June 20, 2008
Vile Turk and Hyde Street-Level, One-Bedroom Apartment: $1,500

Wait, really?
BeyondChron's Paul Hogarth has a depressing article up about the Tenderloin's newest and ugliest building, above, offering up their street-level one-bedroom apartment for a whopping $1,500/month. For that. At Turk and Hyde. In a space where people are sure to kick in your window and sexually assault you twice a day.
BC goes on to point out that, yes, it is priceless when it comes to people watching, but the fact that this street-level space isn't being used as commercial property is a but perplexing. We can't image ever getting to sleep in that space sans the assistance of sweet Ambien.
Anyway, the place is available at the start of July. Slowly but surely, we are giving up on the idea of ever landing a one-bedroom or studio space in the TL. Sigh.
Image credit: BeyondChron


At least we now know what a front row seat to societal decay costs.
hahahah. This is the new building on my block. I HATE it! most buildings in the tenderloin are ghetto fabulous or even classy. this building looks like it belongs in some apartment complex in San Jose. I hoope this isn't the direction that the TL is going in.....I figure the building has a laundry facility inside and dishwashers/other modern amenities. I live in an old buiding on Turk Street and I don't even have modern outlets. I literally had to buy converters so that I could plug in my shite.
While I love living in the Tenderloin, I don't think I'd be comfortable living in a street level apartment. Especially on Turk and Hyde. Turk and Hyde is certainly the ghettoist corner in the TL west of Jones Street. Lately they have "Police Do Not Cross" fences to decrease drug/crime activity at that corner, and it seemed to work for about a week, but they're definitely all back now. It seems all of the homeless people and addicts like to congragate at the NE corner of Turk and Hyde for some reason. I live at Turk and Leavenworth, just one block away, and it's not nearly as bad.
No bars on that window?
One of the apartment's corner windows was already broken the other day and is still not repaired. Also, you can see that it is double paned glass. Hopefully the inner pane is bulletproof.
The stupidity of this building's design is astounding.
it seems like in any neighborhood, the way the apartment is situated -- on street-level with huge windows -- would be odd. in the TL it's just thoughtless.
I'm sure they will find someone who will pay $1550 a month to get that corner unit. The problem is (for the sake of the neighborhood) it will be a drug dealer who wants a "clear view" of that corner. Nobody will sleep there, as drug dealers in the TL don't live in the area ... they commute by BART.
artists only
If you're desperate for overpriced New Urbanismo housing in Pasadena you can get an apartment with a friggin' train running through it:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121366811790479767.html
nah, i don't think artists would go for that apartment. an artist moving into the TL moves there because he or she is poor. you can get much better units for less than $1550, above ground, and in nicer buildings. that building is literally an eye-sore. even the dilapidated building directly across from it on Turk Street is classier looking.
you know it's only 500/mo for one of Paul Hogarths Tenderloin Housing Clinics crack addled apartments units. I dare ya. I dare Paul to move into one of his own THC buildings and see how many hours he lasts before commencing a 1300 word diatribe on beyondchron
"If you're desperate for overpriced New Urbanismo housing in Pasadena you can get an apartment with a friggin' train running through it."
Dude, that would be awesome. I'd live in LA in a second if it didn't require having to drive everywhere. I use their light rail/subway system whenever I'm down there for work (and much to the horror of the Angelenos with whom I'm working) and it rules. It's far superior to Muni. They need to expand it all over the place, as LA is too sprawled out to be living ones life solely along a transit corridor.
isn't it time we had capital punishment for bad architecture?
"isn't it time we had capital punishment for bad architecture?"
AGREED!
I agree that LA's transit system has greatly improved since I left, but better than MUNI? Maybe they adhere to something resembling a schedule better than MUNI does, but beyond that I'm not convinced...
LA's lightrail/subway thing is comparable to metro muni and BART. their system of bus lines doesn't even approach Muni's system of other transit lines.
Muni's not perfect, but it's a perfectly viable alternative to a car in SF. the same cannot be said about LA's mass transit.
It's basically impossible to compare Muni and LA Metro - SF is a city that's only 49 square miles in size. LA is what? 495 square miles in size? However, what I do know is that I can get from LAX to Union Station in downtown LA in about 45 minutes on the train. That's about 20 miles. When I take Muni, it takes about the same amount of time to get from Cole Valley to my office down by the ballpark. That's like what? Four whole miles?
BART'll take you from SFO to Powell and Market in 25 minutes. That's 16.5 miles....in other words, BART is much faster than LA Metro. Huzzah! Muni/BART always wins.
Muni and BART are hardly the same thing. Come off it.
BART almost always runs on time and gets where it's going quickly and easily. The problem is that it doesn't really go anywhere, the stations are often inconveniently located if you're going from the city to the suburbs (and when you live here, but had to take a job outside the city that definitely sucks), and you're paying more to ride it.
Muni Metro vs. LA Metro though? Muni is relied upon as a major form of daily transit in a densely populated, compact city where plenty of people use public transit as their sole means of getting around. LA actually has parking and if you're only taking public transit... I don't know how you're doing it. I mean, I've only visited and never lived there, but I simply can't imagine not having a car there.
So when a public transit service that is frequently and heavily used is compared to one that is infrequently used in place where the majority ignore public transit, yeah, that's a pretty big problem.