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SoMa (South of Market) is a neighborhood in San Francisco, California, United States. Its borders are Market Street to the north-northwest, the San Francisco Bay to the east, Townsend Street to the south-southeast, and U.S. Route 101 (Central Freeway) to the west-southwest.

It is the part of the city in which the street grid runs parallel and perpendicular to Market Street. The eastern edge along the Embarcadero and southeastern corner of this area (where Mission Creek meets the bay) is known as South Beach, a separate neighborhood, and the border below Townsend Street begins Mission Bay.

The northeastern corner (where Market Street meets the bay) is often considered part of the Financial District, while the upper western corner of SOMA between Van Ness Avenue and 5th Street, and between Market and Howard Street is considered part of the “skid row” Tenderloin District.

SoMa History

Once known as ‘South of the Slot,’ in reference to the cable car line down the center of Market Street, this ‘wrong side of the tracks’ San Francisco neighborhood is a still evolving, often contradictory collection of urban spaces and experiences.

Yerba Buena Gardens kids play areaThe neighborhood is, for instance, home to the many family oriented and kid friendly Yerba Buena Gardens spaces and amusements including play areas, an ice skating rink, bowling alley and historic carousel.

Conversely SoMa also hosts the Folsom Street Fair and somewhat smaller preview Dore Alley Up Your Alley Fair, both of which celebrate San Francisco’s Gay community and focus on leather subculture, bondage & rubber fetishes and BDSM activities not far from world class museums and other bastions of culture and respectability.

Rincon Hill was once home to wealthy residents in San Francisco before the cable cars made Nob Hill and Pacific Heights accessible. Later it was lowered to serve as the south anchorage of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge but SoMa history repeats as new high rise residential buildings brings those who can afford to live there back to the Rincon Hill Neighborhood.