35 years ago

From the Sun vaults, August 29-September 4, 1974

"She made her way to the ladies' room and barricaded herself in the left-hand stall. And there, written on the wall in ink, was the weirdest thing she had seen in all her 28 years... [continued next week."

Pacific Sun fans of Armistead Maupin's "Serial" column would never find out what surprised Mary Ann Singleton about the graffitied rampart of the Marina's Slater Hawkins body bar. The paper's San Francisco edition was about to be pulled from the racks and Maupin's summer-long tenure as a Sun "associate editor" was coming to a premature end 35 years ago this week.

"We have now had 10 months of experience in publishing a special San Francisco general news section," Sun editor and publisher Steve McNamara announced in a letter to readers. "Circulation goals have been met, but in the area of display advertising it would be many more months before that section would break even as an independent entity." Or, as McNamara more recently explained to us, "Our San Francisco venture was in bad shape financially, threatening to bring down the whole company."

While the Sun was able to lick its wounds and refreshen its ladle in the never-drying well of goofy Marin stories, the 30-year-old Maupin was left holding the bag--in this case, a shopping bag from the Marina Safeway he was making famous in his fictional column about Swingin' '70s San Francisco.

It would be another 18 months before Maupin would pick up where he left off with the adventures of fox-out-of-water Mary Ann Singleton and Maupin alter-ego Michael Tolliver as "Tales of the City" in the Chronicle. Which was a shame, because after only a handful of installments of the "La Ronde"-like column, "The Serial" was just hitting its platform-shoed stride--in the final Sun installment from this week in 1974, readers were following the Castro District adventures of Michael, as his friend Robert introduced him to the notorious Ritch Street Baths:

"The lounge was a vision from Fellini. Minoan columns sprouted in lush profusion. A mirror ball shimmered on the ceiling. Laguna Beachboys munched nine-grain bean sprout sandwiches on tiers overlooking the pool...Michael noticed a murky opening in the wall opposite the television lounge.

"What's back there?" he asked.

"A maze."

"A what?"

"A maze, dork. With mirrors and alcoves and dead ends and other trippy things."

"Does it lead to anything?"

"Yeah," Robert deadpanned. "The orgy room."

Michael's voice went up several octaves. "Christ, Robert. I'm not ready for this."

It seems Marin may not have been ready for this either. As McNamara tells it, Maupin offered to reshape the "Serial" into a Marin setting, but Sun editors declined due to the S.F. writer's lack of detailed local knowledge upon which, they believed, the formula was dependent.

"Armistead was devastated," McNamara recalls. "Just as he had found his calling it had abruptly vanished."

Fifteen months later, the Sun was up and running with a new version of "The Serial," penned brilliantly by Mill Valley writer Cyra McFadden, when Chronicle columnist Charles McCabe got wind of the buzz it was creating throughout the county. McCabe convinced Chron managing editor Gordon Pates that they should track down the S.F. writer who'd created the original "Serial" and give it a new lease on life--in early 1976, "Tales of the City" was born.

Today, McNamara considers the Pacific Sun's contributions to social satire simply another step in the long line started 2,400 years ago by Aristophanes.

"Many other newspapers tried imitations--the Washington Post and Chicago Sun-Times, among others," says McNamara. "The imitations fell flat. It's not an easy thing to do.

"Armistead and Cyra did it exceptionally well."

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