When people talk about neighborhoods in San Francisco, the conversation inevitably turns to gentrification and a city in transition. Due in part to its mixed-use zoning and central location, SOMA is the epitome of the changes in the city that are unwelcome by many.
The SOMA neighborhood is “largely reforming, newly forming, new construction,” said Eric Geleynse, an energetic, fast-talking real estate agent who’s worked in the neighborhood for over 10 years. “It’s intense and very diverse.”
Google Maps marks SOMA as the area South of Mission and above 16th street, all the way to the AT&T Stadium.
Upon hearing these boundaries, Geleynse laughed. He said there’s no official source of neighborhood boundaries. SOMA’s boundaries depend largely on whom you speak to: locals, real estate agents, city planners, cartographers, historians or politicians. Not only is there disagreement on exactly where SOMA begins and ends, some long-time locals dispute the label entirely.
Retired lawyer Richard Kent Marsh, dismissively said, “SOMA is a bullshit name. SOMA is an invention of the extra money that was coming in in the ‘90s.”
Marsh lists off all the changes he’s seen in the neighborhood since his arrival in San Francisco in 1971 to attend Hastings Law School. At the end of his long list, he concludes that there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, “the bars are still bars.”
A few older businesses remain in the neighborhood, and stand as reminders of SOMA’s past lives. Mr. S, a leather and bondage store geared toward the gay S&M community is one of the last of its kind along Folsom Street, a corridor once so well known for the counter-culture it had the nickname “chain lane” according to Marsh. The street also still hosts the famous S&M “Folsom Street Fair,” which celebrates the area’s history as a hub for counter culture.
Nonoko Sato, director at the SMART Program, a SOMA-based educational nonprofit for low-income k-12 students, said the neighborhood changed once Twitter moved in. Sato said her nonprofit is being priced out of its current location and is looking into locations in the Bayview/ Hunter’s Point neighborhood in 2016.
“When we signed our lease 4 years ago, it was all non-profits, and now its all tech companies. I felt like I blinked and suddenly a lot of these organizations were gone,” said Sato.
Along with Twitter, SOMA is also home to tech industry giants Google, Adobe, Yelp, Salesforce, Reddit, Wired Magazine, and countless others.
While established museums like the SF MOMA (currently under construction), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and Museum of the African Diaspora are concentrated along the Southern Market border of SOMA, the neighborhood has become too pricey for the less established members of the art world.
Artist Jonathan Matas briefly occupied a live/work space is SOMA in 2013 and found the disparities in income levels of SOMA’s residents astounding.
“When I was living there I was basically squatting in a tech guy’s newly purchased second house,” said Matas. “Right outside the door where I was working, there were crackheads fighting all night, making weird sculptures.”
There were even people living in the porta-potty being used by construction workers at one point during his stay, Matas said.
As new businesses continue to displace the old, it remains to be seen whether SOMA will be able to retain its soul, as new industry continues to move in.
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