budget hotels in LA and San F

Clarify "low priced"?

And for LA, you might want to be a bit more specific. LA is a big place without convenient mass transit, so you don't want to end up miles from where you're planning to hang out.

In SF, the Pickwick is quite a bit lower than that and decent, in a great location... at right around that range, the two Kimptons (Palomar... and?) downtown are a safe bet.

I was just in SF and stayed at the Metro Hotel. Cheap, albeit very small rooms, and conveniently located to almost anything cool. It was like $77/night. You can also check out Yelp.com, particularly for SF; it's loaded with solid reviews.

I have used The Maxwell in SF Union Square and enjoyed my stay there ( http://www.maxwellhotel.com/ ). Believe rates were around $100 - $150/night depending on the particulars (Orbitz usually has better rates).

It's been a few years, but in SF I've stayed at the Beresford, just off Union Square and it was perfectly adequate for my needs.

In SF, I stayed at the Pickwick once. It's small and noisy. Stayed at Club Quarters recently and it was nice. Not sure what the price is b/c the company paid for it, but it was the quietest hotel I've stayed at and in a good location. It seemed like a budget hotel, due to the simple, small rooms, but check it out. In LA, it's so spread out, I would say it depends on what part of town you need to be in, but downtown has some nice accomodations. Little Tokyo has some nice walkable areas and is not too expensive (check out The New Otani, which has a summer beer garden most nights). Also, everyone should stay at the Westin Bonaventure at least once, to see the recognizable elevators, where famous scenes from In the Line of Fire and other movies (that one with Arnold, the Governator, riding a horse) were filmed. Also, if you stay downtown, you'll be centrally located, and can take the metro to Hollywood, Pasadena, and Long Beach, and there's even a convenient flyway bus to/from Union Station and LAX.

Unless you really need to be downtown, I don't think you want to stay at the New Otani. The hotel itself is perfectly nice, and during the day Little Tokyo can be nice (it's also close to Chinatown, Olvera Street, Disney Hall, and MOCA.) But many people are not comfortable walking around that part of town at night (as you'd have to do to reach the metro rail), and downtown can be pretty dead at night (although it certainly has its spots if you know where you're going.) Yes, you can take the metro to Hollywood, Pasadena, and Long Beach, but only to central locations in those areas. If you want to go to the beach, to Disneyland, to Beverly Hills, or to many other places, it's useless. If you're driving, the area of downtown where the New Otani is can be kind of a pain for non-Angelenos, as there are lots of one-way streets, etc.

To each his own, but I happen to think the Bonaventure is meh. For buildings downtown, I much prefer the Bradbury Building (beautiful railings and cage elevator, the setting for many noir films), although the outside of the building has been desecrated with horrible street-level Sprint and Subway signage. I'm also a big fan of the Hotel Figueroa -- if you go out by the pool on a sunny day you feel like you've walked into a Raymond Chandler book. Plus, there's quite a bit of cool old WPA architecture in downtown.

I've stayed in Grosvenor Suites in Nob Hill, SF. The location is superb, the price is great, and the room is quite large.

Another thumbs down to the New Otani.

The surrounding blocks are where I take my visiting friends on a tour to see the hood, without actually being in the hood.