SoMa is home to many of the city's museums, to the headquarters of several major software and Internet companies, and to the Moscone Conference Center.

As with many neighborhoods, the precise boundaries of the South of Market area are fuzzy and can vary widely depending on the authority cited.

Some social service agencies and nonprofits count the economically distressed area around 6th, 7th, and 8th streets as part of the Mid-Market Corridor.

[citation needed] The terms "South of Market" and "SoMa" refer to both a comparatively large district of the city[10] as well as a much smaller neighborhood.

At the time, the streets of San Francisco were aligned approximately with the compass points, running north to south, or east to west.

[13] During the mid-19th century, SOMA became a burgeoning pioneer community, consisting largely of low-density residential buildings, except for a business district that developed along 2nd and 3rd streets, and emerging industrial areas near the waterfront.

[17] By the early 20th century, heavy industrial development due to its proximity to the docks of San Francisco Bay, coupled with the advent of cable cars, had driven the wealthy over to Nob Hill and points west.

The neighborhood became a largely working-class and lower-middle-class community of recent European immigrants, sweatshops, power stations, flophouses, and factories.

The construction of the Bay Bridge and U.S. Route 101 during the 1930s saw large swaths of the area demolished, including most of the original Rincon Hill.

[20] "South of Market in the land of ruin You get all manner of action Tinsel tigers in The Metal Room Stalking satisfaction.

[4] From 1962 until 1982, the gay leather community grew and thrived throughout South of Market, most visibly along Folsom Street, since it was a warehouse area that was largely deserted at night.

The crisis became an opportunity for the city (in the name of public health) to close bathhouses and regulate bars - businesses that had been the cornerstone of the community's efforts to maintain a gay space in the South of Market neighborhood.

The fair also provided a means for much-needed fundraising, and created opportunities for members of the leather community to connect to services and vital information (e.g., regarding safer sex) which bathhouses and bars might otherwise have been ideally situated to distribute.

However, in recent decades, and mostly due to gentrification and rising rents, these establishments have begun to cater to an upscale and mainstream clientele that subsequently pushed out the underground musicians and their scene.

Many of these were built under the cover of "live-work" development ostensibly meant to maintain a studio arts community in San Francisco.

In addition, new high rise residential projects like One Rincon Hill, 300 Spear Street, and Millennium Tower are transforming the San Francisco skyline.

[27][28] Renzo Piano's complex has since been canceled, and replaced by a newer project entitled 50 First Street, to be designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).

The neighborhood consists of warehouses, auto repair shops, nightclubs, residential hotels, art spaces, loft apartments, furniture showrooms, condominiums and technology companies.

The park features a large play area, an ice skating rink, a bowling alley, a restaurant, the Children's Creativity Museum[31] and the restored carousel[32] from Playland-At-the-Beach.

Many major software and technology companies have headquarters and offices here, including Ustream,[33] Planet Labs,[34] Foursquare,[35] Cloudflare,[36][37] Wikia,[citation needed] Wired, GitHub, Pinterest,[38] CBS Interactive,[39] LinkedIn, Trulia, Dropbox,[40] IGN, Salesforce,[41] BitTorrent Inc., Yelp,[42] Zynga,[43] Airbnb,[44] Uber,[45] Advent Software,[46][47] Pac-12 Networks,[48] and Yeti.

[69][70] In April 2016, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution that established the SOMA Pilipinas Filipino Cultural Heritage District.