The view from the double bed would be worthy of a five-star hotel: the serene green of Fort Mason sloping toward the Marina, the Golden Gate Bridge stretched out like a welcome mat, the rock of Alcatraz Island studding San Francisco Bay.
San Francisco, CA
Airbnb Might Be Struggling, but SF Hostels Are Thriving—Sort of
But it’s not a five-star hotel, or even a hotel at all. It’s Hostelling International’s Fisherman’s Wharf hostel, perched on a gorgeous bluff above Aquatic Cove, where private room No. 23 sets back guests as little as $100 a night. Visitors won’t have their own bathroom, but they can enjoy a cozy common area with a crackling fireplace, an in-house theater, an expansive shared kitchen and free breakfast.
The hostel—housed in a historic 1863 building that once billeted Civil War soldiers—is one of nine such affordable accommodations scattered around the city. While San Francisco hostels have long attracted young and crunchy international travelers on a budget, the city’s bargain beds are now giving Airbnbs a run for their money by offering more than just affordability.
Hostels’ increased privacy and perks are attracting a wider range of ages and demographics. The Music City hostel in Lower Nob Hill—which recently underwent a major overhaul—has rooms equipped with guitars and amps for practicing. The hotel-like Samesun on Lombard Street includes free parking and private rooms. The funky Green Tortoise Hostel in North Beach features zany carpeting, a boho common area and a free dry sauna.
“We’re very bullish about where San Francisco is going to be in two to three years,” said Russ Hedge, president and CEO of Hostelling International USA, the largest hostelling network in the world. The company also operates a location in Union Square and a pair of famed lighthouse lodgings down the coast in Montara and Pigeon Point, where you can fall asleep to crashing surf for as little as $45 a night. While Hostelling International closed one of its Downtown hostels during the pandemic, the company is now actively scouting a new location in the city.
All of this is conspiring to make the hostelling scene something it hasn’t been in at least a generation: broadly desirable. Across the country, elaborate amenities like rooftop pools and steam rooms have led some to speculate that hostels are poised to overtake Airbnbs as accommodations of choice.
“Guests want the social vibe that comes with staying at the hostel,” Hedge said. “But they also want a level of privacy that probably didn’t exist 20 to 30 years ago.”
That has led to changes like more private rooms, more single-stall bathrooms and private changing areas in shower rooms, amenities that didn’t exist in hostels a decade or two ago.
Even though hotel bargains are hard to come by in high-cost San Francisco, you can score a hostel bed for as little as $28 in the heart of the city with amenities galore—so why are so many of them only half full?
Perception Is Everything
With their prime locations, array of amenities and basement prices, hostels could be a stiff competitor to Airbnb, which witnessed a rise in vacancy rates last year. But both forms of accommodations appear to be suffering from the same problem: the negative narrative surrounding San Francisco.
“The doom loop narrative is keeping people away,” said Ruben Ortiz. The general manager of Hostelling International’s Fisherman’s Wharf hostel cited a recent school group—50 kids from the United Kingdom—that canceled their reservation because of what they were seeing on the news.
Overnights in San Francisco hostels were down 15% in 2023 as compared with 2019—whereas that rate is only 8% in the rest of the country, Hedge said. The Hostelling International president attributes the San Francisco drop to the lack of a rebound in travel from China and the Asian rim. But it’s not only that.
“Our travelers are quite well-informed,” he said. “So if there is media coverage that raises questions about a city or a neighborhood, they’ll take that into account in terms of their travel plans.”
At the European Hostel on SoMa’s Minna Street, that kind of news was happening in real time during a visit by The Standard. “Tourists are very scared to come to this street right now,” said receptionist Nikunj Upadhyay on the phone, while registering a guest’s complaint about people doing drugs outside his front door. “There are kids staying here.”
The capacity at Green Tortoise is currently under 50%, lower than is typical for the slow winter season, when occupancy rates usually hover above 60%. The Fisherman’s Wharf and Samesun hostels are also below 50% occupancy.
Yet despite all the negativity in the ether, hostel guests interviewed by The Standard only had positive things to say about the city, highlighting its beauty and the friendliness of the residents.
“It’s a great city,” said Samesun guest Renata Paulo, who traveled from Washington, D.C., to celebrate New Year’s Eve. “I can’t wait to come back.”
The Hostelling International president, for his part, remains optimistic about the future of San Francisco—and about what hostels can provide for it. “Our guests have felt so welcomed by the people of San Francisco,” he said. “There’s an attitude that distinguishes it from other cities, a graciousness.”
What’s more, hostels can host group sizes not possible in Airbnbs, like touring cyclists or large Girl Scout troops, like the one that overtakes the Fisherman’s Wharf hostel every year.
“The whole place fills up with little girls,” Ortiz said. “And the chaperone moms sipping on their chardonnay, saying, ‘We have to drink to get through this.’”
(KRON)– An 18-year-old is dead, and several others are injured after an early morning crash on eastbound I-80, near the 7th street off ramp in San Francisco’s SoMa district, according to California Highway Patrol San Francisco (CHP SF).
The crash occurred around 1:00 a.m. between a tractor-trailer, a Recology truck semi, and a grey Chevrolet Camaro, according to CHP officials.
