For the past few weeks, I've been bidding on the city of San Francisco - ALL the zones (Civic Center, Financial, Fisherman's, Japantown, Marina, SOMA, Union Square), all the way down to one *, up to $110. No luck. There is an Oracle convention that starts on the last day so the city is pretty booked up. It seems like the only choices are either cheap hostels or hotels $200-$400. I ended up booking a hostel with shared bath at $70/night for backup and was resigned to stay there. :) Then I found out that Oakland downtown is about 15 minutes away from San Francisco's Union Square via the BART (