Nothing says love on Valentine’s Day in San Francisco more than meeting up for the free pillow fight at the Embarcadero. If you’re tired of the same old overpriced roses and awkward dinner dates, this is the perfect way to get your heart racing.
We’ve seen the audience dwindle since its heyday in the early 2000s. But enough people gathered at 5:45 to cause a good amount of fluffy mayhem. People of all ages joined. Kids sat giggling in pajamas while clutching their pillows like they were holding onto the last piece of candy in the house.
The adults? Their ages ranged in decades, and that’s what has always made this free SF tradition so special. There’s room for everyone. Whether you’re 5 or 50, you can bash someone in the face with a pillow and be proud of it.
Dressed in a unicorn onesie, Allie McAndrews and her friends led the crowd in a pillow fight warm-up session. We stretched, waved pillows over our heads, and exchanged practice hits amid much giggling. “We are your worst nightmare, coming to a bed near you!” she said. I was 100 percent ready to join the fray and unleash my inner fluffy terror.
As the clock tower struck 6 p.m., the pillow warriors — and a solitary Spiderman — raised their pillows and let out a battle cry. Feathers would choke the air and clog the drains by now, but this year they remained in their pillows, much to the delight of everyone who didn’t want to be sneezing for the next three days.
Among the chaos, a tall, bearded man holding a large plush red heart with arms jogged gently through the crowd, touching one of the soft red hands on people’s heads and yelling, “Boop!”
Pillow fights are high-energy and can leave you breathless, but the Noble Booper didn’t lag one bit in his quest to boop each and every participant. I don’t know what kind of energy reserves this man has, but I’m hoping he’s bottling it for the rest of us. You can’t stop the boop.
No one was harmed, save for an inadvertent sack-tapping I witnessed. I noted that the weapon of choice was inexplicably covered in drawings of breasts. The victim, bent over in pain, did stop to introduce himself to the woman who had committed the crime he noted the breasts drawings and this seemed to help him find peace with his situation.
It would have been an adorable meet-cute if her husband wasn’t battling nearby.
And the battle raged on, with people continuing to whack, boop, and laugh their way through the chaos.
The beauty of the Embarcadero pillow fight is that it’s not about winning or losing — it’s about doing whatever it takes to avoid being the first person to get hit in the face. Then of course there’s also the love.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional pillow fighter or just there for the spectacle. Everyone can jump in, swing a pillow, and maybe even leave with a new friendship — or at least some good stories to tell.
Vita Hewitt is a Bay Area-based photographer, filmmaker, journalist, and writer.
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More photos from Valentine’s Day Pillow Fight 2025
All photos by Vita Hewitt for The Bold Italic.
