You can’t tell the story of Bay Area hip-hop without a tip of the cap to all of the Filipino Americans who helped shape the scene — from the legion of mobile DJ crews and B-boys/B-girls to the influential emcees, producers and graffiti artists. It makes sense, then, that the 2023 edition of Undiscovered SF, San Francisco’s preeminent Filipino American culture fest, is framed as a months-long celebration of hip-hop. This year is hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, after all. And as Desi Danganan — executive director of Kultivate Labs, the nonprofit that organizes the event — explains it, the Bay Area’s vibrant Fil-Am food scene today is itself deeply rooted in the community’s ties to hip-hop. Back in the ’80s, among Filipino Americans in the Bay, “everyone and their mom was a DJ,” Danganan recalls. Then there was a stretch of time when it seemed like everyone became a club promoter. Danganan remembers when he was in his twenties, the promotion crews running the nightclubs in SoMa were 90% Filipino.

The cultural district was established to uplift Filipinos in San Francisco—an ethnic group that's been pushed out of its neighborhood by gentrification not once but twice. Manilatown, centered on Kearny and Jackson streets, was more or less redeveloped out of existence, and numerous residential side streets in SoMa were later bulldozed to make way for SFMOMA and Yerba Buena Gardens. Undiscovered’s ambitions remain undiminished—if anything, there’s a major push to highlight third-wave Filipino food and its surprising array of vegan options. But the block party has to contend with a tsunami of media coverage claiming that the flourishing, if troubled, neighborhood is actually a dangerous dystopia.

Vibrant night markets studded with food halls are a staple in major global cities like Taipei, Hong Kong and Los Angeles. Now, a newly proposed state bill, AB 441, would make it even easier for food destinations like San Francisco to start and run bustling night markets. By eating away at some of the red tape involved with opening a night market, proponents of the bill hope these events can help turn the tide on the city’s slow economic recovery from the pandemic.