Union Square Backpackers Hostel

Stay away! I booked here despite the many warnings because I couldn’t get a bed at any other hostel. First, they lost my reservation and stuck me in a room with eight beds even though I had paid to be in a room with only four. I was moved to another room a day or two later, only to come home at midnight to find someone sleeping in my bed! I had to wake the manager and move to another room after much brouhaha and consternation. It turns out that someone had overstayed his booking, a fact they should have known if they knew how to manage a hostel. The manager had the nerve to tell me I had created a disturbance in the hostel because I banged too loudly on his door. I was fucking pissed! The bathrooms are a mess and the shower doesn’t work in one of them. The mattresses are ancient and the springs stick you while you are sleeping. This place is in a good location, but there are tons of hostels in the same area that are probably run a lot better than this one. Unless this is your last chance, find another hostel and avoid this dump.

My boyfriend and I traveled to San Francisco one day on a whim with no plan and only the clothes on our backs. We began to look for hostels when it got dark and saw a dimly lit alley with a dingy hostel sign. When we walked in and asked about their rates, the Indian owner began to respond but was stopped abruptly as the African man said, «Do not speak». … Wat
We stupidly decided to pay for a room, went into the room, and soon feared for our lives. While we were thinking of moving the TV in front of the door to ward off murderers… we saw a pair of feet outside under our door. That pair of feet stopped in front of our door for a good 30 seconds before walking away.
After that we decided to that the streets of San Francisco at 11pm were going to be much safer than this hostel and we went out. While we were walking around we passed by USA hostels and realized the mistake that we had made. We decided to try to get a refund and to instead book a room at USA.
When we got back, the African guy refused us our refund, and pretended to look around for a non-​existent refund policy.
Never again.

stayed here a few nights in early march. access is decent. other than that, look elsewhere.
the black african dude is a proper dick (the guy who eats really awesome smelling omelets but is too much of a cunt to make any eye contact or be half-​polite to anyone who is melanin deprived) wont lift a finger to answer a simple question. its like hes being bothered working in the service industry… go figure. lets move on.
I made some great friends here but the fact that we bend our elbows and like to eat and drink and watch sports and may get loud didnt jibe with these folk.
the «boss» was too passive/​agressive to tell me to my face a few days back that i couldnt book a room bcause «you and your friends cant stay here»…gayer than aids.
they had a bunch of beds open. if they are so paranoid about a paying human, fuck them. dont waste your time or loot. Amsterdam hostel is ace. dealing with the folks on us backpackers hostel is like dealing with the kid that cries when he gets taken down in 5 a side. proper wankers.

This is by far the worst hostel I have ever stayed at!
I made a huge mistake when booking this hostel, I didn’t go online to check reviews and just looked at the price.
First of all we arrived and saw the place in a little alley and was thinking «Can it be here?»
The hostel is disgusting it seems like they never clean at all. Its all old and nothing really works. We booked 3 beds in a 4 bed room and got the most shaky beds ever, it didn’t matter how still you laid in the bed they would still shake and make noises.
The mattresses where so old and dirty as well.
The plan was to stay there from thursday to sunday and ONLY sleep there because we could stand being there.
Saturday we woke up early, packed our backs and went to Yosemite we took our stuff with us because we needed some of it and there was no reason to have our computers and stuff at the hostel.
When we came back 12.30am and open the door to our room we found that 4 other people where sleeping there. The lobby was closed and it was impossible to get in contact with anyone who worked at the hostel. We tried to call, went online to look for information and after 1 unsuccesful our we started knocking on doors to find someone who could help us. We woke up this one guy who worked there and he told us that they had made a mistake and sold our room to some other guys and they were fully booked. He made it sound like our mistake because they checked the room and our stuff wasn’t there so they thought we left? (even though we didn’t check out and give them our keys back) We talked with him for an hour demanding our money back and he told us he couldn’t give us anything we had to talk to his boss. He was very rude to us and said that he was not the guy who have made the mistake and we should be glad that he would even help us when we woke him up 1.30am in the morning. Worst service I have ever experienced.
We left the place 2.15am and drove for about 45 minuts to Palo Alto and checked into a motel.

