Union Square Backpackers Hostel

Great fun
Well stayed here for two nights and had the best night ever in San Fran. The place is so disgusting and dirty but the people staying there are great. We all went drinking together and went out in san fran. Made so many friends but it was an experience. The staff are a bit weird and creepy but other then that it's a story to come home with -- like we found drugs in our room!

The worst place i've ever stayed in
At all costs this place is to be avoided. I have no idea when the pictures of the place on the right were taken, but they bear no similarity to the dive you'll arrive in if you book in here. They completely overfill the place, the dirt of the bedrooms/kitchen/bathrooms is a disgrace. While we were staying there the toilets were overflowing in most of the bathrooms leaving only one you could use. The guys who run the place are weird, they disturb people with their weird comments and their personal hygiene is a joke, one guy wore the same shirt for the four days we were there and you could actually smell him from half the building away. Seems to be next door to some sort of brothel or something too, a "massage parlour" that only opens at midnight. Avoid at all costs!

Stay away -- worst ever!
This place is just something to keep away from it! First they charged us more than we're supposed to. Check your account, before you sign. Cleanliness -- The hostel is located in the most dirty and smelly areas Downtown. Redlight-business right next to it! They are rats in the hallway, flea bites all over our bodies after sleeping on this sh*tty mattresses! Even the bathroom had mud and mushrooms on the wall! The mushrooms were as big as a child's hand! Most people there don't take showers because it's so dirty. Also the kitchen is so dirty that bugs are everywhere -- what a disgusting place! The rooms are crowded and the windows don't close. Everything is rotten. Even it's one of the cheaper places to stay in SF -- it's not worth the money! We'll send an mail to the hostel inspector to close this place down. Unfortunately we forgot to take pictures of that place to keep you -- traveler friends -- away from this place. All the staff are not clean -- they smell and wear dirty clothes every day. One of them is smoking Marijuana the whole day! Not an hour he doesn't want you to rent a bicycle from him.

Shithole, employes were very stupid
i stayed for one week and during this week a man that worked there tried to sell me drugs and kept sexually harassing my friend who was also staying there. she checked out early because of this. dont stay st this place, its a sh*thole and they also had rats.

Do not stay here!
Do not stay here! worst hostel Ive ever stayed in. it's run by freaks! dirty, disgusting, and dangerous! got yelled at by one of the idiot staff for using the internet! Just plain dodgy. stay anywhere else before here.

Do not go to this hostel
I have been to several hostels in the San Francisco Area. This Hostel is a complete nightmare. The night attendant was cracked out of his mind, the whole hostel is a joke. No sheets, no towels? Do yourself a favor and stay anywhere else but here. If you want to feel safe and secure do not go to this hostel. F*** this place. They wouldn't even refund my money.

Doesnt deserve even a star
Please do not visit this place or book it, it is really dodgy. unfortunately we only found that out when we arrived and it took half an hour to get keys to our room because the desk guy was from another planet. We prebooked to stay there for a week and thank god we only had to spend one night there. we lost our money but it was worth getting out of there. I haven't never been so scared to go asleep. It's not even cheap. Pictures are not what the place looks like.

