100 free scoops.
One Saturday.
A Thing To Talk About is teaming up with Miyako Old Fashioned Ice Cream — the last Black-owned shop of its kind in San Francisco — to give away 100 scoops, any flavor, first come first served.
FLAVORS
ON DECK
Doors open August 1, 2026 at noon
Free scoops run 12–4 PM or until all 100 are gone — whichever comes first.
Every scoop is first come, first served on the day — RSVPing doesn't reserve one, but it does get you a heads-up before they're gone.
A Fillmore fixture, one scoop at a time
Tom Bennett opened Miyako in 1993, in the same Fillmore District storefront the shop still occupies today. He'd come to San Francisco from Philadelphia with a plan to open an ice cream shop, and this was the first space he found. He named it Miyako as an invitation to the neighborhood's Japanese and Asian community, in a district that had once been a thriving Japantown.
More than three decades later, it's still family run — Tom's daughter Teresa now co-owns the shop, with her sister Bonita pitching in when things get busy. Regulars come back for the same reasons they always have: a huge wall of flavors, generous scoops, low prices, and an owner who remembers your name.
- FlavorsOver 100, from classic vanilla to ube and lucuma
- Est.1993, same Fillmore storefront
- Address1470 Fillmore St, San Francisco
- PaymentCash only in-store
Scooping ice cream in a neighborhood built on reinvention
Long before Miyako opened its doors, the Fillmore was known as the "Harlem of the West" — blocks of jazz clubs, theaters, and Black-owned businesses that made it one of the country's great mid-century music corridors, with legends like Billie Holiday and John Coltrane playing its stages.
The same streets were also home to a thriving Japantown, until World War II incarceration forcibly emptied it of Japanese American families and businesses in the 1940s. When Tom Bennett opened his ice cream shop in 1993, he named it Miyako — Japanese for "beautiful capital" — as a deliberate invitation back to that history.
Miyako has served the Fillmore from the same address since 1993 — through the neighborhood's ups, downs, and everything since.
A neighborhood shop, a community sponsor
100 Scoops Day is a community event connecting a beloved small business with the neighbors who keep it going.
Miyako Old Fashioned Ice Cream
An independent, family-run ice cream shop in the Fillmore District, serving the neighborhood since 1993 with over 100 flavors and a lot of history.
Visit Miyako on Yelp ↗A Thing To Talk About
A Bay Area creative production company that builds awareness for local businesses and community events by pairing them with people who want to show up for their neighborhood.
Visit athingtotalkabout.com ↗RSVP and pick your reminders
Leave your info once, choose which reminders you want, and we'll handle the rest. RSVPing doesn't guarantee a scoop — it's first come, first served on the day — but you'll never miss the heads-up.
What happens next
- You'll get exactly the reminders you check below — no extra emails.
- A note one week out, so it's on your calendar.
- A note the day before, as a last call.
- A note the morning of, if you want a final nudge.