WORST HOTEL IN SAN FRANCISCO

An article on a Dutch news site highlighted a reporter's horrific experience at the Blair Victoria Hotel in London, which apparently was such a filthy hole that staying there might give you several diseases. At sixty pounds per night. The manager, a charming Pakistani gentleman of impeccable grace and courtesy, forcefully threw him and his cameraman out.

Now, years ago I lived in a residential hotel in North Beach, operated by a Muslim personage of East Indian extraction. Perhaps it was not the cleanest place in the world, but I have fond memories of that time.
And I will never speak ill of my amiable host, Abdullah.
He was a very tolerant man in a mad universe.
As well as equitable and calm.
A true gentleman.

Yet that article got me thinking. What is the worst hotel in San Francisco?
An internet search yielded a treasure trove.


Among the candidates:

The Europa Hotel
310 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA 94133.

The Renoir Hotel
45 McAllister St, San Francisco, CA 94102.

The Sonoma Inn
1485 Bush St, San Francisco, CA 94109.

Travelodge
1707 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94103.

The Best Hotel
162 Taylor St San Francisco, CA 94102.


Three of the five mentioned above appear to be closed now, but their owners/operators are probably still vending hospitality. Which in their case is misguided at best. Among the problems mentioned in great and eloquent detail on several different sites are bedbugs, drug use, sheer unmitigable filth that smelled bad and damned well made the dissatisfied customers heave or leave, dangerous wiring, sheets and carpets repossessed from a third world death camp, and crimes going on in the foyer or shared bathroom. As well as in the rooms next door.

Bedbugs, bedbugs, bedbugs!

There were an unbelievably huge number of other candidates, but I chose these five because they are known to me. The Europa Hotel is two blocks away from where I lived, and is still in business. The owners of one of the other places ate often at the Indian restaurant where I worked, and the neighborhoods of all of these lodgements are extremely familiar.

But I must stress that these are not the only ones.
The entire city has shitty hotels.



By the way, I would advise not staying in North Beach. After dark falls, the intersection of Broadway and Columbus attracts some rather skeevy types (perhaps they were asleep nearby during the day), several nightclubs are scarcely disguised sleaze pits, and the "hotels" in the neighborhood are between questionable and residential. The cleanest guests are probably programmers from South India lamenting their foolish decision to come to this town and work for starvation wages in the high-tech sweatshops of Internet Gulch. Peanuts, buggery, and barracoons.

There are also transient Europeans with lice and backpacks.

As well as a smorgasbord of drug addicts.

It's a full spectrum.




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