Balay Kreative

A pop-up arts hub in San Francisco provides a space for Fil-Am artists across the Bay Area to accelerate their brand and businesses. Rommel Conclara has this story.

“Arts and culture, that’s the key,” Danganan says. “That’s going to be the anchor to really accelerate this kind of community engagement of coming back into your community, giving back and rebuilding it.” His vision is for Mission Street to become a commercial corridor of Filipino American shops, restaurants and cultural spaces.

As a first-generation Ilokana immigrant, now based in San Francisco, California, I remember my whole family being gifted inabel blankets with our names on them. Yet I didn’t fully appreciate their significance until I immigrated and began exploring weaving as part of my own process of decolonizing and reclaiming the pre-colonial indigenous nature of Ilokano culture.

It’s called “TNT Traysikel,” a customized motorcycle and sidecar that cruises the streets of San Francisco Bay Area, complete with blaring karaoke music and every inch painted with cultural icons of Filipino American history in California.

It’s not everyday you see the humble Philippine tricycle plying major thoroughfares in other countries.