We are planning to go to SF for thanksgiving. We got a great deal on a hotel room but parking is so expensive at the hotel! If you are local, can you suggest some places to park? We are staying near china town but we are not planning to drive at all so if anyone knows cheap overnight parking outskirts of town that will be great. We will take a bus into town.

Thanks for your help!

 

I don't know the daily rates for any garages, but if you call around you should be able to find something that will work for you:

http://sanfrancisco.citysearch.com/y...l?query=garage

Hope you enjoy yourself in our fair city

(and for some 4 wheel fun you should take the car out for a spin or two in SF and Marin - see more sights and enjoy some twisties )

 

I don't know much about garage overnight parking, but I'll mention the following. Free street parking in residential neighborhoods should be relatively easy on Thanksgiving weekend. A LOT of people leave town and it is amazing to see streets open up with parking spaces on some of these extended holidays. You should be able to find a parking spot in a good neighborhood and leave the car there for the entire 4 day weekend. I would suggest the upscale Marina district, which has the 30 Stockton bus running directly to Chinatown.

I should explain that central parts of the city usually have a 2 hour street parking limit unless you have a residential parking sticker (there are signs on the street). However, residential parking does not apply on Thanksgiving or the day after, or Sundays. That leaves only Saturday, but in most places residential parking is only Mon-Fri (check the street signs). In my neighborhood it's also supposed to include Saturday but I've never seen it enforced on Saturdays. If you feel queasy about street parking, I'll just say that a lot of residents park their BMWs and Mercedes on the street because they don't have garages, and you'll be doing no worse than them.

 

When we go to SF, we drive to the free BART parking in El Cerritos/Richmond station (covered parking with security), and BART into the city.

I think it costs about $5.00 to ride BART each way.

 

If you choose to leave your car on the street read the signs very very carefully - the DPT is vigilant in many parts of the city and generate tickets like crazy. They also keep an eye out for missing front licence plates, both myself and a friend have been hit with the $100 no front lic. plate tickets in different parts of the city while parked on the street (totally residential area for me, shopping area for him).

 

That's another option.

BART has started to charge some parking fees, so check this for weekday parking (weekends & holidays okay): http://www.bart.gov/guide/parking/overview.asp. For pfunk (the original poster), if coming from LA I would suggest the Colma station (near the San Francisco airport) for shorter drive and train ride. It has a covered and monitored parking structure.

To add to my earlier post about street parking in San Francisco itself, I confirmed that you would be able to park in the Marina district and leave the car for the 4 day Thanksgiving holiday without parking violation. In addition to residential parking, you also have to worry about which day of the week street cleaning occurs on, but the DPT website says there will be no street cleaning the Friday after Thanksgiving.

 

If you're gonna stay around the china town area, every weekend (Sat & Sun), you can park at the Golden Gate Garage (around 3-4 blocks to china town). They have shuttle bring you up to the china town. The charge is only $2 parking from ~9am to ~9(or 10)pm, and you need to bring the ticket to china town and get a validation stamp (most stores/resturants has validation). Then, possibly you can bring the car out before 9/10pm and find a road side parking, which should be easy (I guess). Only thing is make sure you pull your car before the validation period is over (9/10pm), otherwise, you will pay full amount (we experienced that, and we paid like $25). Hope this helps.

 

Thanks guys! you guys ROCK! We are still debating is whether we should take the MINI or the Scion xB..... Mini will be more fun obviously but the gas milege and the ride on my konis..... we can get 35mpg on our xB.

 

Just my opinion, I think you should take the MINI, the xB (103hp) may have a hard time climbing the SF hills and the highway 5 from LA toward Bakersfield region.

My 2c.

 

Yeah, take the Mini - SF is a real Mini town :smile:

Koni shocks and all LA to SF is not a real long ride, and with the MCS you might want to take the scenic route and drive about a bit more

 

I would think that if you are staying at a hotel in the city they would comp you parking, sounds like you didn't get such a deal if they are charging you for parking....

 

Its very common to charge for parking - particularly in cities. We've run accross high charges for parking everywhere from Portland OR to Chicago IL, etc in a majority of the hotels. When we drove the 03 MCS accross country it was certainly something we had to plan around and factor in unless we were staying in the suburbs/small towns. Often hotels will run internet specials via their web sites that include parking but we passed if it was valet and in the end find better self parks close by (hotel staff will often even help find the garages).

Oh and hi pitbuell, I noticed it was your first post :smile:

 

So - how was the visit? Take the Mini, find parking?