Ask HN: Best place to start in San Francisco?

I moved from Seattle to SF in 2008 and have lived in 3 places in the city.

Border of Bernal Heights / Mission district - shared a Victorian with 2 roommates, paying a total of $3700. Large house, more space than what we knew to do with. 10 min walk to the Mission & 24th BART. Neighborhood safety is spotty - my car was broken in twice that year.

6th and Howard - $3200 for a 3br (cramped) apartment. Very nice foot commute if you happen to work for in the SoMa or financial district. Very close to Westfield Mall and downtown shopping. East/West wise, the difference between 5th and 6th is vast. North/South wise, I would consider Folsom street the south end of the shadiness in the Tenderloin Market area, so we didn't quite avoid the crackheads and homeless. One night some homeless guy broke into my car and slept there. The stories of some guys laying turds on the street in broad daylight are true, I've seen it, I've smelled it, I put up with it as a neighbor for a year. If you have lady friends, it's not a very nice place to invite them over to. I can only describe 6th and Howard as an eyesore.

25th and Judah in Sunset district - I moved here in August. Really love the proximity to the park and ocean. I'm from Seattle so the fogginess is fine, don't see what the big deal is if you just want to live well and work on your hobbies. Cheap food, safe neighborhood, win.

$1000 is a bit low, I would expand to $1200-$1500. (that said I had a studio for $1000 right by GGP, but I had it for quite some time)

I lived in SF for the better part of a decade, all over the city. I would say the best quality of life is to be found if you live off of the "N Judah" streetcar line. It's easy to get to the beach, inner richmond, outer richmond, golden gate park, castro, noe valley, Hayes Valley, fidi, SoMa, BART, Embarcadero, etc off of this line.

You mean $1000 total or each? If total it's probably on the low end and expect to pay more. Check craigslist to have an idea of price. You can get around by bike, public transportation or walking, but it's not a bad idea to either have a car or rent one from time to time to travel around the bay area. (highly recommended!)

As for recommendations of places, my advice is to stay with friends in the first days like you said, look around and see the places you like. You probably can rent a place in 1-3 weeks.

Yea, we were hoping for $1000 total, for a small studio. What price range should we expect to find?

Please keep in mind we have no idea what the neighborhoods are in SF, so please include that as well.

That's optimistic, especially if you want to use bicycles and public transit.

You could live in the tenderloin - it's one of the worst districts in the city, but it's close to a lot of stuff and rents are cheap.

Check craigslist. Also, there was mashup posted here earlier. http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=111...

Pretty good summary. Seems like you guys are concerned about saving money and making good contacts - in that case, I'd probably recommend the mission. You'll have to pay like 1000-1500 for a studio, but the location is prime and it's eminently walkable.

Tenderloin/Mission/Sunset are places you might be able to find something for a grand.

Tenderloin - stabby stabby. Mission - on the dirtier side, a little sketchy in parts, but trendy and experiencing lots of gentrification. Sunset - lots of asian influence, very livable. You'll very rarely see the sunset from here though.

You might even be able to find something in Richmond for a grand if you're lucky. Just keep an eye out, set up alerts on padmapper.com. I found a $1400 one bedroom in a nice part of the city there.

You'll very rarely see the sunset from here though.

Let me clarify what smokestack is saying. The weather in the Sunset district is reliably foggy and cool or chilly. Most people don't like it.

I'll have to respectfully disagree. The TL is sketchy, but there are so many crackheads/witnesses/cops around since it's close to city center, overt violence is more rare than you'd think.

The mission is my favourite district in the city, and it's close to everything. If I had to live in the city, I'd live in the mission.

The sunset is crap. It's like a suburb that's attached to the city, especially outer sunset, where the rents are cheaper. It's blocks and blocks of houses, and very family oriented. There are a few good places in the sunset, but it's almost essential to have a car there, and you can't really go bar hopping, and it's about 20 minutes to drive to downtown.

For $1000 you can find a small studio, but also consider the advice to look for places in the peninsula (Mountain View, Menlo Park, Palo Alto) and East bay (Oakland, etc)

As a rule of the thumb, the places north in the city (nob hill, south beach, marina, etc) tend to be upscale. Downtown is not so bad, but I'd stay away from tenderloin. I don't particularly like the Mission and SOMA, but it seems a good number of startups have offices there, so YMMV. Northwest (close to the Golden Gate Park) have nice places, but seems to be worse if you don't have a car.

You'll see that sometimes a neighborhood is perfectly fine and safe and you walk two blocks down and it feels sketchy and unsafe. That's why I recommend you walk around.

Ditto on "stay away from the Tenderloin." I can't stress this enough. Homeless people and drug addicts there think nothing of dumping a giant brown turd on the sidewalk wherever they happen to be walking at the time.

If you are trying to save money, you should consider living in Mountain View, San Jose, or the east bay. Living in the city is fun and will be the most like NY (you won't need a car), but it will also be more expensive. I know people who live in Mountain View and Palo Alto who get by without a car, but it is harder. There is also not nearly as much fun stuff to do outside of the city, but that also means less distractions from your start-up.

