Macondray Lane

This guide to Macondray Lane in San Francisco follows Armistead Maupin, who in 1976 began writing a daily newspaper serial about the tenants of a fictional Russian Hill address, Barbary Lane. It traces how readers fell for the invention so completely that they went looking for the real street it was based on, and how Maupin's saga went on to carry its characters through the 1980s. Listen for how the wooden steps and leaning cottages around you compare to the view Maupin described from his own window nearby.