The communities that make La Union
Nicknamed “Elyu” through the years, La Union, a small coastal town 277 kilometers north of Manila, became not just a weekend getaway or a hot surfing spot, but a home to like-minded creatives and visionaries from different parts of the Philippines and the world.
The people who were tourists first because of its sunset and surf eventually founded businesses and creative communities in Elyu. When Boracay briefly closed in 2018 for rehabilitation, beachgoers flocked to Elyu, where the town saw a boom in tourism and creativity. Self-starters knew the town needed spaces to create, express, connect, and share. Whether that be through a shared love for surfing, a celebration of pride, or a passion for ecology, here are three of the most prolific and celebrated communities in La Union.
Surftown Pride
Newly aware of his sexuality, Nikko Atienza, who was visiting his cousin Kiddo Cosio and his wife Amy, dreamed of a celebration where the LGBTQIA+ community could see the beloved province as a queer-welcoming space. They just needed help figuring out where to start.
Enter Janlee Dungca and Mela Habijan who guided them in planning and organizing the first Surftown Pride in 2019. It was an intimate and impactful weekend, spent with activities like beach volleyball, leather-making, and a film screening.
Through the years, it has become a staple of Surftown Pride to hold conversations on current issues like HIV/AIDS or SOGIESC, with Dungca and Habijan facilitating the discussions. It’s a reminder that in our rejoicing, we’re also in debt to the revolution and the protest, and there is still more work to be done.
Several queer spaces also opened up after that first Pride weekend, with bars dedicated to drag shows and queer-owned cafes and accommodations. These establishments, namely Bighani, Hara, Shorebreak Hostel, and Sora, are now Surftown Pride partners helping cement Elyu as an inclusive tourist spot.
Last May, Surftown Pride became an official NGO, with a dedicated board of directors who continue to organize festivities, even on a random weekend. “We do it for the love,” they say. “We do it for the baby gays and the people celebrating pride for the first time. There is value in community and in providing a safe space.”
Single and unattached
Founded more than a decade ago, Single and Unattached (S&U) is an international classic longboarding invitational competition held in San Juan, La Union. Founders Nikki and Buji Libarnes, who are architects and business owners most days of the year, grew the simple competition for the love of leashless surfing to become an internationally recognized event flocked by surfers from all around the world.
The competition is held every February as a celebration of the love binding surfers to the sport—the type of love that allows S&U to operate in the spirit of “bayanihan” where organizers come in when the season starts, pulled away from their day jobs, to spare a few days for the competition.
In the early days, responsibilities were shared by the couple and surfer friends who lived in Elyu. As S&U grows, plenty of the moving parts and director roles are now delegated to other members of the surfing community.
"It wasn't easy at all to organize the competition. Every year, we were uncertain if we could run it with the limited funds we had. Even after 10 years, Nikki and I still get anxious and extremely nervous a few months prior to the opening ceremony," says Buji.
The sport, as S&U showcased in the decade it has been around, remains the catalyst for life lessons and community-building. For Buji and Nikki, S&U is their love letter to surfing. The couple has thought of putting a period to it; with the love surfers have shown for S&U year after year, we hope they decide otherwise.
Emerging islands
Emerging Islands is an artist residency in La Union and a partner for local initiatives related to art and ecology. Their projects include the International Ocean Station model currently in exhibition at The Mind Museum, participated by different communities in La Union; the programming and maintenance of Mebuyan’s Vessel, an art installation of 21 interconnected inhabitable pods by Leeroy New mounted on the shore in San Juan; and many more exhibitions, art talks, and events both local and international. They also work with National Geographic and other international organizations to mobilize artists and reconnect with their ecology through sensing, meaning-making, and world-building.
Emerging Islands believe that island communities such as the Philippines stand on the environmental frontline, with the challenges that come with it also shared by other archipelagic countries. Samantha Zarandin, one of the founders, shares that they continue to nurture creative solutions and strong connections with organizations worldwide that share their vision: "Through creative collaborations, knowledge can be easily shared, imaginations joyously compounded, and collective impact amplified."
The founders all met in Elyu in the early days of the pandemic: Nicola Sebastian, an ecological writer; Hannah Reyes Morales, a photojournalist; David Loughran, an art curator; and Samantha Zarandin, a development worker and producer.
"We needed to create something to counteract the stark lack of cultural infrastructure in the Philippines. We decided on programming an art residency, where we could provide a little mobility for artists to work outside the echo chambers of Manila," David shares.
Given that the founders were not from La Union, they were careful and diligent in giving their newfound home the respect it deserved, as David echoes: "Whatever work we would do would be in service of what came before us: the complex histories of La Union, its rich ecologies, its vibrant communities.”
Emerging Islands builds programs around decentralization and ecology, something the founders share with the residency as they experience their own form of displacement and reconnection to nature. "Through projects that connected art, community, and ecology, we dreamt of ways where we could collaborate with the communities themselves, as we believed that in times of great crises, and as we continue to claw ourselves out of our colonial past, it is the voice of island communities that needed emerging."