Just some things that stood out to me about San Francisco

Accommodation

I stayed in the Hostelling International City Centre Hostel. The hostel itself was great. Every room had its own ensuite. The free breakfast was good (Bagels and coffee) and the staff were really helpful. What wasn't so great was the location.

Before going I had been warned to stay away from the district known as Tenderloin as it's the roughest part of town. It turned out that that was exactly where the hostel was located. It would have been too late to change to somewhere else so I decided to just do it. I did feel pretty uncomfortable out on a street but it was a good experience and I don't regret it.

Getting Around

Public transport in San Francisco is great and I caught buses every day as well as the Metro (which is really trams) and the BART subway. Anywhere in the city seems to be a short bus ride away. The buses themselves are pretty uncomfortable things, especially racing up and down the San Francisco hills. All of the seats on the buses and the metro are hard plastic which seems to result in people choosing to stand even when seats are available.

Another service that I used to get around was an app called Lyft. It's only launched recently and is currently available in just a few cities. It's similar to Uber except that you can choose to get what's called a Lyft Line where the car that picks you up will also pick up other people who have a similar route to you. It's a cool concept and it really social. It's also super cheap. I used it three times for journeys of around 10 to 15 minutes and never paid more than $6. I was also given 10 $5 off vouchers when I signed up so in all I'm pretty sure I paid $2 total.

Poverty

One thing I could not get over was the extreme and overt poverty in the city. There are homeless people everywhere throughout the city. People of all ages and ethnicities. Some of them are obviously mentally ill while others seemed to just have no other option. It really is shocking that such poverty can exist in such a wealthy city. Although I have heard that nearby cities transport their homeless to San Francisco. It makes me feel a bit guilty about being here as a tourist, getting stressed out about trivial issues like whether I would be able to find a car.

As a result of this the city feels really dirty. Almost every doorway smells like pee. The pavement throughout the city is covered in suspicious looking stains. There are bundles of old clothes and cardboard stashed all over. I would not go anywhere near a public toilet. Parks are places to avoid as you don't know what might surprise you in the grass. Often there would be people passed out at the top of stairs and escalators into metro stations.

I don't mean to sound too negative here but I feel like it did impact on how I felt while staying.

Oh, and one other thing for us Kiwis;no one here called it San Fran, ever.