SoMa

Understand

Once home to warehouses and dilapidated Victorian houses, SoMA saw an artistic and club culture revival in the 1980s. By the time of the Internet boom of the 1990s, the "live-work" buildings of this area had become prime real estate, and the artists and musicians who had made it cool could no longer afford the sky-high rentals.

After the burst of the dot.com bubble, SoMA became somewhat more affordable, but has also lost many of the businesses that made the area attractive during the boom. Some of the best clubs are still in SoMa, but a taxi is recommended for getting around after dark as some areas are still a bit dangerous.

In effect, SoMA is actually two neighborhoods. To the east, it's basically an extension of the financial district, redeveloped into high rises and offices. This ends with Moscone Center, where the district transitions into a mostly low-rise district, with Fifth Street being the main dividing line between the redeveloped area, and the rougher landscape of warehouses and older housing stock. It's in this western area that most of the interesting parts of SoMA are, but most of them are hidden behind closed doors.

In the 2010s, real estate developers attempted to escape the reputation of SoMA by trying to rebrand the eastern end of the area as "The East Cut." While they managed to convince Google to change the name on Google Maps, the rebrand never stuck.

Get in

Being at the San Francisco end of the Bay Bridge and the heart of San Francisco's public transit network, there are extensive transit options to this district.

By rail

Caltrain, a commuter rail line between San Jose and San Francisco, terminates at the Caltrain station at 4th & King Streets, just down the street from Oracle Park.

Bordered by Market Street on its northwest side, SoMa is within easy walking distance of all MUNI Metro lines and the several BART lines which run under Market Street. Running on Market Street is the F-Line Streetcar which stops frequently on its route from the Castro to the Ferry Building, then north on the Embarcadero to Fisherman's Wharf.

Additionally, the MUNI Metro T-Third and N-Judah lines emerge from the Market Street subway and travel through the SoMa district, stopping at a few places along the Embarcadero south of Market, including Oracle Park. The N line stops at the Caltrain station, while the T line continues south down 3rd Street into Southeast San Francisco.

By bus

MUNI offers extensive bus service through SoMa, with nearly every street having a bus line of some sort. Routes 10-Townsend, 12-Folsom/Pacific, 30-Stockton, 45-Union/Stockton and 47-Van Ness are the best bets for getting down from the neighborhoods to the north, like Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf. Routes 1-California, 5-Fulton, 6-Haight/Parnassus, 38-Geary and 7-Haight/Noriega are some of the best for getting in from eastern neighborhoods like The Avenues, while routes 9-San Bruno, 12-Folsom/Pacific, 14-Mission, and 27-Bryant come up from Southern San Francisco through the Mission district.

The Mission Bay Shuttle also serves the area.

Nearly all intercity bus service into San Francisco runs into the Transbay Terminal in SoMa, including Megabus, Flixbus, Cabin, Greyhound, MUNI, and various other Bay Area transit services (AC Transit, samTrans, Golden Gate Transit, and WestCAT). It's on Beale, between Mission and Howard, a short walk to Market Street and Embarcadero Station. It's big, spanning all the way to 2nd Street.

By car

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which is part of Interstate Highway 80, offers a direct connection from the cities of the East Bay area (such as Oakland) to SoMa. After getting into San Francisco, any of the first three exits (Fremont/Folsom, 5th Street, 8th Street) will lead you into SoMa before I-80 terminates at US-101.

From the south, there are two freeways running into SoMa: I-280 dead ends near the Caltrain Station - stay in the right lanes to get onto 6th Street, or stay in the left lanes to get onto King Street and past the Caltrain Station and Oracle Park. US-101 comes up from the south to merge into I-80, where you can get off onto I-80 and take one of the two eastbound exits into SoMa, or stay on US-101 (stay in the left lanes) and exit at 9th Street or Mission Street before the freeway terminates at Market Street (US-101 continues north as Van Ness Avenue).

SoMa is also well-connected to other San Francisco neighborhoods by surface streets. From the north, The Embarcadero is the best one for getting down from Fisherman's Wharf, while Van Ness Avenue is the best for getting from the Golden Gate area. Between those two are a number of other major thoroughfares, such as Montgomery, Stockton and Hyde Streets, which will also do nicely. From the south and southwest, 3rd Street, Mission Street and Market Street all work well.

Parking here, as anywhere else in San Francisco, can be a challenge, but there a number of parking garages in the district, including a large one at Mission between Fifth and Fourth streets for the Moscone Center. People driving to a Giants game are advised to park at the large parking lot along 3rd Street just south of Oracle Park, just across the canal.

By boat

In addition to the regular ferry service provided to the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street in the adjacent Financial District, two ferry companies offer special ferry service to Giants home games at Oracle Park: Golden Gate Ferry from Larkspur, and San Francisco Bay Ferry from Alameda, Oakland, and Vallejo.