Review of HI San Francisco Downtown Hostel 3*

I stayed for about a week in May 2015, it is clean and it offers a reasonably nice breakfast. They also have outings as well as knowledgeable front office people with maps ready to give you directions whenever needed. They have a sufficient number of showers and bathrooms and they're all private. My biggest problem with the hostel were the lockers in the room I was in (I don't know if it's the same for every room. ) They are not the standard locker-room type lockers that you see in most hostels but slide-out metal crates kept under the bed with welded thick metal cords criss-crossing perpendicularly leaving roughly two-inch by two-inch squares for anyone to fully see the contents and stick their fingers through if desired. Worse, due to poor design on the latch a standard combination lock will allow the crate to open approximately one inch making it relatively easily to slide out things like laptops. I was travelling with an expensive laptop and it made me uncomfortable whenever I went out with it in the crate (I kept it in a backpack in the crate to conceal it more) but fortunately nothing was ever stolen. Although their website claims that they offer "secure lockers", I think it is fair to say that that is a misrepresentation. I also did not like that they didn't offer coffee outside of breakfast hours in the kitchen/dining area on the third floor (although they offered it for free on the ground floor entrance), many people on their laptops or chatting at the tables would like to pour themselves some coffee without needing to go out to Starbucks or walk down to the first floor to get some. If you're not travelling with valuables that you can't keep on your person, this hostel is fine. Myself, although I have not stayed at the Orange Village Hostel a block-and-a-half away, room photos on their website indicate that they have the standard locker-room type lockers. On my next trip to SF I will probably stay there instead, so I can lock up my stuff when I go out and not worry so much about it getting stolen.