The Queerest Places

San Francisco, Calif.

Macondray Lane

Macondray Lane is best known as the inspiration for Barbary Lane, the fictional Russian Hill street of Armistead Maupin‘s Tales of the City series. In 1976, Maupin’s story began as a daily serial in the San Francisco Chronicle, relating the adventures of an eclectic group of residents at 28 Barbary Lane. When it was published as a book in 1978, Tales was an immediate best-seller. Maupin followed a community of friends and lovers, straight and gay, through six volumes, ending with Sure of You in 1989. His chronicle of Barbary Lane proved a keenly observant satire of the ’70s and ’80s, and was an early chronicler of the AIDS epidemic in fiction. In 2008, he revisited the characters in a new novel, Michael Tolliver Lives.