Good luck with your start-up!

Thanks for the advice but we're really leanin towards living in SF. After living in NYC for 3 years I think I'd go crazy living 45 mins away, and needing to get around by car.

Only an answer to a specific part, but as far as needing a car goes, in SF you don't, but you likely will if you plan to visit people/companies/events in Silicon Valley. It's possible to get to something like DevHouse (http://superhappydevhouse.org/) by public transit, but it's often a hassle. If it's only occasionally, though, you could sign up for a service like City CarShare or ZipCar.

I actually am considering picking up a scooter when infer there, as I've already got a motorcycle license. Does anyone have experience getting around on one in sf? Is it possible to make it out of the city to somewhere like mountain view / San Jose on a scooter, or does it require going on high speed highways?

A scooter is great for SF, easy to park, but to get almost anywhere outside the city of interest -- east bay, silicon valley -- requires getting on the highway. Mountain View is 45+ minutes away by highway; San Jose 1hr+.

You can certainly make it all the way to San Jose without going on the freeway, but it's tough going. If you already know how to ride a motorcycle why not get a proper motorcycle for a few thousand more?

A scooter would be a fun way to get around SF.

It's theoretically possible (I think?) to get to San Jose on local roads but it would take so long it would be impractical. It wouldn't be much faster than bicycling there.

I had a motorcycle in SF and found the freeways to and from the South Bay terrifying on a motorcycle. You can lane split in California, though... so a motorcycle is probably the most practical vehicle for getting over the Bay Bridge in rush hour...

It's not too terrible to get all the way up/down the peninsula on local roads, but it does take a while (~2 hours). The directions are easy, though, because El Camino Real (CA-82) goes the whole way.

Yeah, CA-82 was what I was thinking of. But even driving a car on CA-82 from SF to MV(?) takes 2+ hours (I actually don't remember where I was coming from; just that it took forever). Riding a motorcycle would suck because of all the stops and starts. A scooter might actually be better for this as the step through design makes it a bit less painful to wait at intersections.

I honestly do not get what is so great about SF. If you lived here long enough, you guys would realize how boring it is. If you want IN-N-OUT that is not overpriced (like Fishman's Wharf) then you go to Daly City. If you want Krispy Kremes, Daly City. If you want to go Bowling, Daly City. However, there are bars and the clubs here for the night life.

If you're getting a studio for $1,000. I guarantee you it will be small, especially for two people unless (read below). Now let me tell you about Sunset. Around 19th street (the main street) is the most expensive and safest, but as you go closer to the ocean the housing is noticeably less great. Trust me on this.

A tip on housing, not much people know about this, so listen up. You will find better housing if you post in the wanted section. I found a few places that were really nice at $1500 excluding utilities (but utilities ended up around ~$70 with dryer and washing machine) and including DSL with two bedrooms. Like how you like to pick your housing, owners like to pick their renters. So, put something nice in your description when you're posting in the wanted section.

Thank you for the confirmation regarding why I prefer to live in SF rather than Daly City. Different strokes, I guess.

A lot of people will suggest avoiding the Tenderloin (as you can see in the other comments), but I know several people who live there and haven't had any particular problems. Yes, there's a bit of a zombie infestation, but as long as you keep your wits about you and don't stumble around drunk at 3am you'll likely have no problems. It does get sketchier the closer you get to Market, so a little further up in "Lower Nob Hill" (aka the "Tendernob") is a better choice overall.. still fairly cheap, centrally located, and not quite as rough.

If it's feasible in your situation, I'd definitely recommend subletting for a month and getting a feel for the different neighborhoods. December isn't the greatest time to look for places since most people aren't moving unless they have to, so the extra time would also be a big benefit.

I agree. I lived for a year at Geary and Taylor (technically Tendernob) and the rent was great ($2k for a 2-story apartment) and I had no problems whatsoever.

If you're determined to life in SF, don't want to have a car, and want to be reasonably close to where most tech events happen (SOMA), I'd recommend "lower nob hill", which is a nicer way of saying the northern part of the tenderloin. The northern borders would be Pine or california, and the southern borders would be Geary. I wouldn't go any farther south than geary, and the closer to union square, the better. There's studios in that area to be had for $1200 or so. You can always go out the sunset or the richmond, but then transportation becomes a pain and there's nothing out there.

Also, if you're trying to minimize expenses, you're probably better off finding a 1-bedroom or 2-bedroom and getting another 1-2 roommates, as the price of rentals doesn't scale linearly with the number of bedrooms.

I'm a software developer who lived in San Francisco. I highly doubt you'll find anything for $1,000 in the city. You can get a studio in San Leandro for $950. For $1k you can probably find a nice room share in just about any neighborhood.

I highly recommend not having a car. Parking is a nightmare in San Francisco, I actually find it much easier living in Williamsburg/Brooklyn. Renting a space is anywhere from $125-250 per month.

I really enjoy living in the sunset, but it's always overcast. I also lived in SOMA and the heart of the Mission. I would advise against SOMA.

You need a bike. San Francisco cyclists are well respected by drivers and once you learn the routes (ie, the wiggle) you are set. It's the fastest way to get around the city.

