SOMA Pilipinas reignites the ‘plaza’ for Bay Area Filipinos

Filipino men sit on outdoor stone tables playing chess. Colorful murals of carabao and jeepneys decorate street corners. And Filipino words grace the signs in front of community spaces.

This might sound like a street scene from the Philippines, but it’s right here, in San Francisco’s SOMA Pilipinas Filipino Cultural Heritage District.

SOMA Pilipinas director Raquel Redondiez describes the district as a reflection of the Filipino bayanihan spirit. The word translates to “community spirit,” often illustrated by the image of townspeople coming together to lift and move a bahay kubo (nipa hut) from one location to another.

“(This) is a place where immigrants and their families come to set roots in the U.S.,” Redondiez says. “And it’s also a place where people come together to support each other.”

Created in 2016, the cultural heritage district extends south of Market Street to Brannan Street and between Eleventh and Second streets. It’s home to several important historical landmarks — and the infamous I-Hotel lies nearby. The former International Hotel once held 104 low-income residential units and in 1977, was the site of major protests and mass evictions of Filipino and Chinese immigrant residents, many of them seniors.

It’s an area, the city ordinance noted, that is “home to Filipinos who have been an integral part of the city’s cultural richness, economic prosperity and historical significance.” But it’s not the only one.

The Bay Area is home to some 500,000 Filipinos — 12% of the four million Filipinos in the United States, according to the 2017 American Community Survey. They reside in cities and towns throughout the region, with vibrant Filipino American communities in cities like Daly City, South San Francisco, Union City, Milpitas and beyond, each bringing rich traditions and cultures to the area.

The SOMA Pilipinas organization, which oversees the district’s cultural and special events, is working to preserve the history of Filipino heritage in Northern California through the commission of several vibrant public murals. You can tour the district via Jeepney — a popular public utility vehicle in the Philippines made from World War II-era Willy Jeeps left behind by the U.S. military. Here, the winsome vehicle totes riders on a tour of the district’s 20 pieces of public artwork, including those murals.

Among the latter is the newly refurbished and intricately designed Ang Lipi ni Lapu Lapu mural. Originally painted in 1984 by Johanna Poethig, Vicente Clement and Presco Tabios, it was recently restored by Poethig, Dev Heyrana, Mariel Paat and Pablo Ruiz Arroyo. This 90-foot by 25-foot mural at the corner of Bonifacio and Lapu Lapu streets depicts centuries of Filipino history. You’ll spot images from the 300-year-old Spanish galleon trade to two-time Olympic gold medalist Victoria Manalo Draves. Boxer Pancho Villa is represented, as is Cebuano chieftain Lapulapu, who is famous for slaying Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan. There are Filipino farm workers, nurses and more.

Other important murals in the district include the Carabao, by Franceska Gámez and Cece Carpio at 1052 Folsom St.; the Jeepney mural, also by Carpio, at 975 Bryant St.; and the Ani – Harvested Hopes mural by Venazir Martinez at 275 Fifth St.

Although many of the organization’s events are celebratory and inviting, they are birthed from another spirit of SOMA Pilipinas that Redondiez talks about: fighting – for land, for jobs, for housing and for survival.

“I think there’s an inherent fighting spirit within the community to really assert our place and our right to have homes in the city,” Redondiez says. “And (to) have a neighborhood that has the same kind of neighborhood amenities that other parts of the city have, like parks and safety.”

MC Canlas, SOMA Pilpinas’ local historian, notes that xenophobic sentiment fomented during Donald Trump’s first run for president in 2016. San Francisco’s recognition of the district became a response against the racism that characterized Trump’s campaign, he says. The area’s designation as a cultural district also meant city officials had to get approval from the residents of SOMA before they developed anything in the area.

“You cannot just displace people, that’s the legacy of (the) I-Hotel,” Canlas says.

For decades — long before the official decree — the mixed-use district has served as a plaza, Canlas says. In the Philippines, the plaza was the center of Filipino culture with schools, churches and money transfer services.

San Francisco author Oscar Peñaranda says the plaza reflects the Filipino mindset: the need for community, known as kapwa in Filipino psychology, and the need for a physical center where everything you needed was within reach.

The city with the largest Filipino American population in the country is not San Francisco at all, but Daly City. A third of that city’s residents trace their heritage to that island nation, according to the 2020 census.

But the creation of SOMA Pilipinas makes a notable statement in this community, which houses the Bessie Carmichael School, which offers a bilingual Filipino and English program, senior services and apartment buildings for working-class Filipinos.

While the city has sanctioned a Filipino district, Redondiez says that still doesn’t make up for the effects of a billowing tech sector that has driven prices upward and forced the displacement of thousands of Filipinos in SoMa. Redondiez recalls the tech boom in the early 2000s pricing out many Filipino renters and their families. They were forced to move into other, smaller homes such as those in the Tenderloin and outside of San Francisco.

SOMA Pilipinas has fought to reassert Filipino presence in the area. The organization purchased a building, for example, whose former tenants actively discriminated, decades ago, against Filipinos with signs barring their entry. Redondiez smirks at the irony of a Filipino-owned building that once segregated the same people.

The group’s Asian American Pacific Islander fund, which totaled about $30 million at its peak, has helped businesses owned and operated by Filipinos and other Asian and Pacific Islander communities buy their own buildings. And other Filipino-owned businesses are beginning to purchase buildings, she says, including Kulintang Arts, an art troupe whose performance pieces preserve the ancestral and tribal arts of the Philippines, and the nonprofit Bayanihan Equity Center, which serves seniors and adults with disabilities.

It is the very definition of the bayanihan spirit.