Maxime Leforestier's Blue House

This Victorian building at 3841 18th Street is a site of immense cultural significance for French visitors, serving as a real-world anchor for a song that became an anthem for an entire generation. In the summer of 1971, a young Parisian musician named Maxime Leforestier stayed here as a guest of a commune known as Hunga Dunga. The house functioned as a vibrant, unconventional home for artists, activists, and draft dodgers who sought to live outside the rigid norms of the era. Leforestier was so deeply moved by the spirit of radical freedom he found within these walls that he composed a song about the experience upon returning to France. The track, titled San Francisco, immortalized the residence as a blue house backed up against a hill where residents had thrown away the key.