Job in SoMa, best place to live for a young male? (Marina: apartments, lease)

[Marqi]

Hello, I recently got a job in SoMa and am now in search of an apartment in SF. So basically I am a single male new graduate, am not looking to buy a car for transportation, and am looking for a place in a safe area. I absolutely love the apartments in SoMa but a hefty price comes with them. Getting one of those would allow me to walk less than a mile to work, and live in a trendy town that I think would be great for someone my age. The problem of course is the fact that anything decent is looking at 2k+/mo even with a roommate. A studio would be ideal, but even for 2k they are smaller than the size of my current kitchen. If I have a roommate, I would definitely want my own bedroom/bathroom.

I was wondering what other places would be good to look at. A place that is a good place to live for a young male, easy to commute to SoMa, and not too dangerous to walk at night.

I will be making around 75k, so I was hoping to spend a max of 2k/mo. How does that sound?

[mayorhaggar]

SOMA is a big area. What you want to do is take a look at the Muni map and see what bus lines or train lines go within a few blocks of your work, then find neighborhoods where you could hop on a bus or train and ride it straight to work with a short trip and without having to make any transfers. If you want to give me a major intersection near your job I could come up with a list of neighborhoods and bus/train lines you could use.

Honestly SOMA always seemed like a pretty crappy place to live to me. The far eastern corner has a lot of new buildings and a decent amount of cool places to eat but the apartments are super expensive. The rest of SOMA is just really dumpy, with apartment buildings scattered among abandoned warehouses and car repair places and wholesale stores. There are some restaurants and bars scattered around but you don't really get cohesive areas with blocks and blocks of commercial stuff like you see in any other neighborhood in SF. It just doesn't feel like a normal SF neighborhood especially because there's very little foot traffic and all the streets are one-way freeway feeders with a ton of noisy traffic.

To get you started I'd look at Hayes Valley and the Mission, and maybe Noe Valley if you can take the J Metro line to work.

[bmw335xi]

Live in South Beach!

[Marqi]

Thanks for the replies guys. It was my mistake, I thought SOMA was a little smaller, I see it is pretty large now. I was thinking in the nice areas, around Berry, Brannan, Townsend Street for example. Those places look new, trendy, and nice. Also those areas of South Beach seemed awesome too. I would be working on 3rd street by Brannan. Thanks!

[dmode]

Those are all nice areas you mentioned. But be aware that they are very expensive. My friend lives in a studio on Bryant and pays $1800 per month and this was before prices went up. For 1 bedroom in that area in a newer apartment (e.g., Avalon) you are easily looking at 2.5 to 3k.

[mayorhaggar]

Originally Posted by Marqi

Thanks for the replies guys. It was my mistake, I thought SOMA was a little smaller, I see it is pretty large now. I was thinking in the nice areas, around Berry, Brannan, Townsend Street for example. Those places look new, trendy, and nice. Also those areas of South Beach seemed awesome too. I would be working on 3rd street by Brannan. Thanks!

You'd pay through the nose to live in places like that, though maybe you could find a roommate with a cheaper old lease to share a 2br if you really want to live in a new unit in that area. It's pretty bland though compared with the rest of SF.

Here are my public transit/neighborhood suggestions:

Hayes Valley: hop on the N or T light rail lines at Van Ness station, and ride to the 2nd and King station. Probably about a 20 minute ride on a good day. Hayes Valley isn't my favorite neighborhood but it's alright and it's centrally located.

Marina: ride the 45 or 30 buses. The problem with these buses is that when they go through Chinatown, they get crowded to the gills with a ton of Chinese people who only want to ride from around Broadway down to Market. So that would be annoying to have to deal with every day. The Marina is yuppie frat boy/sorority girl paradise so you have to like that.

Nob Hill: take the 47 bus down Van Ness. It's kind of a pokey route but at least it runs pretty frequently.

Duboce Park/Lower Haight/Northwestern Mission: Here you can take the N at Duboce and Church. It would be kind of a long trip, probably 30 to 45 minutes, but the area around Duboce Park and Dolores Park is really nice, pretty much my favorite part of SF. The Lower Haight is kind of dumpy imo but it's near the N.