Hostile!
I stayed at this hostel with my girlfriend for one night -- one night too many! It is located at the end of a dingy, creepy alley in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. Prospective visitors should be warned that the photographs above are not, in my view, representative. If you want a shocking story to tell your friends about your stay in San Fran, the Union Square Backpackers Hostel will definitely deliver. Originally we had reserved a private room for a full week, but upon being "greeted" by a positively hostile person at the front desk and finding no pillows or towels in the room, we decided we'd find other accommodations. I am totally accustomed to staying in hostels and have seen some sketchy places in my travels, but this place takes sketchy to a whole new level. There were feces on the toilet seat (seriously!), and, in the middle of the night, the exposed pipe in our room exploded and water was spraying everywhere. When we asked the guy who reluctantly checked us in if he could keep an eye out for our delayed luggage which would be delivered that evening while we went out to get something to eat, he replied "maybe, if I'm around." He also ranted at length about another guest whom he called "schizophrenic" and "warned" us to stay away from the second floor. He aggressively interrogated us and made us feel super-uncomfortable. We were also creeped out by the fact that there were no women in sight -- all the other guests we saw were men. The hostel is at the end of a dark, dirty alley in the Tenderloin district -- which is reputed to be unsafe (lots of drug use around -- but we didn't have any problems walking around at night) but the sketchiest thing about the neighbourhood (hands down!) is definitely the Union Square Backpackers Hostel. It's adjacent to Union Square (the two neighbourhoods bleed into one another), but "Union Square Backpackers Hostel" is, strictly speaking, a misleading misnomer. In the morning, when we informed another staff person that we were checking out and asked for a refund, he told us he was not "authorized" to give us one and that we'd have to come back when the owner was in. Luckily, the owner telephoned me on my cell later that afternoon. What was bizarre was that he was incredulous about our early check-out, and he wanted to know "what exactly" made us want to cancel our reservations for the remaining nights. He called back two or three other times and was very apologetic, and he refunded my credit card promptly. His reaction was entirely incongruous with the entire experience -- but it was a relief to find that no credit card fraud had been committed (I actually called my credit card company to flag the transaction). To prospective visitors, do not stay here. It's not actually significantly cheaper than other hostels in San Fran and you will probably not be able to tolerate more than a night's stay anyway. Except if you're writing a bad novel and need some outrageous material. To the owner -- the place needs a serious overhaul in every imaginable area from amenities to service, basic cleanliness to staff with basic social skills. You couldn't pay me to stay here and, probably for the rest of my life, I will tell the story of the Union Square Backpackers "Hostile" to the great mirth -- and disbelief -- of friends the world over.

Me and my friend stayed here whilst traveling round America last summer. We had no choice but to stay there because we wanted to prolong our stay in San Fran (because we loved it so much), but every hostel apart from this one in the city was booked up. Basically, the owner had just had his laptop stolen or something weird and he was flapping around with that so didn't pay that much attention to us. My friend had gone in the day before and he confirmed that he had lots of room for us to stay there. The next day, we arrived and he didn't actually seem to know where he was going to put us. He looked on his computer for a minute or so then decided on a room. On entering this room, it was very clear to us that three of the four beds were already occupied. So he told one of the boys in the room to move ("pack your stuff you move!" were his exact words), then decided to move one of the other people, who wasn't actually in the room. The guy reassured us that he had asked her earlier if she would move and she had said yes. This clearly wasn't the case as all her stuff was still unpacked. So we went out anyway. On our return, trying to get into our door, he shouted at us and told us we weren't in there. We were somewhat confused by this. But he shoved us upstairs anyway, and we slept in the most rickety old beds I have ever seen. Yes, I wasn't expecting four poster beds but ones that weren't falling apart would have been a start. The showers were sick as well, I was kind of scared to go in. We also met some other people who had stayed there. They told us that one of their friends had asked if she could stay for one night and the owner had said yes, she could sleep on the sofa upstairs. Apparently she didn't really want to sleep on the sofa, but at least it wasn't the streets. When she got back later someone else was on the sofa so the guy told her he had a spare mattress and she could sleep on that behind the reception desk. Just weird. I didn't even want to put one star but unfortunately I had to.

That's a sh*tty place to stay. The personnel are bad and not helpful. I call many time about a thing that been stole in my room by the personnel (they were the only one that had the key), they found it but they never send it. I had a broken window in the room and everything is dirty!

