Re:Ask HN: Best place to start in San Francisco?
by wyclif on Friday October 01, 2010 @01:54PM
(#1747888)
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.
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.