Cindy H.
Yelp
This place was the nicest hostel we had stayed at during our trip to Europe. After looking at all of the reviews on HostelWorld for the available hostels at the time for Paris, we decided on The Loft since it was newer and had lockers.
The hostel is about a 5-10 minute walk from the Belleville metro stop on Line 11. It is a little far away from everything else in Paris (you have to switch at least once on the metro). But the hostel itself isn't too far from the metro, which is nice. If you take the Rue de Belleville exit, hang a left and go up the hill til you hit rue de Julien Lacroix. Turn right and walk about 1.5 blocks. You'll notice it's located in an Asian community.
The lobby area has several computers that are free to use, brochures for things to do around Paris, a small indoor common area with free coffee/tea, small kitchen and fridges, and a small outdoor patio with tables and chairs. This hostel does have some "curfew hours" (i.e. the patio closes at a certain time so that anyone trying to sleep can). You can also buy drinks (beers, wine, sodas, water, etc.) from the front desk. I believe there was also a free breakfast, but I was never awake early enough to take advantage of this.
The rooms themselves are nice. There is no elevator here btw. We stayed in a 6-bed mixed dorm. There are small lockers that fit our day backpacks. You have to insert 50 cents to lock it (it's a 4 digit combination lock), but you get back your 50 cents when you unlock it. There were plenty of outlets in the room. I think I saw 2 by the beds, 2 by the door and 1 in the bathroom. And speaking of bathrooms, there is an attached one with a sink, toilet, and shower. It's a newer hostel so everything still looks new!
There's also a laundry room for all of you backpackers who need to wash some stuff. And my favorite thing the hostel offers is.... free luggage storage. You can store your bags in their locked luggage room for free before you check in (if you get there before check-in time) and after you check out. Not very many hostels offer this, so we definitely took advantage of this on our last day before heading to our next stop of our trip.
The staff working here are all friendly and helpful. If you need help finding something on the map, which metro lines to take, or even just wanted to know where affordable shopping was (Paris gets expensive!), they're able to answer all of your questions!
Last but not least, free WiFi. Sure, most hostels offer this. But most hostels' free WiFi's are spotty at best. The WiFi offered here was fast and worked in the rooms as well as the common areas.
So overall I would have given this hostel 5 stars, but deducted 1 star for the location. It takes awhile on the metro to get to different places and if you're trying to go out at night, there aren't that many cafes/bars open around here.