Pistahan 2024
Pistahan is a Tagalog word translated to mean “having a festival” or “feasting”. It is an annual 2-day celebration in the SOMA district of San Francisco that begins with a parade through downtown that ends at the Yerba Buena Center. In 1977 Filipino-American WWII veterans were forcibly evicted from the International Hotel in SOMA by SF riot police. In 1994 4000 Filipino-American families were displaced in order to accommodate the redevelopment of the Yerba Buena Gardens Complex and the Moscone Convention Center. Every year the city of San Francisco and the Yerba Buena Complex allow the Filipino community to reoccupy SOMA for 48 hours to celebrate the heritage and traditions of Filipino-Americans in the Bay. There was a baseball team, traditional Filipino dancers, a real estate group from Palo Alto in a pink cyber truck, and a group of Fil-Ams dressed in Star Wars gear known as Vader’s Pinoy 501st Legion. Here’s a bit of what it looked like…
