When I first moved in with my wife, I discovered one of my favorite local oddities.

It was just a 10 minute walk from our apartment in Long Beach, California,

and it quickly became my go-to spot to bring out-of-town friends.

Sure, you could come and crash on our couch, but you'd be going on this walk.

I actually found it using the Atlas Obscura website. I was looking to connect with my new

neighborhood by searching for interesting places near me, and I found a place really near me.

It was the Long Beach skinny house.

This thing is thin, only 10 feet wide,

just enough room for a squished French door. As I dug into

this house's strange history, I found a number of other skinny houses all across the

world. One phrase in particular kept popping up in my research,

spite houses. In fact, this very podcast has covered some skinny houses before in an episode titled,

Spite Houses.

These are properties that are built out of malice to block views and crowd out neighbors.

They have their own petty legends used to explain

their strange shape. But here's the thing. Not all skinny houses are spite houses.

Many are built for much more benevolent reasons.

To make use of a scrap of land, to house a family,

to be a piece of art. They are masterfully built, labors of love.

My name is Talon Stradley, and this is Atlas Obscura,

a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous

places.

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