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The California Report Magazine

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Nitt Witt Ridge: The Poor Man's Hearst Castle
Today, we hit the road to uncover a few of California's hidden gems. On the central coast in the town of Cambria, just a few miles from San Simeon, there's a place called Nitt Witt Ridge. Some locals call it "the poor man's Hearst Castle," but it?s every bit as fascinating. We stop by to discover this little-known California historical landmark, and the man who brought it to life.

Burnt Almond Cake, a San Jose Specialty, Remains a Mystery
If you grew up in San Jose, or even nearby, you've probably eaten a slice of burnt almond cake at a birthday or a graduation party. It's not that people don't eat this fluffy delight elsewhere, but in San Jose it's a local specialty.

LAPD Museum Houses History of City's Dark Side
On one end of York Blvd. in the trendy, northeast Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park, you'll find record stores, cafes and hipster boutiques. On the other end you'll find the Los Angeles Police Museum. This collection of all things LAPD lives in the city's last surviving 1920s station house -- and it offers a visceral glimpse into the city's cops and crooks, real and imagined.

San Francisco Museum Archives Social Activism
We visit a hidden gem where the past is passed along, in the hopes of shaping a better future. The Freedom Archives in San Francisco's Mission District collects images and words of social activists from vinyl, tape and film, and then they restore, digitize and preserve them.

L.A.'s Bradbury Building Still Dazzles Visitors, Filmmakers
In downtown Los Angeles, there's a building many of us first saw in the classic 1982 sci-fi film "Blade Runner." Director Ridley Scott filled The Bradbury Building with neon and smoke. It's been a popular filming location for half a century, and it remains a must-see stop for tourists and architecture buffs.

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Oakland's Chapel of the Chimes a Place for Both Living and Dead
It's not unusual for cemetaries to attract tourists. They flock to Pere-Lachaise in Paris to see the tombs of Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. Forest Lawn in Glendale is the final resting place for entertainment luminaries like Humphrey Bogart and Michael Jackson. And a similar but much less well-known attraction sits at the end of a busy street in Oakland, past boutiques and up-scale coffee joints. We pay a visit to the Chapel of the Chimes columbarium.

An African Wildlife Preserve - in Sonoma County
For the last stop on our hidden gems tour, we head to Sonoma County. The region is best-known for its wine, especially reds. But it's also home to Safari West, a wildlife preserve with about 800 exotic African animals. We sent our adventure-seeking interns Nancy DeVille and Angela Rowell to Santa Rosa for a journey into the wild.

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