Though 28 Barbary Lane is a fictitious address, it's based on the real-life Macondray Lane in Russian Hill, described in 1978's Tales Of The City thusly: "And what she was able to do for the trans community then is something that had not been done before.” “When Olympia did in 1992, no one else would touch it," Laura Linney confirmed on Forum. Maupin, executive producer of the new show, has said that a real trans woman would have been cast in the role of Anna Madrigal if it were being cast for the first time now. In a 1992 BBC Arena documentary, Kate Bornstein, a transgender woman living in San Francisco, expressed how much Tales meant to her growing up, saying, “I thought, if a city can accept a transexual character drawn with so much love, there is some hope.”
Though Maupin was permitted to introduce gay characters six weeks into writing his column, he was firmly prohibited from revealing Anna Madrigal's trans status for an entire year, "or else we'd scare off the readers." That delay mattered little in the grand scheme of things. It Was A Major Step Forward For Trans Visibility It has brought me into the family of man, Mama, and I like it here. It has given me people whose passion and kindness and sensitivity have provided a constant source of strength. It has shown me the limitless possibilities of living. Being gay has taught me tolerance, compassion and humility. "If you and Papa are responsible for the way I am, then I thank you with all my heart, for it's the light and the joy of my life. Others, including a caller to KQED's Forum last April, have since used it as a blueprint to come out to their own families. The beautiful coming out letter that Michael wrote to his Anita Bryant-supporting parents in the original Tales of the City book is based on Maupin’s own to his conservative parents. used to fantasize about living there… It wasn’t until several years later that I realized the dream could come true.” "That extraordinary white vision rising above the blue water. “I stood there and looked at the city," he recalled.
) The process of leaving the Navy in 1970 required Maupin to go to Treasure Island. (He returned there to build houses for disabled veterans after the war. Maupin did two tours of duty in the Navy, the bulk of which was spent working as a communications officer in Vietnam. Originally hailing from Raleigh, North Carolina, the author's father was a Confederate flag-owning segregation supporter. Maupin Loved San Francisco Before He Even Lived In It As Maupin himself wrote: “In this town, the love that dare not speak its name never shuts up.” The community was impossible to keep out. Maupin quickly made a deal with his editors that allowed him to write about gay characters too they said as long as the gay characters only made up a third of the cast, it was okay.
It was, at the time, a well-known pick-up joint every Wednesday night, but when Maupin failed to find any singles willing to talk honestly about what they were doing at the supermarket, he decided to transform the story into fiction. The roots of Maupin's Tales column started in the San Francisco Chronicle after he attempted to write a 1976 article about the Marina Safeway.