Hotel Review: the Pontiac Hotel, San Francisco, CA

Pontiac Hotel
509 Minna Street
San Francisco, CA
415-863-7775
http://www.pontiachotel.com/

The Pontiac Hotel is, as I would characterize it, about 25% actual hotel and 75% SRO. If you are unfamiliar with SROs (short for Single Room Occupancy), let me give you a quick primer. These are hotels that primarily cater to various very low-income residents who are staying for a long-term period, but offer rooms on a daily and/or weekly basis. They are usually old hotels from the earlier parts of last century, and are only found in a relative few major metropolitan cities that have a preponderance of old buildings as well as a housing crunch/major income gap (San Francisco has possibly the most in the country; New York, Chicago and Los Angeles are other cities that are known for having numerous SROs). Typically you have a small private room, but share a bath/toilet out in the hall, and may (or may not) have other shared facilities such as a kitchen and common room.

So, what does the Pontiac offer? Private room, but shared toilets/showers on every floor, no kitchen, no common room, no laundry, for the price of $45 flat per night or $265 per week. It's in a real bad neighborhood, just off of Sixth Street (notorious drug alley) in downtown San Francisco, and therefore has a number of little tics that the unaware visitor who is perhaps accustomed to highway motels and such will really want to know about in advance.

Let's talk about the neighborhood first, and getting here, since that is probably what has most captured your attention at this point. Minna is just off of Sixth Street, which is a 24-hour hangout for a lot of sketchy drug dealers and users. That said, it is not a very violent or physically dangerous neighborhood. It's more like one of those place where down and out junkies go to die in the throes of their vices. That said, late night robberies are not unheard of, but if you're hardened to the sight of urban degredation and you don't flinch at the occasional mumbled call of the agressive pusher in your direction ("Was'sup man. Was'sup man."), you're pretty safe walking down Sixth during the day.