of the meaning of this nation.”—New York Press.

Secret California: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

Secret California: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure
Author: Ruth Carlson
Publisher: Reedy Press LLC
Total Pages: 422
Release: 2021-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 168106331X

How do you step into a live fairytale with aerial dancers, opera singers, and a huge rabbit? Where can you walk on a beach covered with broken pottery? What is the Institute for Abnormal Arts? Who will show you evidence Bigfoot is real? Find the answers to these questions and many more in Secret California: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure. This is a book for travelers who love to meet quirky characters, discover oddities, and experience littleknown aspects of the Golden State. Learn the fascinating tales behind all the points of interest and discover some new places to look for adventure. Learn where to spend a night in a museum, explore an underground city, and watch silent movies in the same theater where Charlie Chaplin premiered The Tramp. Find out about the country’s only perfume museum, how a wall became covered in frogs, and why a colorful garden will not grow. Whether it’s an ancient society’s crypt or the second city underneath the capital, this guide leaves no stone unturned. Author Ruth Carlson uses her years of experience as a Californian to fill you in on the hilarious, the bizarre, and the beautiful in this unusual guidebook so you can experience the hidden treasures locals would like to keep to themselves—if only they knew about them!

Weird Ventura

Weird Ventura
Author: Richard Senate
Publisher: Independently Published
Total Pages: 70
Release: 2017-02-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781520703046

A light breezy look at the history of Ventura, California, that includes: odd history, lost treasures, strange characters, Ghosts and haunted places, including the old Mission San Buenaventura (founded by St. Junipero Serra 1782). Ventura has over 200 years of history bizarre happenings!

Weird Las Vegas and Nevada

Weird Las Vegas and Nevada
Author: Joe Oesterle
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2007
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 9781402739408

A travel guide to Las Vegas that also focusses on the neglection of its historic places.

Best Kept Secrets

Best Kept Secrets
Author: Sandra Brown
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2013-02-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1455546259

From a New York Times bestselling, a savvy attorney in small-town Texas will stop at nothing to catch the man who murdered her mother in this steamy thriller. Lawyer Alexandra Gaither revisits the three men who were with her mother the night she died twenty-five years ago. None of their charms can stop Alex's determined search for the truth–she's not leaving without one of them being arrested and convicted. When Alex's investigation uncovers decades-old intrigues, someone decides she must be stopped. Now, with a one-month deadline to either wrap up the case or drop it for good, Alex must work diligently to catch her mother's killer–and find a way to stay alive.

Unruly Places

Unruly Places
Author: Alastair Bonnett
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2014
Genre: History
ISBN: 054410157X

Alastair Bonnett explores extraordinary, off-grid, offbeat places including micro-nations, moving villages, secret cities, and no man's lands. Consider Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and making his wife a princess. Or Baarle, a patchwork city of Dutch and Flemish enclaves where crossing the street can involve traversing national borders. Or Sandy Island, which appeared on maps well into 2012 despite the fact it never existed.

Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon

Weird Scenes Inside The Canyon
Author: David McGowan
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2014-03-19
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1909394130

The very strange but nevertheless true story of the dark underbelly of a 1960s hippie utopia. Laurel Canyon in the 1960s and early 1970s was a magical place where a dizzying array of musical artists congregated to create much of the music that provided the soundtrack to those turbulent times. Members of bands like the Byrds, the Doors, Buffalo Springfield, the Monkees, the Beach Boys, the Turtles, the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Steppenwolf, CSN, Three Dog Night and Love, along with such singer/songwriters as Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, James Taylor and Carole King, lived together and jammed together in the bucolic community nestled in the Hollywood Hills. But there was a dark side to that scene as well. Many didn’t make it out alive, and many of those deaths remain shrouded in mystery to this day. Far more integrated into the scene than most would like to admit was a guy by the name of Charles Manson, along with his murderous entourage. Also floating about the periphery were various political operatives, up-and-coming politicians and intelligence personnel – the same sort of people who gave birth to many of the rock stars populating the canyon. And all the canyon’s colorful characters – rock stars, hippies, murderers and politicos – happily coexisted alongside a covert military installation.

Our California

Our California
Author: Pam Mu¤oz Ryan
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Total Pages: 43
Release: 2008-02-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1607340488

Takes the reader on an imaginary trip through California while offering information about the history and geography of the major cities and towns.

Weird Arizona

Weird Arizona
Author: Wesley Treat
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2007
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 1402739389

Each fun and intriguing volume offers more than 250 illustrated pages of places where tourists usually don't venture, including oddball curiosities, local legends, crazy characters, and peculiar roadside attractions.

California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts

California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts
Author: David Kulczyk
Publisher: Linden Publishing
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2013-11-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1610351940

A freewheeling catalog of misfits, eccentrics, creeps, criminals, and failed dreamers, this compendium profiles 45 bizarre personalities who exemplify the Golden State’s well-deserved reputation for nonconformity. In the pages, Gold Rush pioneers are revealed as murderous madmen; Hollywood celebrities are shown to be drug-addled sex maniacs; early hippies are just 1950s weirdos; and even seemingly ordinary Californians have a talent for freakish, crazy, and criminal behavior. From frontier lunatic Grizzly Adams, whose head was one massive wound after multiple bear attacks, to I Love Lucy star William Frawley, a racist, misogynist, foul-mouthed drunk, and legendarily awful film director Ed Wood, California Fruits, Flakes, and Nuts is a side-splitting look at the people who made California the strangest place on earth.