[Rob Instigator]

The City of Angels: It's where many of our favorite celebrities work, play, go to rehab, get breast implants, relapse and drive expensive cars into trees. It's a land of magic, is what we're saying. But it's also home to the third largest oil field in the U.S. Now, isn't it a shame that all of that sweet Texas tea should go untapped, just because it's sitting underneath the nation's second biggest city?

Well, don't worry: It isn't. In fact, oil rigs have been placed all over L.A. and are pumping away in secret even now. The city was so caught up in oil fever that in 1930, 95 percent of the town residents passed a law allowing them to drill in their own yards. Of course the modern LA resident would never allow one of the largest oil operations in the country to go down right in their own back yard. So where'd all those rigs go?

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If it's tall, out-of-place and oddly phallic, it might be an oil well.

See despite it's reputation for being not in Texas, L.A. has been an oil town from the time black gold was discovered there in 1892 right up until today. As the city's hippie clogged arteries began to expand out over the reserve, oil companies got creative. After refining a new urban design in the 1930s, the wells were all but soundproofed; an innovation that allowed oil companies to start playing "hide the pumping station."
Get your minds out of the gutter. We're still talking about oil rigs here.
Where Are They Hiding?

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Right here.

On street corners, on school grounds, tucked away behind shopping malls--hidden rigs are literally everywhere in Los Angeles. There's an unmarked building on Pico Boulevard in West Hollywood which houses one of the biggest hidden oil operations in the city. From the site, 58 wells have been directionally drilled up into the Beverley Hills area. Here's what 58 oil wells looks like everywhere else in the world.

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And now here's the building in LA, busily drinking the milkshake right out from under thousands of unsuspecting Bel Aire residents as you read this.

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But you know how the story goes: You go to Hollywood all hopes and dreams of making it big, and when things don't work out, you find yourself covered in crude, toiling inside a clock tower that houses a secret oil rig in Santa Monica. It's practically a cliche.