Good luck

I moved to SF from NYC five months ago. I moved the SOMA neighborhood, and love it. Go to any coffee shop here and it's full of entrepreneurs working on stuff. So many of the big startups in SF are in the area. I pay 700 for a huge room in a shared apartment. I kind of lucked out. I live somewhat near the "shady" part of 6th st, which people will tell you to stay away from. You have to remember that people in SF are prudes though. You're coming from NYC. You can handle homeless people and a crazy person here or there.

I'm in the process of moving from Austin->San Francisco and I've been using PadMapper to see apartments per neighborhood. Once I find a place I think is cool, I click over to google maps and "explore" a bit with street view. Incredibly useful...

I also use google maps to check transit times on Caltrain to various SV locations. Include times from apartment -> transit stops -> final location, etc etc to get a good feel for total travel time to events/meetings.

Good luck!

A lot of people comment how the Tenderloin area is bad. I frequent the area and have friends who live there and overall if you can put up with the numerous bums, crackheads, and general craziness it is doable.

The area near Geary and Larkin or O'Farrell and Larkin isn't too bad. It is super busy at all times of the night. I do see a lot of car breakins in this area though.

Also, can anyone speak to the social scene of the different neighborhoods? Since we're not going to know anyone when we get out there it's important that we live somewhere where we can make friends either through good bar scenes, or startup meetups. Does anyone have experience moving to Sf without knowing anyone and making friends?

I moved to SanFran with my girlfriend without knowing anyone about 8 months ago. I live in between the Mission and Noe, on Guerrero St. I still don't really know anyone outside of my job but it's a great area full of friendly people. You can easily strike up casual conversation with most people in Doloros park. I joined a couple meetups and met some good people but then got to busy at work and haven't attended any in a while. There's noisebridge on Mission St where you could go hang out and meet some people. https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisebridge

My view is that people in the bay area are very friendly and it's reasonably easy to make friends (accounting the geek factor ;-). A good start is to check meetup.com for groups with similar interest (startups, programming languages, food, etc). If you're into hiking, the Stanford Outing Group is pretty good:

https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/outing

They are not affiliated with Stanford anymore and they have user-organized group hikes regularly (sometimes every week) around the bay area.

The Height and nearby neighborhoods like Cole valley and inner sunset are fun, central and have plenty to do. That said there is no shortage of geek socialization opportunities (meetups, etc.) seemingly every night of the week.

I'm Azuldophin's partner, on a throwaway acct. Everyone's advice has been a great help so far. One thing to add, how would you compare certain neighborhoods in SF to ones in NYC? It would be great to have some context that we could relate to. For example, it sounds like the Mission roughly equals a more grungy Williamsburg.

mission = williamsburg/bushwick

soma = far west chelsea meets bushwick

haight ashbury = st. marks place

nob hill = upper west side

financial district = financial district

union square = lincoln center

that's all I got.

Also, check the comments here for "Garry's SF Guide to Where Your Startup Should Be":

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1510553

The closer you get to popular neighborhoods, the more expensive.

Avoid the Tenderloin and Bayview/Hunter's Point. Yes, they have cheap rent. They also have high crime rates, drug usage, etc.

Some of the most inexpensive but nice areas to live are in the Sunset(near Ocean Beach along the N-Judah MUNI line) and Twin Peaks. The problem with Twin Peaks is that you get a great view and slightly lower rent, but there are no trains that go up there and limited MUNI bus lines. You're also not quite next to any popular places, so its not as easy as walking out your front door to go to the bar.

I live in Lower Haight near Haight St & Filmore. I'm paying about $1000 a month for my house that I'm sharing with one roommate. However, I only have this lucky situation because I've lived here for 3 years, and my old roommate for 2 years before that. So I've basically inherited a lower rent.

Craigslist is the primary place to find apartments in SF. Be aware of the occasional scam. If you see postings that are too good to be true, i.e. low rent for an otherwise awesome place, be wary. Typically when you reply to these, you will get an email a day or so later where the person is saying they are out of the country and that after you make the deposit, they will mail you the keys. No, no no no no. Stay away from these scammers.

One of your best bets would be for you and your roommate to find one or two other people that are either looking for people to fill vacancies in a house, or looking to get a big house together. There are many houses in SF that have 3-7 rooms, so often you can find inexpensive rooms like that.

You might also have luck with the last idea yourself. Given the number of people on HN that live in or around SF, you and your buddy might be able to hook up with some locals and rent a new house together, or might even find suitable vacancies in a geek-friendly house. =)

Here's the craigslist link you want to use http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa

I would suggest you to find somewhere in Palo Alto area than SFO.

It's a super dump, but you can get a studio for $1k/month at Trinity Plaza on Market St. Expect to lose your deposit from what I'm told, but hey it has a pool, and plenty of meth dealers, and it's right at Market & 9th so it's central to everything.

But seriously, for $1k -> $1,200 you can actually find a decent studio on nob hill. I just helped my ex-girlfriend move into a beautiful and very well-laid out 450 square foot studio for $1,100/month at Clay & Leavenworth with all utilities included.