Well I'd love to go with all two people that enjoyed this hostel but quite frankly I don't think I could say one positive thing about this place. Firstly, situated down some piss alley, where even the local taxi's have not heard off – I felt unsafe at night. After twelve months of travelling this is the only dorms I could consider as simply -- revolting. Small, cramped, and stuffy (no air-con or fan). One bunk bed had a double mattress on it so you had to try not to move in fear of rolling off. I had the pleasure of bed linen with rips throughout. Owner accused me of making it up, until he saw the sheet -- no apologies given. Last minute private room became available and moved into there at the eleventh hour. Nice that people could see in due to the lack of blinds. My fave room was the dorm by the entrance -- window opened out over three huge stinking dustbins. The dude on reception was what made my stay complete. This guy lacks the ability to communicate, and feels the only way to 'help' out a dissatisfied customer is by telling them 'no-one asked you to stay here, so leave.' He then broke out into a screaming match with guest, shouting at me that he didn't even want to work there anyway, and was doing a friend a favour. No one works the later shift on reception, leaving this one guy to be bothered by anyone with a problem. He therefore gets it all, and clearly also lacks the ability to multitask and work under pressure. Only nice person who saw problems and tried to help was the cleaner. What does that say? Seriously folks, this place is not worth saving a few bucks over. Never been so disappointed. Hostelz.com – you are giving yourself a bad reputation by advertising a hostel such as this. Makes me want to think twice before booking with you again.

This hostel was awful, awful, awful! My friend and I were supposed to stay three nights but couldn't bring ourselves to stay even one. The place was dirty, the mattresses were disgusting (smelt and looked as though they had been urinated on), there was rubbish all over the room, our room door wouldn't lock, there were no sheets available when we arrived, and the guy on reception was so rude that there was no way we could have stayed there (especially when we found out we were supposed to share a room with him!). In retrospect I'm sure that they are running some sort of scam as they charged us two nights rent (due to their forty-eight-hour cancellation policy) dispite the fact that they had not provided us a room we could stay in. Please do not give this place business there are definitely far nicer hostels to stay in still in the Union Square area and these aren't in such a dodgy part of town.

My brother and I stayed there. Or I should say attempted to stay there. We asked to be in a mixed dorm because we wanted to stay together. The guy on duty, who seemed like he had one bong hit too many kept trying to put the two of us in an all girls dorm. He kept saying that they wouldnt mind if a guy was staying in there. Then once he was convinced to actually put us in a mixed dorm, it took him forever to process us, I mean like half an hour. He handed us sheets, which were dirty and then took us on a tour of the place which consisted on him yelling at the dude who was on duty before him. The place was dirty and stuffy and there were a lot of high people there. We decided not to stay there. But they did not even have five bucks to give us the key deposit back. We stayed at another hostel that night which was fine.

My daughter recently stayed here, and although she didn't comment much on the facility itself, she has told me about some very bizarre behavior by one of the staff members. She had seen one of them carrying small surveillance-type cameras. She also had her things moved and she was moved to another room - in which she was the only female. Furthermore, this particular staff member took it upon himself to email me (I booked the trip, so getting my email address was a no-brainer), and accuse me TWICE of not caring about my daughter. When I tried to reach the owner by phone to discuss the matter, I was told he would be back in 15 minutes. I tried to call again and the phone rang and rang - not even an answering maching picked up, so I assume they were screening my call. She also told me about how the staff member brags about guns and the ability to hack into computers. She was denied use of the phone (she had a calling card, so this shouldn't be an issue), and while they do have Internet access, she suspects her chat logs were spied upon. Intitially, her arrival (by train) was delayed 5 hours. When I called, they acted like it was such an effort to be of help to me, no concern whatsoever for a worried mom. I asked that she be asked to call me when she arrived. She never got the message. Although she or I didn't expect the Ritz, I certainly think we both expected professionalism and courtesy to a paying customer. This was a nightmare. Reply from the Staff Person: pretty much every guest here likes me, my friendliness and my helpfulness even when i am not helping the owner at the desk. i helped that girl (who could be seen roaming around san francisco homeless a few months ago) whose mom wrote a comment with some money, food and even clothes; but she apparantly wanted more. i had contacted her mom only when the girl talked about attempting suicide. i can't believe there are people like them on this planet. these people should be sued for attempted extortion.

We traveled South America and will always remember this hostel as being the most reasonable and having the best location. As extras we got free Internet and free luxury breakfast and free DVDs. What more can a backpacker ask for? It is a backpacker's paradise. Keep up the great service as we are spreading the word everywhere we go. Thank you! Plus the quirky humor of one of the receptionists was entertaining!