Neighborhood worth a visit : SoMa San Francisco

Nov 11th, 2009 by the authors of San Francisco Hotel Reservations in 4. Attractions

South of Market (SoMa) in San Francisco : the heart of artistic activity similar the the famous New York City’s Soho district.

Penguins at the Steinhart Aquarium

 picture from travel2.nytimes.com

South of Market Street is the South of Market neighborhood, also known as SoMa. It was originally a district of hangars and old warehouses, but thanks to the Internet bubble, known as the dot.com era, it became the home of young computer engineers working in the neighboring Silicon Valley.

A building boom followed: it was during this period, from the 1990’s to the early 2000’s, that big museums, like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Yerba Buena Center and the Contemporary Jewish Museum were built. Big convention centers like the Moscone Convention Center, nightclubs, trendy restaurants and high-tech labs were also built during the dot.com era.

But with the burst of the Internet bubble in the early 2000’s, activities in the area slowed down to a crawl: many start-up ventures closed down or declared bankruptcy and soaring prices became unaffordable for many. Compared to the glorious years of the dot.com era, SoMa is not so trendy anymore, but with its museums and nightclubs, it is still worth a visit.