![]() ![]() New tenants are welcomed with a joint taped to their apartment door. The enigmatic, anagrammatically named landlady, Anna Madrigal, is just as funky and endearing as her home. ![]() Of course she did: Her fully furnished single (utilities included) is $170 a month, or about $770 adjusted for inflation. On her first day scouring the rental listings, the unemployed 25-year-old scores a room at 28 Barbary Lane, “a ramshackle, two-story structure made of brown shingles” located along a secluded footpath in the tony old Russian Hill neighborhood. As the serial opened in the San Francisco Chronicle in May 1976, Mary Ann Singleton, a naive yet plucky tourist from Cleveland, has just decided to extend her stay in the city indefinitely. Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin’s beloved saga of life in San Francisco, begins with a fantasy of affordable housing. Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters. ![]()
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