Macondray Lane

San Francisco


The scenic route down from Ina Coolbrith Park – via steep stairs, past gravity-defying wooden cottages – is so charming, it looks like something from a novel. And so it is: Armistead Maupin used this shady, hidden byway as the model for Barbary Lane in his Tales of the City series.

Transportation

  • cablecar: Powell-Mason, Powell-Hyde
  • bus: 41, 45

Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby San Francisco attractions

1. Filbert Street Hill

0.14 MILES

With a 31.5% grade, the honor of steepest street in San Francisco is shared by Filbert St and 22nd St in the Castro. Filbert is shorter, but wins top…

2. Ina Coolbrith Park

0.17 MILES

On San Francisco's literary scene, all roads eventually lead to Ina Coolbrith. She was California's first poet laureate, editor of Mark Twain, colleague…

3. Jack Kerouac's Love Shack

0.17 MILES

This tiny cottage on a quiet alley was the source of major drama from 1951 to 1952, when Jack Kerouac shacked up with Neal and Carolyn Cassady and their…

4. Vallejo Street Steps

0.2 MILES

Reach staggering heights with spectacular views along this staircase connecting North Beach with Russian Hill – ideal for working off a pasta dinner…

5. Lombard Street

0.25 MILES

You’ve seen the eight switchbacks of Lombard St's 900 block in a thousand photographs. The tourist board has dubbed it ‘the world’s crookedest street,’…

6. George Sterling Park

0.28 MILES

'Homeward into the sunset/Still unwearied we go/Till the northern hills are misty/With the amber of afterglow.' Poet George Sterling's poem 'City by the…

7. Diego Rivera Gallery

0.3 MILES

Diego Rivera's 1931 The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City is a trompe l'oeil fresco within a fresco, showing the artist himself pausing to…

8. San Francisco Art Institute

0.31 MILES

Since the 1870s, SFAI has been at the vanguard of Bay Area art movements – including 1960s Bay Area abstraction, 1970s conceptual art and 1990s new-media…

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