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Old 06-05-2012, 09:55 PM
 
Location: Mountain View, CA
1,152 posts, read 3,192,277 times
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I don't live in San Francisco but I've been there many times and have a cousin who lives there. Personally, for me, the parking situation would be the deciding factor on having a car. If you can have a car without paying an arm and a leg (e.g., you live somewhere with parking, or good street parking, or a garage that is somewhat reasonable), I would have a car.

Primarily, SF has good transit overall, especially in the downtown core, North Beach, etc, but it isn't Manhattan. There are plenty of areas where transit is a less than ideal option. Additionally, as you mentioned, there are so many neat places to road trip to in that area. As great a city as SF is, I wouldn't want to be stuck in my neighborhood all weekend, beholden to transit schedules.

And yes, I know you can rent a car, and that may be cheaper. But it also is kind of a pain. To get good prices you generally have to go to the airport. I'd much rather just hop in my car and head for Napa or Big Sur. Plus - what if you have friends out in the suburbs on in Silicon Valley?

If you are more of a homebody and only travel very occasionally, you probably would do better with renting. A car certainly isn't a necessity in SF. But if you like to travel and have "reasonable" parking options, it's probably worth having at least a decent used vehicle to get around the wider region.
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Old 06-06-2012, 02:05 AM
 
121 posts, read 209,429 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by uptown_urbanist View Post
Is your choice of city based purely on public transportation?
Not at all. I have many motivations for moving here, of which public transit is a small one, I suppose.

Quote:
When we moved back we ended up in Alameda, and while we don't have a car...
Interesting that you are car-free in Alameda. Do you take public transit? Come to the city often?
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Old 06-06-2012, 02:31 AM
 
10,629 posts, read 26,643,397 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jupiler View Post
Not at all. I have many motivations for moving here, of which public transit is a small one, I suppose.



Interesting that you are car-free in Alameda. Do you take public transit? Come to the city often?
We've only been here a relatively short time (Alameda, I mean) but yes, we take public transportation. My husband works in the city and takes the express bus, which actually gets him downtown faster than it took from our old SF neighborhood. I get around mostly on foot or by bus, and since we're still pretty new to the East Bay (didn't do as much exploring around here when we lived in SF as I would should have) I've been more oriented towards Oakland than to SF lately.

There are better places to live without a car than Alameda, of course, but there are also worse. I do wish, however, that there were more car-share options here. In the city of SF it seems like you can find them everywhere.

Another thought I forgot to add earlier, regarding grocery shopping: the ethnic and produce markets (and even sales at places like Walgreens for convenience food items) are often cheaper and better than the Safeways of the city (and if you're taking the bus/train to work, it's easy enough to just pop in on your way home from your bus stop after work a few more times a week; no need even to make a special destination trip), but also keep in mind that if you want to do a big bulk shopping trip, you can order online and have Safeway deliver it straight to your door.
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Old 06-06-2012, 02:52 AM
 
Location: San Francisco
1,472 posts, read 3,534,142 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Boompa View Post
NOt to mention that Super Markets are, in general, too expensive. When I lived in Outer Richmond three went under because they couldn't compete with Clement Street or Geary Blvd. Shopping at the Safeway on La Playa was outragous. Trader Joe's on Masonic using their store brands was much better. I could walk over and ride the #38 home.
Huh? I can use my club card, shop carefully and come out WAY better than small stores. As far as owning a car goes, if you don't have a secure place to keep it you're better off renting when you need one. Its too much of a headache constantly cruising for street parking and shifting it to avoid time limits and street cleaning.
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Old 06-06-2012, 03:04 AM
 
Location: San Francisco, CA
506 posts, read 1,151,143 times
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I shop for groceries Mollie Stone's, where they'll give you a ride home in their little bus once you've bought some stuff. Not that I actually use this. I never get enough stuff at one go that I can't carry it home... But it's something to keep in mind.

I also go once a month to Costco to buy big lots of stuff, and take a cab home. (Note: getting a cab at Costco is not trivial -- renting a car would be better.)

For buying large furniture, you can always get delivery, from what I've seen, and if not you can rent a vehicle.

Same with road trips out of town -- rent a car. Though, actually, there are busses to a lot of local destinations, too. You can get a bus to Tahoe, or Santa Cruz (train + bus), or Napa Valley.

Unless you really love your specific car, I'd say ditch it.
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Old 06-06-2012, 04:16 AM
 
Location: South Korea
5,242 posts, read 13,035,227 times
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Berkeley, Oakland and SF are really the only parts of the Bay Area you can easily get by without a car, and in that case Berkeley and Oakland would be best if you supplemented BART with riding a bike.

For shopping, the best thing to do is live near a grocery store so you can get stuff easily. It really is nice to stop at Safeway or your local deli or independent grocery store and get a few things whenver you want on the way home from the train or bus--it makes it easier to cook since you can get fresh ingredients rather than having to stock up on frozen stuff by making big shopping trips irregularly. But you don't want to have to walk more than a few blocks with some heavy groceries, so don't live too far out from a commercial shopping strip. Next best thing is to be able to take one bus or train line from near your apartment to a good grocery store. You don't want to deal with a lot of transfers and you don't want to have to walk a long way from the bus back to your apartment.

