Save the date for the 4th annual Chuseok (Korean Harvest) Festival, happening at the Presidio’s Main Parade Lawn on September 10 from 11am-5pm. The popular event will have endless Korean food and beverages, as well as live performances from local Korean choirs and dance groups.
SF’s Korean Center is putting together a wonderful program to celebrate the best of Korean culture in the Bay Area, with a huge variety of food vendors, makers, family-friendly activities, and art.
Food options include Korean barbecue from Mama Cho’s, garlic noodles from Noodle Belly, fried chicken from K-Pop Chicken and Seoul Bird, craft beer from Dokkaebier and Fermentation Lab, desserts from Crazy Block Cheesecake, and many others. You can also browse wares from makers including Affinity Artwork, the Korean American Artist Collective, Lui Jewelry, and Min’s ClayArt, to name a few.
The event will include all-day performances from several local organizations. Watch K-Pop dance performances from groups K-Pop-Up, Eclipse, and Parang; and fan dancing and drumming from Urisawe. Both the Korean American Senior Choir and Silicon Valley Korean Children’s Choir will perform, as will Korean American rappers Year of the Ox. Guests will also have the chance to observe a traditional Korean wedding ceremony.
If the food and entertainment weren’t enough, the Chuseok Festival will have plenty of fun family-friendly activities including calligraphy, a photo booth, paper lotus lanterns, and traditional Korean games. Guests can also participate in a silent raffle and a sculptural community art project.
Chuseok, which translates to “autumn evening,” is South Korea’s major mid-autumn festival celebrating the fall harvest. It’s characterized by sharing a delicious traditional feast and performing ancestral memorial services both at home and at family members’ graves. In San Francisco, the Chuseok Festival at the Presidio is a the Bay Area’s largest public celebration of Korean culture.
San Francisco’s Korean Center, Inc (KCI) is a local organization dedicated to serving the Bay Area’s Korean American community. It dates back to the mid-1970s, when it began to assist the growing Korean community with language training, employment, and acculturation in San Francisco.
Be sure to put this year’s Chuseok Festival on your calendar for Saturday, September 10, from 11am-5pm at the Presidio’s Main Parade Lawn.
Featured image: Photo via presidio.gov