A couple days ago I bought a San Francisco guidebook so we could get an idea about some of the neighborhoods, and look at some maps, and think about where to eat and what to do once we get there. It's Frommer's. It's okay; every guidebook has to be taken with a grain of salt. It's a good guide of where the touristy stuff is and how to stay away from those areas.
I like maps that have public transit routes on them, and some of the maps in this book does. We narrowed down some of the neighborhoods we had in mind, based on their access to BART or MUNI. We're hoping to stay a 1-car household, so public transit is a very important factor for us. When we moved to D.C. I bought D.C. for Dummies, and it was mostly useless, except for the maps showing the Metro stops. I consult those maps often, because it's almost impossible to find your way around without a streetmap that also has Metro stops marked. (Why would anyone even print maps without the Metro stops on them?)
We also recently called in a favor from someone we know with real estate contacts in San Francisco. We really need help looking for an apartment. Think about how much time and money it costs to look for an apartment in the city you're currently living in. Then multiply that by at least 10 to get an idea of what's it's like to look for an apartment in a city 3,000 miles away from where you currently live. We just don't have the time and money to make a lot of trips out there to look for places before the move. I'm not scared yet. It's a big city with zillions of apartments. I'm sure we'll find something when the time is right.
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