PI Market

The Philippine Islands Market, or “P.I. Market,” was a Filipino-owned store that began operating in Pismo Beach in the 1930s and was the flagship of a small chain with branches in Salinas, Montalvo, and Los Angeles. As conditions slowly improved for Filipinos in the 1940s, the P.I. market eventually became a major cultural hub for the Five Cities area Filipino community. The aging bachelor store employees, affected by interracial marriage laws in their younger years, became surrogate relatives to many Filipino families formed after the repeals of immigration exclusion laws. 

The original building was slated for demolition because an official evaluation commissioned by developers found the P.I. Market’s historical significance to be “weak,” with absolutely no input from the Filipino American community considered.  In 2006-7, local Filipino Americans vigorously and successfully fought for the beautiful historical façade reproduction that today stands at the market’s original location:  238 Ocean View Avenue.

As Bing Aradanas recalls, “I was only one of many young second-generation Filipino-American children who saw the P.I. Market…as more than just a store, but as a family home of beloved elderly uncle or godfather figures…[who] lived full-time in the three bedrooms at the back of the [store]…I regularly watched elderly Manong bachelors drop by with their catches of fish and leave them with my uncles.  Other Manongs…would also stop by and drop off excess batches of produce harvests…sometimes going to the garden in the back of the store where my uncles grew vegetables which weren’t sold in stores but are popular with Filipinos.”

To learn more about the P.I. Market:

History

Importance to Filipino Community