To those who live in SF - these two places have the same rent (with roommate):
1.) Townhouse in Duboce Triangle - completely standard, 2bd/1ba
2.) Condo in Soma (the worse-ish near Twitter HQ part). 2bd/2ba, full amenities (roof, pool, gym),
The balance here is super nice building in shit neighborhood, vs shit building in nice neighborhood.
Is the Duboce Triangle really considered a "good" neighborhood? It looks pretty crappy to me. Anyway, it's popular with the gays if you're into that. Personally, I'd go for the better unit.
>>1078130
SF here. Live in the Lower Haight, approx. 2 blocks north of Duboce Triangle. Close enough that realtors call listings on my street Duboce Triangle, and we get the Duboce Triangle Neighborhood Association newsletter shoved under our door. I absolutely love the neighborhood and would choose it in a minute over SOMA. But it depends on what you're looking for. DT has a bit more character--more interesting varieties of architecture, more old hippies, bohemians, and weirdos that haven't been priced out yet. It's also walking distance from a bunch of neighborhoods--Haight, Mission, Castro, NOPA, even Lower Pac Heights/Fillmore/Japantown are all 15 min or less away on foot. If the SOMA building is recent construction, you may find it slicker. I find those places sterile. And rather than the miscellaneous neighbors described above, you'll have a higher proportion of douchebag brogrammers with some junkies and winos around the edges.
Both SOMA and DT are popular with the homosex, btw--historically, the ones south of Market were kinkier, while those nearer the Castro were more old-school. But it's all changing fast.
>>1078195
Whoops, forgot to mention also that Duboce Triangle has more families, while SOMA is predictably more young singles (only some of whom are douchebag brogrammers). And it's a fairly good nightlife area, at least in terms of clubs, although you may not need or want to do a lot of walking to or from them. So these may be draws for you.
>>1078199
>douchebag brogrammers
I'm not sure what this means. I work in tech and I would really only consider Marina/Russian Hill the land of bros and douchebags.
The area of Soma I'm talking about is West of 6th and and North of Howard. I'm not aware of too many clubs/bars in the area as the area seems pretty empty. The main drawback, is as you said, you don't want to be walking around at night (outside of that area, you will want to take an uber).
In any case, we were looking to stay in the mission as it was closer to what we wanted (restaurant/bar/scene walking distance from home), but we ended up only finding a place north of market (duboce triangle).
The Soma place is really high end but the same price as the townhouse - my roommate wants out of soma, but I don't mind soma (I grew up in a not so great part of new york).
While I'm not gay, I don't really mind the gay scene (they seem to hate me more once I mention I'm not gay - for this reason I don't really go to bars on Folsom anymore).
In short, I'm trying to convince myself that living in duboce triangle is worth it for nearby, because if we just end up ubering everywhere, we would have gained nothing. On weekends we really only ever go out in the Mission or North Beach.
