Ask The Strut: San Francisco
Jimster
Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,955 Posts
Fellow Strutters,A very good friend of mine here in the UK has bagged a ten-month assignment in SF, pretty much expenses-paid. He flies over from London at the end of this month. He's visited the place before but only for a few days at a time - so he knows just the visitor basics really: fog, trams, gay jokes, Bullitt and Dirty Harry, 
Any advice on The Real Deal, i.e. where is good to live, eat, drink, where is good to catch Strut-related music, or generally just hook up (he's a bedroom DJ) and just shoot the breeze would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance.
Any advice on The Real Deal, i.e. where is good to live, eat, drink, where is good to catch Strut-related music, or generally just hook up (he's a bedroom DJ) and just shoot the breeze would be greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance.
Comments
music:
groove merchant
amoeba records (both in SF and Berkley)
Open Mind
Rooky Ricrado's
Jinx74 (excellent dealer....who is the embodyment of SF....gay)
Food:
There's tons of great places to eat. Depends on your friends taste in food
Clubs:
Depends but if he's into hip-hop (more on the mainstream tip) there's club six & milk that a lot of us SF strutters play often at. Poleng is also great for more left-of center stuff (house, rare groove, new soul, broken beat etc...).
The independent has a lot of live shows also the Filmore, Elbow Room, and the Warfield have a lot of live stuff as well.
To live:
rent is maaaaad expensive.
Also since the Bay is very condescended a lot of cities/suburbs are close there's always some place to go...i think.
That's the good part - they are either paying or subsidising his accommodation. With that in mind, what neighbourhoods are good?
Food wise, he likes his noodles and sushi. I hear if you look really hard, you can even get Chinese in SF, right?
SF is expensive as hell for a US city, but compared to London it's cheap.
In an international cost of living index I saw recently, London was ranked 5th
SF came in at just 34th.
That's surprising to me, though I haven't been there myself. Too pricey, bad service, bland food, or what?
If you want to be super-underwhelmed, go to Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc. It meets all of the criteria above.
fuck plain 'ol eating, give me theatrics too
What's number 1?
new york?
if your friend likes japanese food, then the best spots are all in the suburbs. Especially for ramen, no good ramen in sf itself.
best pho: turtle tower
If you look real hard you can find good deals. Look for landlords that are interested more in having long term tenants instead of making a lot of money.
I would guess Tokyo.
Minimum in a good neighborhood is probably $1200 going anywhere up to several thousand. Check Craigslist for going rates. Deals can be found. I found a studio for $975 in Noe Valley (never saw it though, wasn't what I was looking for at the time) and found a 3 bedroom place for $1900 once (two bedrooms and a spare room to be exact, rather small though). Elder people don't know or care about the going rates often. My flat is $2000 a month with three rooms, a huge backyard and is a rather nice place overall. I had to look at about 30 places to find this deal though.
I would think you can get a nice, sizeable 1-br or a smaller 2-br for ~1500 in the City, if you know which neighborhoods are slept on versus which ones are too trendy for their own good.
That's just based on people's pads I've been to and what they claim to be paying.
I got about 850 sf, which contains a living room, bedroom, music studio room, kitchen, and dining area, plus cable internet and satellite TV for less than $650 a month. But that's even a killer deal in Denver. If the cost of living is that high in SF, I imagine the average salary is much higher as well. 45k a year as a fry cooker and shit. Hah.
That's considered cheap out here.
3 rooms, or 3 bedrooms?
That's not too far off the mark.
$850 in SF for what you described sounds like an awesome (and RAER) deal. Whereabouts?
SG
1 official bedroom, two other rooms divided by a sliding French door, common room, kitchen, laundry room, split bathroom. It's a typical Victorian setup here is SF.
Oh, sorry I forgot to mention, I live in Denver, and it's actually 650/month
Yeah but $2000 ain't considered cheap out here, not to burst your bubble or anything. Then again, what part of town are you in?
Lower Haight.
Must be the 400 block if it's really cheap.
I'm paying about the same in japantown for a two bedroom, 1.5bath, one parking space. No backyard, just a small balcony. I also manage the building so if you figure that in then I guess my rent is lower than that.
Close enough. 500 block.
Moscow topped the list.
Here's a link:
http://www.finfacts.ie/costofliving.htm#This_2006
No way LA is more expensive than SF.
I know that didn't seem right to me either, but the formula they
use probably doesn't have a real direct link to the day to day life of the
average joe.
Yeah, my one of my friends just told me this last week, quite to my surprise. He's just been there on a weeklong trip with his girlfriend. They got some cheap plane tickets, and expected the stay to be dirt cheap, only to find it to be the most expensive city in the world. He said the whole town was literally crawling with shady suit wearing new money dudes. Vodka is still cheaper than water, though. Some things never change. Budem zdorovy!