San Francisco F13 Day Meetup - February 13th 2008

[Yoru]

You're much better off living on a light rail, cable car, or major bus line and spending the $2 a day or however much it is now for a bus pass.  California and Geary are both streets with very good bus lines running down their length if you go for a place in Nob Hill, Pacific Heights, or the Richmond.

Muni passes are $1.50/ride, $3/day, $15/week or $45/month. The monthly ones also grant unlimited BART rides, strictly between Embarcadero and Balboa Park stations, so you can count that as another rail line for the purposes of commuting.

As for cars, yeah, there's residential street parking in some areas, but it varies between pain in the ass to unbelievable pain in the ass. You can occasionally get an attached garage spot in the low-rise areas of town (southern/western, like the Mission or the Sunset or the Richmond), but you'll pay out the ass for it. $100/mo for an attached spot is Very Very Lucky, $150-200 is average, last I looked. You can also pay monthly for a garage or lot spot in your neighborhood, and those tend to run from $100-$150 in the low-rise areas, up to $300+ in the high-rise downtown areas.

If you only want the car for occasional weekend mobility and hauling, like I did when I brought my car here from LA, I'd strongly recommend looking into ZipCar, CityCarShare or one of the other half-dozen car-sharing-pool things in the city.

[OcellotJenkins]

Haight Ashbury -- You don't want to live here.  Really. Its not worth the effort/money/bullshit, its a cool neighborhood and there are cool apartments but I doubt this is the place for you.

Can you elaborate on this a bit more?  I've only visited San Francisco once but really enjoyed wallowing in the nostalgia of the Haight.  Had some great conversations with random people on the street, smoked some good bud, listened to Jerry Garcia on never ending loop at some pubs.  It was a really cool atmosphere from an outsiders perspective and I've since thought that if I ever make a lot of money, I'd like to have a house there some day.

What is wrong with the neighborhood and why would it not be a good place to live?  Just curious.  I'm sure it's insanely expensive... how much do houses go for in that area?

 

[Samwise]

What is wrong with the neighborhood and why would it not be a good place to live?  Just curious.  I'm sure it's insanely expensive... how much do houses go for in that area?

I haven't looked at the prices around there, but I'm going to guess that it's FUCKING expensive and not worth it unless you have money coming out your ears.  It's also a bizarre mix of overly commercialized/touristy and ghetto, like Disneyland if it had random puddles of urine.  Oh, and driving and parking is about as bad as it gets, and there isn't any really great public transit access to compensate.

The lower Haight (like below Masonic) is more residential and there are some very nice houses there, but it's still pretty goddamn pricy and there are houses that are just as nice or nicer in the Alamo Square area.

[Hoax]

Haight Ashbury -- You don't want to live here.  Really. Its not worth the effort/money/bullshit, its a cool neighborhood and there are cool apartments but I doubt this is the place for you.

Can you elaborate on this a bit more?  I've only visited San Francisco once but really enjoyed wallowing in the nostalgia of the Haight.  Had some great conversations with random people on the street, smoked some good bud, listened to Jerry Garcia on never ending loop at some pubs.  It was a really cool atmosphere from an outsiders perspective and I've since thought that if I ever make a lot of money, I'd like to have a house there some day.

What is wrong with the neighborhood and why would it not be a good place to live?  Just curious.  I'm sure it's insanely expensive... how much do houses go for in that area?

 

The rental market in the Haight is fucking idiotic, like Samwise said, 5 minutes on CL should back me up.  There is rediculous competition for the very limited # of units and you also run a serious risk of ending up with retarded neighbors or in very bizzaro roommate situations considering the price premium.  I just didn't see it being worth the effort on Logik's part.

[Logik]

Hoax, Samwise, Yoru, thanks a bunch.  Your input has been terribly helpful, and I probably owe you all a brew at the next meetup day.   

Since we're talking about neighborhoods, it'd be cool to hear what general areas you all deign to inhabit.  As for myself, I'm t-minus one week to making the haul--packing has finally started.  In between bouts of that, I'm still scanning CL.  Hopefully, I'll have some specific questions when I manage to pin down a few places.

[Yoru]

I live in the Sunset. If you want to get all technical, I'm right near the dividing line between the Inner Sunset and Outer Sunset. It's a quiet, safe neighborhood split about evenly between Asian families, UCSF grad students and young professionals.

I find my particular slice of the area excellent, as I'm within walking distance of a supermarket, several good restaurants, liquor/convenience stores, a few okay bars, the park, and a Muni train line. The downside is that getting downtown, or anywhere in the eastern half of SF really, is a half-hour endeavor, minimum.

[Samwise]

I'm currently living in Buttfuck, Alameda (I moved to the East Bay for college and stayed afterward because of cheaper rents; I'm hoping to be able to move back to the city someday soon).  My parents are still where they've been living for the past twenty years or so, though, so I can talk about those neighborhoods.

My mom lives in a house sort of right between the Excelsior, Visitacion Valley, and the Bayview districts.  There's almost nothing walkable from her house except for John McLaren park, but she is less than five minutes from the freeway, and about twenty minutes from a BART station if taking public transit.  The area isn't exactly the best, but it's improved quite a bit since we moved in there when I was eight; gang activity is almost nonexistent now and she hasn't had her car radio stolen since I moved out as far as I know (she'd had it stolen at least twice while I lived with her).

My dad lives in an apartment in the Tenderloin, which has a reputation for being a really bad neighborhood but IMO is pretty cool; there are a lot of surprisingly good and cheap restaurants, and it's at the dead center of the city so you can get anywhere from there in a hurry (my dad's place is about two blocks from a BART station and a bunch of excellent bus/metro lines, walking distance from Union Square and Chinatown, a fifteen minute metro ride from Golden Gate Park, etc etc etc).

I'm currently hoping to get a house in the Ingleside area, which is relatively cheap, pretty low on crime, close to BART and metro lines and the freeway, and has a nice row of shops nearby (on Ocean Avenue).  My second choices would be the Sunset (I like it for the reasons Yoru mentioned, but since I'd be commuting to the East Bay for the foreseeable future the distance from freeways and BART is a killer) and the Bayview (lots of nice cheap houses there and good freeway access, but very little to do and no easy BART access).  If I had shittons of money my choices would be different, of course.