• California Theatre (1927, Spanish Baroque)
• Institute of Contemporary Art San José
• MACLA / Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana
• San José Museum of Quilts & Textiles

SoFA — South First Area — is the arts, cultural, and entertainment district anchored on the three blocks of South First Street immediately south of San José's historic downtown core. South First Street was a major retail and commercial corridor in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, lined with the buildings that still characterize the district today — including the 1927 California Theatre, a Spanish Baroque landmark built as a Fox Theatre and now home to Symphony San José, and a succession of brick commercial buildings from the 1890s through the 1920s documented in the City of San José Historic Resource Inventory.

By the 1970s, the corridor had declined along with much of downtown San José, becoming a red-light district overrun with adult movie theaters and street prostitution. In the late 1980s, then-councilwoman Susan Hammer spearheaded the zoning out of adult businesses. Beginning in the early 1990s, a group of independent businesses — galleries, nightclubs, theaters, and design firms — claimed the three-block strip and collectively adopted the SoFA moniker, growing organically in small storefront venues while the city's redevelopment attention was focused elsewhere. The SoFA Partnership was formally established in 2016. Today the district is home to the Institute of Contemporary Art San José, MACLA (Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana), the San José Museum of Quilts and Textiles, the San José Stage Company, City Lights Theater Company, and the monthly South First Fridays Art Walk.

MY-NHD's SoFA tee is for those who know Silicon Valley's creative district — built by independent artists in a corridor that the city had written off.