Imagine rents going up three, four, even seven times in a single year! This was the case for many Mission and San Francisco residents in 1978, the year before the Board of Supervisors approved rent control. Documentary film maker Charles Bolton and the production company Optic Nerve, now Ideas In Motion, caught the angst in “Pushed Out For Profit.” The film aired on KQED on Sept. 6, 1978.

According to a new Redfin study, 3 of the 5 most expensive cities for new parents are in the Bay Area. Expenses analyzed include housing, utilities (energy costs), childcare, healthcare, and retail items needed for babies. And by Redfin’s calculations, San Jose is the most expensive in the country, followed by Santa Cruz, CA. San Francisco takes 4th place.

“San Francisco is the best city for childfree living,” says Karen Foster, author of No Way Baby! Exploring, Understanding and Defending the Decision NOT to Have Children. “As the frontrunner in alternative lifestyles, you have to do a lot more than not have kids to be considered odd in San Francisco. I lived there from age nineteen to thirty-two and was never once asked when I was getting married and/or having babies. It’s a place where the childfree may roam free.”

The late 1960s was a decidedly more optimistic time in the history of San Francisco's BART system.

There's something almost hypnotic about this 1968 promotional video for the transit agency, titled "Along the Way." In it, viewers are hyped to the then-under construction system with a hippie-lite jingle about how BART will make life better for Bay Area residents, with lyrics like:

We're building a dream for tomorrow
Where trains that crossed the hills 
And land go through the town by night and day
And sunshine touches every hand in parks where children play
Over the hills and all along the way
We're building a dream for tomorrow

The film goes on to give us a look at the widespread construction occurring at the time for BART's opening, renderings of proposed stations, and a list of the national and local awards it had already received, still four years away from carrying its first passengers.

The narrator wraps up the video by reminding viewers that BART will make San Francisco more like the kind of city the era's most famous urban historian would appreciate, something that will "fulfill Lewis Mumford's hope of cities devoted to the care and culture of man."

San Francisco International Airport (SFO)

A $383 million renovation in 2008 turned this airport (most notably, Terminal 2) into an all-in-one luxury destination for shoppers, foodies and art aficionados.Travelers, tourists and locals flock to the SFO Museum. Opened 1980, it was the first museum of its kind located in an international airport and it has only grown since then, having spread throughout all four terminals.

From modern photography to Pan-Asian ceramics, a rotating array of exhibitions is designed to intrigue a cross-section of visitors. For those with a tot in tow, there's also a children's museum, complete with art classes and even an aquarium (Terminal 1).

Median rents for one-bedroom apartments by neighborhood in San Francisco (Zumper).

The apartment rental startup Zumper has updated its maps of the median rents for one and two bedroom apartments in San Francisco by neighborhood. It found that the median price for a one-bedroom in the city is now $2,764. The median price for a two-bedroom is $4,000.
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The median is the numerical value separating the higher half of a data set from the lower half.

In San Francisco, these rates vary substantially depending on which part of town you're looking in. Much like its notorious micro-climates, the city features micro-pockets of relatively affordable rental units.

For example, here are the three most expensive neighborhoods to rent a one-bedroom:

South Beach - $3500
Russian Hill - $3410
Financial District - $3350

And here are the three least expensive neighborhoods to rent a one-bedroom:

Outer Richmond - $1850
Outer Sunset - $1975
Inner Richmond - $2015

As for the three most expensive neighborhoods to rent a two-bedroom:

Financial District - $5800
Marina - $5450
Cow Hollow - $5400

And the three least expensive neighborhoods to rent a two-bedroom:

Outer Mission/Excelsior - $2460
Outer Sunset - $2525
Lakeshore - $2640

Zumper Co-Founder & CEO Anthemos Georgiades explained the methodology the company uses to construct these maps:

• "We use medians for the average prices to discount outlier listings and so as to not over/understate the real prices."
• "These May 2013 asking rents are perhaps different to what some readers may currently be paying if they rented a few years ago or if they are still paying rent- controlled prices. However, these are the current prevailing prices for available apartments on the market today."
• "Most units on the market tend to be newer (read: non-rent controlled) developments built post-1979, since they experience more turnover. These units are often renovated with many more amenities than their rent-controlled counterparts, making them more expensive."

As for the "least expensive" neighborhoods on the list, this too is a relative matter, especially for low-income families. Earlier this year, the National Low Income Housing Coalition reported that San Francisco is thesecond least affordable rental market among all U.S.cities, after Honolulu.

The rental situation is driving some of those seeking apartments to take extreme measures to enhance their chances.