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.
What to See & Do
SFMOMA at 151 Third Street reopened in 2016 after a Snøhetta-designed expansion that more than doubled the gallery space and incorporated the Doris and Donald Fisher Collection.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum at 736 Mission Street occupies a building that combines the old Jessie Street power substation with a Daniel Libeskind addition.
Yerba Buena Gardens, between Third and Fourth Streets, has lawn, public art (including the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Fountain), and outdoor programming throughout the year.
Oracle Park at 24 Willie Mays Plaza is the home stadium of the San Francisco Giants. Game days fill the streets with foot traffic toward the bay.
Salesforce park is an elevated park with really cool gardens.
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 & Drink
The growth of the Bay Area tech industry over the past two decades is reflected in the food scene around SoMa office buildings; many newer lunch counters and coffee shops opened to serve the office population.
DNA Lounge on 11th Street has been a nightclub since 1985. It has been owned since 1999 by Jamie Zawinski, one of the original Netscape engineers. The EndUp at 401 6th Street has operated as a late-night and after-hours dance venue since 1973, including a long-running Sunday morning service. Audio on Folsom Street hosts electronic and dance music shows.
The Character
Housing in SoMa mixes high-rise condos, older residential hotels, and converted lofts. Construction is more or less continuous in the area as different blocks redevelop.
Getting There
The N Judah and T Third streetcars run through the neighborhood. BART stops at Montgomery and Powell Stations along Market Street. Caltrain terminates at 4th and King Streets. Parking lots are available but charge accordingly.
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 at 1797 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 at 221 Fourth Street 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. 355 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 at 101 Townsend Street, 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
Carousel hand-carved in 1906 by Charles I.D. Looff, who built Coney Island's first carousel in 1876. About 65 wooden animals inside a glass pavilion at 221 4th Street in Yerba Buena Gardens; sat at Playland-at-the-Beach for nearly 60 years before the city bought it in 1998. $4 a ride, daily 11am to 5pm.
Spark Social SF
Outdoor food truck park at 601 Mission Bay Blvd North, rotating from a pool of over 200 Bay Area trucks. Four fire pits, a double-decker school bus, and lawn games. Five-minute walk from Chase Center, so Warriors nights get packed.
