That 70's Show
Reading Tales of the City is like discovering opening a time capsule. Practically every detail that floated aimlessly around in the zeitgeist above until conversation below lit it up like an electrical charge can be found within its pages. There’s Mary Ann Singleton actually saying to herself the mantra of the decade: “Today is the first day of the rest of my life.” There’s Vincent realizing that his Day-Glo “Keep on Truckin’” poster already seems like an anachronism from another time. Listen as Michael references Jimmy Carter’s confession to Playboy that he lusts in his heart. And the nightlife ranges from doing the bump at the disco to a bar that actually has an “Archie Bunker ambiance.” It’s the 70’s, man, so put on your mood ring, mellow out and forget that the Zodiac is still running free ‘cause Charlie Manson’s never getting out and even Patty Hearst got funky.
San Francisco
To suggest that San Francisco in the 1970’s was the one city in America where heterosexuals were completely accepting of homosexuals is to forget that it was on a late November day in 1978 when Dan White went hunting for Harvey Milk. Even so, it is beyond question that the level of normality expressed in the relations between gays and straights in the city had already attained a level at that time which many cities still do not exhibit today. Maupin’s book is really one of the most extraordinary subversive works of fiction published in the 1970’s because it positions widespread (if not necessarily universal) acceptance of homosexuality by its heterosexual characters as a given. This is an especially audacious theme to pursue consider that in the real world time and space inhabited by these characters, Anita Bryant, Dan White and the Briggs Initiative were all enjoying widespread public acclaim for their own uniquely individual brands of homophobic hysteria.
Appearances
The earth mother mother-figure to the tenants sharing space at 28 Barbary Lane has a great bit anagrammatic secret to keep. The weird guy who lives on the rooftop is holding onto some pretty big revelations himself. Nearly every character in the tales at one time or another is forced into a deception of who they really are; for some it is minor and passing. For most it is not nearly as incendiary as that of Mrs. Madrigal or Norman Neal Williams. The deceptions are not just grist for plot mechanics; most of what the characters take pains to hide speaks to elemental aspects of personality and for many when the moment of truth comes, it is not just a confession but a key that opens a lock on their lives.