Police said the Camaro was traveling eastbound just west of 7th Street when it made an illegal lane change to the right, colliding with the tractor-trailer as it was approaching the off-ramp.
Both vehicles crashed into the sand barrels at the top of the 7th Street off-ramp, officials said. The tractor-trailer continued onto the offramp, where it came to a stop, blocking all lanes.
After hitting the sand barrels, the Camaro continued, launching over the off-ramp bridge railing, where it dropped 25 feet and landed in the San Francisco Police Department Impound parking lot beneath the off-ramp and hitting several vehicles in the impound yard, police said. The Camaro landed upside down on top of another car.
Police said four people were inside the Camaro. The driver, an 18-year-old man, had moderate injuries and managed to get himself out of the car, police said. The right front passenger, a 17-year-old male, suffered moderate injuries as well.
The two rear passengers, both 18-year-old men, suffered major injuries. One is being treated at a local hospital, and the other was pronounced dead at 1:50 a.m. at the scene of the crash, police said.
The other three passengers in the Camaro were wearing seatbelts, and the 18-year-old who died was not wearing a seatbelt.
CHP SF officials do not believe alcohol or drugs were a factor in this crash.
San Francisco, CA
A 1906 fire burned 200,000 books. More than a century later, one was returned | CNN
Inside a charred book, pages dotted in soot stains tell the story of how San Francisco rose to the epicenter of a gold rush. Barely escaping the 1906 earthquake, this book should’ve burned completely.
The city’s oldest continually operating library presumed it did. After all, almost 200,000 volumes inside the Mechanics’ Institute did. That was until Randall Schwed donated the book to the library in December. Fumbling around an online marketplace, Schwed found “Echoes of the Foot-Hills” listed for $35.
“What’s interesting about this book is that it’s a survivor,” Schwed told CNN. “I needed to send it home.”
Fires heavily damaged the city during the 1906 earthquake and other fires followed. While no one knows which fire the book survived, here’s what we know about the mystery around it.
Library Manager Myles Cooper has been racking his brain for an explanation of how the book found its way home. In a fire after the earthquake that destroyed 200,000 volumes, how could this book emerge more than a century later?
Was it checked out? Was it rescued from the rubble of another fire? Was it hidden somewhere?
Cooper is certain the book is from the institute in San Francisco, evident by a stamp and a date: Dec. 10, 1874. Schwed, a collector, said his first instinct was to research the owner.
Agnes Quigley is inked at the top of the book’s first page.
In 1898, a woman by the name Agnes Quigley posted an advertisement in the San Francisco Call and Post newspaper, Schwed said.
The advertisement is about a young woman and reads, “From East, wishes situation as chambermaid and carer of children.”
There’s no way to prove whether the two Quigleys are the same person, Schwed said. But he has two theories as to how Quigley could have gotten hold of the book. She could have checked the book out. Or Quigley somehow stumbled upon the charred book and inscribed her name inside.
Both theories are plausible, Cooper agreed. He added another theory: There was a “lot of looting in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake.”
“Echoes of the Foot-Hills” isn’t the sole survivor, though. Other volumes, like archival and reference materials, were in a safe at another location during the earthquake, Cooper said. Another book, “Marriages, Rights, Customs and Ceremonies,” survived and was in circulation until 2001.
Now, the soot-spotted book is unavailable for checkout. It is locked in a display case beneath an 1854 map of San Francisco that also survived the earthquake. Nearby, an oversize atlas bears drawings of the earthquake’s activity created by pendulums.
“It’s really kind of like a library fantasy,” Cooper said. “It’s really magical.”
In San Francisco’s Financial District, the Mechanics’ Institute stands two stories tall. The membership organization is home to the nation’s longest-running chess club, writers’ groups and classes.
In the 1850s, the institute was established to provide gold miners with an education. Decades later, in January 1906, the institute merged with the Mercantile Library to form what was the city’s largest library. Three months later, the Institute lost that title.
“Our library was destroyed in ways that many other buildings were not. I mean, it completely fell down,” Cooper said. “There’s only one remaining wall and really only one brick story left, and everything was burned.”
The institute, like San Francisco, began discussing a plan to rebuild, Cooper said. They collected thousands of dollars and books in donations. Many of those books are related to architecture, mining and railroads – the things San Francisco needed to rebuild.
“It’s definitely part of the DNA of San Francisco to rebuild and rethink things, and that we always have a place to save history, and people’s stories won’t be lost,” Cooper said. “We will be a place that can have the capacity to contain those stories.”
As a longtime San Franciscan, Cooper said the earthquake’s story is kept alive through word-of-mouth. Today, no witnesses of the earthquake and fire are alive.
The institute plans to put acid-free cardstock inside the book to explain its story. It’s common practice for an owner to write their name inside an old book. “Echoes of the Foot-Hills” has had three owners in its more than 150-year lifespan: Quigley, Schwed and the institute.
DENVER — The Giants announced on Friday that they have reassigned third-base coach Hector Borg to a new role within their player development staff. Ron Wotus will fill the third-base coaching role on an interim basis until the organization identifies a permanent replacement.
Borg has made several questionable calls from
Borg has made several questionable calls from
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