Ask HN: Any tips for living cheaply in SF?

This is the best advice so far.

I want to chime in and say DON'T move to the east bay or one of the cheap places on the peninsula. The 'savings' are misleading. There's a good chance you'll spend as much in transport as you'll save in rent.. For example, from downtown Berkeley to 16th and Mission is $3.55 each way. If you go back and forth every day, it's $210/m. Thus if you find a $500/m room in Berkeley but you still go into the city all the time, it's the same as having a $700 room in the Mission. Also, there is little chance of finding a cheaper room in the east bay that is within reasonable walking distance from BART. The east bay is way more spread out and chances are that you'll have to walk quite a ways to get to the BART. In fact I'm going to risk criticism and say that anyplace you find a shared room cheaper than $700 in the east bay is going to be a sketchy neighborhood. YMMV, but the shady parts of berkeley are the only places in the bay area I've ever been mugged or physically threatened by people.

I speak from experience. When I moved here in 2001 I paid $700 for a place in Berkeley, which was about as cheap as it got. I worked on 17th and Harrison in the outer mission. I had to walk almost 30min to get to Ashby BART each way. If something happened late into the evening I'd have to crash on a friend's couch or take a $40 cab ride back to Berkeley cuz the BART stops running at midnight. It mostly sucked.

I don't want to hate on the east bay, it has it's charms. But unless your job and social life is all on that side of the bay, it's better to live in the city. You can definitely find a $700 room somewhere in SF. That's what I paid for a room in the mission until 2006 (then moved into my own place).

Also don't drive here, having a car is a huge expense in SF. My car was paid for and it still cost me around $400/m for parking, gas and parking tickets. You almost always get a virgin america flight from SEA to SFO for $49 if you travel on any day besides friday or sunday.

If I were doing this I'd bring nothing except a backpack with a few clothes (you can buy more stuff here if you need it) and a laptop. Then I'd just float around different cheap places on AirBNB until I figured out what I was doing.

I'm planning to sleep in the car if something happens. And I can't work on a laptop, I'd have to bring my large 22'' display here, and keyboards, so I'd end up walking around with a very very huge backpack :)

Suggest working on how you're going to meet people now -- figure out which events you'll want to go to, which places to hang out, etc. That will help with contacts, which in turn should help with picking up consulting or a formal internship. You can then use this to help plan where you want to live and whether you need a car. Also, as pointed out in the thread, some venues are regrettably 21+.

In particular, a lot of events happen on the peninsula in the Palo Alto/Mountain View area. For example, SuperHappyDevHouse is something you probably want to attend, and it's recently been at places like Sun. While getting there by CalTrain is possible, you can't stay late without being badly stranded. So if you find yourself wanting to visit places in that area, you will want access to a car. Bringing your own is an option, there's also car sharing services like ZipCar or CityCarShare.

You might also find it fun to drop by Noisebridge, a hacker space near 16th and Mission, to see what's happening. Circuit hacking every monday! http://www.noisebridge.net (disclosure: I'm the secretary and a member)

Overall, you are not crazy, but do some prep work by reaching out to potential contacts, setting up meetings, and figuring out the right events now. While the Bay Area _is_ the kind of place where you can walk into a cafe, meet someone random, and then walk out with an incredible conversation that leads to your next opportunity, you will get a lot more out of your summer if you work it ahead of time. Posting here is a good start, but you probably want to do some investigation more closely targeted to your web project idea.

I upvoted you because this is a straight up reality check.