SoMa
About SoMa
SoMa stands for South of Market. The neighborhood spreads across former industrial flats south of Market Street. Boundaries are not consistent; SoMa is often used as an umbrella for an area that includes Yerba Buena, the Western SoMa cultural corridor, and South Beach near Oracle Park.
The blocks around Folsom and 9th Streets are the center of the city’s gay leather community and, since 2018, the SoMa Leather District, the first leather cultural district in the world. The Folsom Street Fair has been held there each September since 1984.
Where to Eat
All restaurants →
Where to Drink
All bars →
View Lounge
Go for sunset and book ahead. The view does the work.
Local Edition
Newspaper-themed cocktails and live jazz under the old Examiner building.
House of Shields
Old fixtures, no clocks, a long mahogany bar. A classic downtown saloon.
KAIYO
Pisco and Nikkei small plates twelve floors up, a walk from Oracle Park.
Monarch
Cocktail lounge upstairs, house and techno downstairs on a serious rig.
Cavaña
Agave-forward cocktails and Bay Bridge views. Book for sunset.
Things to Do
All activities →Grooves Vinyl Attractions
Used vinyl shop on Market run by Ray Andersen since 1993, sold at non-collector prices. Inventory leans 50s jazz, 60s rock and folk, 70s fusion, plus soundtracks, comedy, and children's records. Daily 12pm to 7pm.
Children’s Creativity Museum
Hands-on kids' museum in Yerba Buena Gardens, built around making things (animation, music, building) instead of looking at them. $20 per person ages 1 and up, free for members. Thursday through Sunday, 10am to 4pm.
American Bookbinders Museum
North America's lone bookbinding museum, with 16th-century hand-binding tools alongside 19th-century industrial machinery (much of it functioning). Self-guided audio tour runs about 63 minutes. On Clementina in SoMa; $15 adult, $12 senior/youth, kids under 10 free. Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 4pm.
Cloudflare Lava Lamps
About 100 lava lamps in the Cloudflare lobby, with a wall-mounted camera recording the wax motion as one source of entropy for the company's cryptographic random number generator. Free, weekday business hours, takes about five minutes.
LeRoy King Carousel
A carousel built by Charles I.D. Looff in 1906; he installed Coney Island's first carousel in 1876. This one sits in a glass pavilion in Yerba Buena Gardens with about 65 hand carved animals.
Spark Social SF
An outdoor food truck park in Mission Bay drawing from a rotating pool of over 200 Bay Area trucks. Fire pits, a double decker school bus bar, and lawn games. Five minutes from Chase Center, so Warriors nights book out.
