Financial district safe?

[dalparadise]

From Oakland, you will cross the Bay Bridge and be treated to the most beautiful entry into the City.

I'll advise you again to ditch the car, given the location where you are staying and the places you say you want to go. You could easily get from OAK to Union Square on BART or by Super Shuttle.

Once you get to your hotel, you will hate having to hassle with a car. Even if you wanted to get that Golden Gate Bridge pic, you could ride a cable car up to the waterfront and grab a great shot from there. It's even fairly easy walking distance from there to the bridge, if you want to walk across it.

Just a thought.

[TCAS007]

Thanks! I may cancel the hotel as I read online they charge $20 urban fee per day and it did not say when I booked.
If I find another hotel with a parking garage I'll go there.
Now I know to avoid Tenderloin so I should be good.
What a pain.
I don't plan on driving but I do need to take my truck with my stuff so that is why I need a parking garage

[dalparadise]

There are several public garages in the immediate 3-4 block area. If you're able to find parking for $20 per day anywhere in that area, grab it! $30-$40 is more the norm.

There are motels a couple of miles away, near Van Ness and Lombard, where you could park for free, but the parking might be less secure than in a garage and you wouldn't be walking distance to the Financial District.

[HayesSC]

I just stayed in the Serrano for the past four days. The garage across the street is $39 a day (I believe), and on-street parking is pretty much non-existent.

In terms of safety, when you leave the hotel and walk to the corner of O'Farrell and Taylor, just turn left and walk toward Union Square. That's really your only option.

We made the mistake of taking Taylor toward Market to get to a highly-rated breakfast place called Dottie's, and it sent us into the middle of the Tenderloin. Trust me, you don't want to go that way.

[TCAS007]

I had it changed to the Union Square Hotel. Now that should be easier to go to places and my business appointment.

What is going on in Tenderloin?

[dalparadise]

Union Square Hotel is fairly nice and is in a great location for a tourist with no car. It is a madhouse of pedestrian traffic, fully-loaded cable cars on their way up Nob Hill, shoppers, bar-hoppers, theater-goers, sight-seers, street performers, etc. though.

The street grid right by the hotel is broken up by Market St. (No left turns/crush of buses, bikes and street cars) and the plaza for the cable car turnaround. And all the streets around there are one-way quagmires, with their cluster-effs exacerbated by all the foot traffic and street closures due to either the cable car turnaround or the Central Subway construction, one block away.

People arriving by BART love the fact that they can wheel their luggage up one block and check in. People with cars--even those with cars in a nearby garage--curse that area. In other words, even if you have some kind of parking arrangement, you will have a very hard time getting into and out of your garage and will be better off parking several blocks away--even in a Tenderloin-area garage... and walking.

That all said, the Union Square Hotel is a good tourist-class place to stay. A friend stayed there a couple of years ago and liked it--mostly for its location. The room will be super small, but clean--almost the entire footprint of the room will be taken up by the bed. There is complimentary wine in the evenings in the lobby, and it was easy to strike up conversations with the mostly European travelers who seemed to be staying there at the time.

It's a good spot, but I'm not sure I'd pick it for your needs. With your mandate of having the truck for work, I'd be far more inclined to stay at less expensive motels, such as in the Lombard/Van Ness or even Fisherman's Wharf areas and use public transportation or even private feet to get around when you weren't driving the truck.

Oh, and as to your question, "what is going on in the Tenderloin?" I have seen open crack and heroin use in the middle of the day. I have witnessed a physical fight between a homeless couple in the middle of a street, where the woman was throwing the belongings off the man's shopping cart all over the place, hitting nearby cars with the random garbage. I have seen flocks of prostitutes. The sidewalk is always jammed with people just hanging out looking for trouble.

I have never had a problem, but I have a fairly good city sense, and know how to stay out of trouble and which areas to avoid. I have walked near there alone at 3:00 am on a few occasions, knowing that one or two blocks away was a war zone to be avoided at all cost. People unfamiliar with the area are typically the ones who stumble into trouble.

[TCAS007]

Thanks again. I will drive and use their valet service. That should work alright.

[TCAS007]

Made it safe to the Inn at Union Square. Hope the valet does not damage my car with that insane traffic.

Thanks again for all the information.

[X14Freak]

Originally Posted by TCAS007

I had it changed to the Union Square Hotel. Now that should be easier to go to places and my business appointment.

What is going on in Tenderloin?

The Tenderloin is unique in San Francisco in that it has resisted almost all attempts at gentrification. The interesting thing about this is that there isn't any serious movement against gentrification in the Tenderloin unless you count Chris Daly's tenure as a supervisor. The whole neighborhood is full of nasty SROs and is extremely seedy. Even truly awful neighborhoods like Bayview have been undergoing gentrification but the Tenderloin hasn't improved much at all. It is simply a vile neighborhood although I find the area around Market and 6th Street to be a little bit worse than the Tenderloin.

P.S. When I was called for jury duty in SF, the trial was about a busted drug deal in the Tenderloin which led to murder.