I f you didn’t know you could walk up the stairs next to the bombastic pale yellow Queen Anne mansion at 1809 Taylor St., you might just walk right past them. Thick wood and sturdy, they seem equally likely to lead to a private home than anywhere public, but if you look closely, a wood-burned seal for SF Public Works is evident on the step just below the first landing. One other clear indicator that they’re open to all: a white and black street sign that reads “MACONDRAY LANE.”
What unfolds beyond the top stair is the stuff of fantasy. Chunky square cobblestones interspersed with dirt and moss make up the initial path. Along the car-free lane’s block or so in length, gardens bloom with fuchsia, Chinese lantern flowers and pendulous angel trumpet blossoms. The trees and vegetation overhang thickly, like in a jungle. Though city streets surround the narrow byway, fewer than a dozen homes line its lush environs, and traffic noise is mostly absent. A St. Francis statue peeks out from the green gloom, his hands over his heart. You find yourself wondering, “Is this place actually real?”
It’s not fiction, of course, but Russian Hill’s Macondray Lane did inspire one of San Francisco’s most iconic stories — the “Tales of the City” series by author Armistead Maupin, who reportedly told SF Weekly in 2014 that he wanted to create “a fictional address that would become so real to people that they would go looking for it.”
And look for it they do, coming to Macondray Lane regularly in search of 28 Barbary Lane, the address of Maupin’s fictional apartment complex overseen by a sinsemilla-growing landlord with an intricate past named Anna Madrigal. The welcoming compound’s quirky cadre of tenants included an Ohio transplant named Mary Ann Singleton and her gay eventual best friend, Michael Tolliver. Ultimately, Maupin wrote 10 “Tales of the City” books, several of which became television series that ran on PBS (1993), Showtime (1998, 2001) and, decades later, Netflix (2019).
‘A glorious time to be young and gay’
The book series became known as one of the first fictional works to address the AIDS crisis, but before that, it was a San Francisco Chronicle serial penned by the young newcomer to SF. Maupin ended up sitting next to the society columnist at the newspaper’s 901 Mission St. office, where he dragged himself daily after late nights out. There, he interwove his own adventures with gossip about SF’s elite into 800-word missives that, over time, enthralled the entire city.
“We didn’t know how wonderful it was until AIDS came along, but it was a glorious time to be young and gay,” Maupin told Interview magazine in 2024 of the period, the mid- to late 1970s in San Francisco. The author resided on Russian and Telegraph hills, first in a tiny rooftop studio atop 1138 1/2 Union St. — the “pentshack,” as he called it — that cost him $175 a month. It is around the corner from Macondray Lane…