Reasonably clean and comfortable, despite the dingy old building. Cheap. Staff were friendly and helpful, fellow-​travelers were nice, reasonably quiet, no obvious drug or crime related problems. The location is very convenient, although the alley the hostel is in does look really sketchy. Don’t know what’s up with all the other reviews, maybe they’ve cleaned up the place since last year?

All I know about this place is that I tried to rent bikes from them — kind of a side business they have I guess — but was rented bike after bike (three total) which all had major issues. Apparently what he does is rent out all the bikes he can and when he runs out he starts renting the ones in disrepair. He has no idea how to fix/​maintain any of the bikes, and is perfectly willing to rent you anything that will roll down the block and away from him.
To his credit I did get my money back, but only after the 2^nd bike that day he (the big bald guy) rented me turned out to have a warped-​beyond-​repair rear wheel (which I found out after meeting him to get it, several miles away) — the refund came in the form of him going ABSOLUTELY APESH*T throwing my money on the ground, spitting the food out of his mouth, sticking his middle fingers in my face, and threatening to beat me up if I didn’t leave the area. I think he’s used to getting called out for being a fraud. The lady at the brothel next door to the hostel tells me he freaks out on somebody every single day.
Earlier while renting the first of the bike-​wrecks a fight between the owner of the hostel and a guest broke out, something about the hostel owing the guest a lot of money and refusing to give it back.
I would highly recommend avoiding this hostel and it’s bike rental ‘business’ (hustle) at all costs.

I’ve stayed in some skeezy hostels in Hong Kong, which is notorious for having shit hostels, but this place takes the cake.
I was looking for some place to crash after Dropkick Murphys at the Warfield, and despite the dubious reviews, this place was the cheapest (by 5 bucks… not worth it!!!) and closest to the theater.
The place was dirty, pretty much as dirty as a squat. As in whole rooms/​restrooms have literally collapsed in on themselves. My pillow/​sheets smelled like mansweat, and random mattresses were covered in plastic garbage bags (???).
And rather than cool backpackers, this hostel seemed to be mostly populated by local meth-​teethed street people who had panhandled enough change to spend the night.
Coming back at 4 am and soaked from the freezing rain, I wandered back to my creepy top-​bunk in my creepy dorm room (four bunks crammed into a walk-​in closet sized space) only to discover that there was no ladder to get to my bunk and I had to very awkwardly hoist myself up. You could feel each and every spring of my mattress, and even the slightest movement made the bedframe shudder and groan. I was also not provided a blanket. Already cold from the rain, I had to make do with only a bedsheet, shivering the whole night through.
Oh yeah, and it’s located at the edge of the Tenderloin behind a brothel.

There is one word to describe this place: SHITHOLE.
Six of my friends came down from Oregon for spring break and I ended up crashing with them one night because I was too inebriated to get home. And after hearing what they endured, I thank god that it was just one night.
The dingy alley at the end of which the hostel is located is marked by a seedy «massage parlor» (I think we all know what that means). Near the entrance were a couple of bicycles up for rent at $ 10 per day. This is funny because the two men working at the desk loudly, and constantly argued in thick accents about vacuuming duties and stealing bicycles! The owner convienently claimed that he had «lost the keys» to the chains that were attached to the bikes.
The first night my friends were there, a woman was caught in the bathroom smoking crack and one friend woke up to two strangers having sex in the bunk above him.
The second night, while I was there, an Italian guest with a vampire accent relentlessly and shamelessly pursued my two female twin friends for a date. I also met their roommate, an older woman named Wendy who was very nice and seemingly «normal», until she confessed that she thought the Queen of England is an alien, Jesus Christ was half alien, George W is a clone, and the government is poisoning our food.
The thing that surprises me the most? The fact that I willingly slept on the floor of that dingy hostel and used their pillows! I guess I was too drunk to notice, but I think that was the source of the pink eye I contracted shortly thereafter. Fuck.