What is the setting of Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin?

There are two key components of the book's setting - time (the mid-1970's) and place (San Francisco). In terms of the former, the '70's were a period of expanding freedoms, of relaxation of once-strict moral and sexual codes, and above all of behavioral revolution. Groups whose behavior and power had been restricted for decades (women, blacks and other non-Caucasians, gays and lesbians, the young) were, as the result of the social unrest of the 1960's, experimenting with and expanding the boundaries of what they could do, what they wanted to do, and how they felt about it all. Nowhere in America, and perhaps even the world, was this sense of experimentation more widespread and more celebrated than in San Francisco, which for decades and for whatever reason became a beacon for anyone and everyone seeking freedom from whatever they believed oppressed them.

What TALES OF THE CITY does, however, is look beyond the superficial celebration allowed by the setting of time and place into the beginnings of a deeper concern, a deeper wondering about the meaning beneath the surface expressions of sensuality and joy. Even while it's being celebrated, the atmosphere of liberty inherent in the book's setting is a catalyst for the initial stages of a wondering about and a longing for something that might actually last. These wonderings and longings are alive, albeit to varying degrees, in the characters of the book, propelling them through not only this particular narrative but the several narratives that follow, which interestingly enough portray the setting of the story changing, at least in some ways, in the same way as the characters who live there.