George Herbert wrote:
On 9/23/07, Sue Gardner sgardner@wikimedia.org wrote:
George, Marc, Sue, others - what neighbourhoods might you recommend? Fundamentally, for that first year, we are looking for something transit-accessible, central, and as cheap as possible. A little seedy would be okay.
In my personal opinion...
In San Francisco, the two parts of town that I would recommend would be SOMA (despite my earlier comments) and on Market up between say 7th and 12th streets.
There's some parking around SOMA, though it's not great. The 101 and 80 freeways (landing for the Bay Bridge) go through or touch down in SOMA. MUNI trains go mostly around, not through, SOMA, but the buses connect on through the middle. The Caltrain trains coming up from the Peninsula land at 5th and King St, at the south edge of SOMA.
SOMA ranges from upscale to slightly seedy, but is not cheap.
Market and very slightly south of market in the 7th to 12th street area is cheaper, but much seedier. It's not as freeway accessable and has lousy parking, but is right on the BART and MUNI train lines. Ten years ago this area was a bit too dangerous; it's still downscale, but not so bad.
Where I'm coming from...
I work doing IT consulting work for a company based in Santa Clara, near San Jose. I've worked for long periods around in SF, Emeryville, Berkeley, Oakland, San Mateo, Mountain View, Santa Clara, San Jose, Cupertino, ... around a lot. More in the South Bay than elsewere, but a fair amount in downtown SF or SOMA (4 years worth? 5 maybe).
I'm not a business real estate person, but some of my IT work has included IT facilities, and I've been familiar with the facilities people and leasing issues to some degree nearly everywhere I've worked.
To second something I think Phoebe hinted at in passing...
A good resource would be to ping all the people who attended the en.wikipedia SF meetups 2 and 3 (a few months ago, and last weekend) - the first was great, I was sick for the second, but it sounds like turnout was good and people had fun. They will undoubtedly have their own opinions and experiences.
Should there be a page on Meta? 8-)
What a great mail George, thanks - I am now thinking about Market for the immediate future. And please by all means, I would love to see a Meta page for this conversation.
I also wonder, could we follow up with you off-list if we have facilities-related questions? (I'm thinking we may want to ask you a few things as this moves along.)
Let me know, thanks, Sue