Generally there is parking at grocery stores in SF but the lots are small so it can be dicey, sometimes you have to sit around in the lot waiting until a space opens up, or you might have to park a few blocks away. The main problem will be coming back to your apartment afterwards. Unless you live way out by the beach, you can easily spend a half hour circling the block trying to find a parking space in SF.

Really if you live in SF and want to cut down on your expenses I'd live without a car, especially if you live pretty much anywhere but the Outer Richmond or Outer Sunset (where it's easier to park on the street). The main problem is just how difficult it is to find street parking, it really is maddening, and on top of that you have your usual gas and car payment expenses, insurance, and plus you have to move the car every couple days for street cleaning. You save a ton of money, easily $300 or so for most people.

But you won't be able to leave SF easily, and you'll find yourself rarely going out of SF because of what a pain it is without a car. For those situations I'd look into getting ZipCar or whatever, which would also be useful for grocery shopping.

Also something maddening you'll discover about living in SF (or Berkeley or Oakland) is that there's very few big-box stores--no Targets or Wal-Marts or Home Depots--they're mostly in nearby suburban areas like Colma or Emeryville or further out. That means if you want to get to a one-stop-shop to get a lot of very basic home goods stuff at fair prices, you have to have a car so you can get to Colma or Emeryville. If you don't then you'll find yourself having to go to 10 different local shops where they may or may not have something really basic you're looking for, like a white t-shirt or a spatula or whatever, and if they do have them they're ridiculously overpriced.
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Old 06-06-2012, 08:42 AM
 
Location: Sierra Vista, AZ
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Still hung up on Super Markets, which are NOT where the majority of your shopping is. Planning to go and load your car up on groceries is trying to live a suburban life in the city. Yes most Supermarkets have parking, mostly on the roof, but when you are stopping at the take away or the produce store daily you shouldn't needf to go to the "super market" more than once a month, then only for staples
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Old 06-06-2012, 08:44 AM
 
Location: Sierra Vista, AZ
17,531 posts, read 24,611,297 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffredo View Post
Huh? I can use my club card, shop carefully and come out WAY better than small stores. As far as owning a car goes, if you don't have a secure place to keep it you're better off renting when you need one. Its too much of a headache constantly cruising for street parking and shifting it to avoid time limits and street cleaning.

you are still driving around trying to live a suburban life, good luck with that.
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Old 06-06-2012, 11:25 AM
 
10,629 posts, read 26,643,397 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffredo View Post
Huh? I can use my club card, shop carefully and come out WAY better than small stores. As far as owning a car goes, if you don't have a secure place to keep it you're better off renting when you need one. Its too much of a headache constantly cruising for street parking and shifting it to avoid time limits and street cleaning.
That has definitely not been my experience in SF. BUT... it depends on what you're buying, I think. Safeway has some good sales and if you shop carefully it has some bargains (boxes of pasta for $1 a few weeks ago), but overall, Safeway couldn't beat the small markets on Geary and Clement for most things. Produce was both better and cheaper at the produce markets than Safeway, milk was cheaper at the 7-11, bread was cheaper (and baked fresh that morning) at the bakery. If buying big boxes of packaged food like cereal then I can imagine the smaller markets would be more expensive than Safeway on sale, but overall, the big grocery stores (outside of Costco and the Smart and Finals) in SF aren't really designed for bargain hunters. Buying smaller amounts of food in a lot of places is a very different type of shopping, but it's the way a lot of people in SF shop.

FWIW, we had major food sticker shock when moving to the Bay Area, but while some items are very expensive, it's also offset a bit in other ways -- produce, in particular, is very affordable.
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Old 06-06-2012, 04:32 PM
 
1,263 posts, read 3,997,585 times
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If it is not too much trouble, I suggest you keep your car. You can do with public transit but it is most of the time much much slower than driving, and I mean 4 to 5 times slower, especially in places like Sunset where traffic is not that bad and BART is unavailable. It can take more than an hour to go somewhere by public transit and only 15 minutes if you drive. Plus your radius of activity would be very limited if you restrict yourself to public transit. With a car it is likely you'll explore the whole Bay area more often rather than being stuck in certain parts of the City.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jupiler View Post
Please help me with this decision. I'm single and plan to live near public transit. My initial thought is No Car due to the availability of public transit. But then, here are some scenarios that I currently use my car for. I'd like to know how does a car-less San Franciscan typically handle these?

-Grocery shopping. I currently shop once a week or every 2 weeks, and bring quite a bit home. Do car-less SF'ers go more often and have less to carry?
-Do grocery stores in areas like Inner Sunset and West Portal have parking?
-Buying large items like TV and furniture. Do stores typically deliver?

Also, I'm sure I'll be road tripping quite a bit to all that California has to offer. I could rent a car in these cases, but it's another use case for having a car.

Is it a good idea to have a car for these cases? I have an old car that probably isn't very attractive to thieves. I imagine I'll use it once a week or so. Is street parking near the home typically safe and free?
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