Cubao Daytrip and a Tenuous Metaphor About Haunting
(10:50 AM)
I had thoughtlessly volunteered to help out in archiving some film stored at the Mowelfund Film Institute. I drove to the Marikina Shoe Expo in Cubao on a lovely, sunny Saturday afternoon and attended a short meeting, an orientation of sorts.
I forced myself to go. It was Cubao after all, the commercial center of my childhood.
My mother and I used to regularly go to Cubao, every two weeks, on the dot. We always had a routine. We would park in Ali Mall, visit National Bookstore, cross the street to Shoe Mart, shop a little then go down to the food court to have lunch, usually at Sizzling Plate. Afterwards, we went back to our car in Ali Mall and drive to Rustan's to do our grocery shopping. Then we go home.
There were very few variations. On occasion, we would eat at the sparse food court of Ali Mall or at Goldilock's in Rustan's. One time we tried the Pizza Hut in Fiesta Carnival.
Somewhere in the tight schedule, I would squeeze in my own shopping: Hardy Boys and comic books in National Bookstore, Matchbox cars and music cassette tapes in the dry goods section of Rustan's supermarket, Eskimo Roll (ice cream sandwich) in the Shoe Mart food court.
That was during the early 1980s.
In the late 1980s, Cubao started changing. Significantly, Uniwide opened, offering cheaper groceries, so we shopped there. National Superbranch also opened, a five-floor behemoth spewing out office supplies and books. I was in college by then, and my mother and I still went together.
Cubao was forever changed in 1990: my mother died and turned this messy landscape, with all its malls, buildings, streets, and ugly signage into one painful memory.
By the time the pain subsided, Cubao was a shadow of its former self. It was the old downtown, quaint but way off the shopping fastlane.
I would go there once in a while for some nostalgia tripping and cheap books. The National Superbranch had become a dumpsite of used books, imported from the US (and Canada). The Fiesta Carnival had become a giant warehouse of old carnival rides and sad flea markets. Rustan's had moved out altogether. Ali Mall and Shoe Mart had seemed to be frozen in time, or caught in the past. I felt like a ghost visiting a lost town, eating my crummy Chuckwagon from Sizzling Plate.
Despite my own personal drama, Cubao did move on for everyone else. Now, there's the well-air-conditioned Gatewall Mall and the loud, imposing supermarkets. I also counted about four different branches of Book Sale.
But the best surprise is the Marikina Shoe Expo.
I do remember going there once or twice long ago. My mother and my sisters would shop for shoes, while I get bored in the car. Nowadays, it is the Marikina Hip Expo (Cubao X, they call it), with art galleries, a bookstore, cool gift stores, and an exalted Italian restaurant.
The shoe stores, of course, are still there, providing a convenient backdrop to all this hip-ness.
My meeting was at the Black Soup Project (owned by Neil Daza and Robert Quebral), an art gallery of sorts, just a stone's throw from Booklines bookstore and the Bellini's restaurant. If you have a good arm, you can even reach The Chunky Far Flung Gallery on the other side. This brings to mind one major question: how much is rent in this place?
The meeting lasted for an hour, presided by an old friend (and teacher) from my long-lost Mowelfund days, Ricky Orellana (who might be another owner of Black Soup Project, dunno). He's now a professional film archivist and he's looking for a few film lovers to help catalog about a hundred titles, mostly those that were confiscated by MTRCB in the 1970s and 1980s. (Bomba films, I suppose.)
"Film is like people," he said. "The moment you are born, you start getting older, you start dying. It's the same thing with film. The moment it is made, it starts decomposing. All we can hope for is to prolong its life."
After the meeting, I beelined for Booklines and picked up a book (The Globalization of Poverty), a CD (The Brockas), and two documentaries on VCDS (one one child labor, by Ditsi Carolino, and another on globalization). I was also tempted to buy some High Chair Chapbooks, featuring poets from UST and UP. Maybe next time.
Then I hopped across the street to the building formerly called Rustan's Superstore (now just Superstore) to continue my Book Sale shopping. I quickly got two books, one about William Turner and another about a book design exhibit. As I lined up at the cashier, I saw a friend from high school leave the store.
"Dennis!"--I nearly shouted across the room, but he disappeared quickly. When I got out of the store, there was no trace of him. Could I have imagined him?
Cubao is still full of ghosts like me.
I forced myself to go. It was Cubao after all, the commercial center of my childhood.
My mother and I used to regularly go to Cubao, every two weeks, on the dot. We always had a routine. We would park in Ali Mall, visit National Bookstore, cross the street to Shoe Mart, shop a little then go down to the food court to have lunch, usually at Sizzling Plate. Afterwards, we went back to our car in Ali Mall and drive to Rustan's to do our grocery shopping. Then we go home.
There were very few variations. On occasion, we would eat at the sparse food court of Ali Mall or at Goldilock's in Rustan's. One time we tried the Pizza Hut in Fiesta Carnival.
Somewhere in the tight schedule, I would squeeze in my own shopping: Hardy Boys and comic books in National Bookstore, Matchbox cars and music cassette tapes in the dry goods section of Rustan's supermarket, Eskimo Roll (ice cream sandwich) in the Shoe Mart food court.
That was during the early 1980s.
In the late 1980s, Cubao started changing. Significantly, Uniwide opened, offering cheaper groceries, so we shopped there. National Superbranch also opened, a five-floor behemoth spewing out office supplies and books. I was in college by then, and my mother and I still went together.
Cubao was forever changed in 1990: my mother died and turned this messy landscape, with all its malls, buildings, streets, and ugly signage into one painful memory.
By the time the pain subsided, Cubao was a shadow of its former self. It was the old downtown, quaint but way off the shopping fastlane.
I would go there once in a while for some nostalgia tripping and cheap books. The National Superbranch had become a dumpsite of used books, imported from the US (and Canada). The Fiesta Carnival had become a giant warehouse of old carnival rides and sad flea markets. Rustan's had moved out altogether. Ali Mall and Shoe Mart had seemed to be frozen in time, or caught in the past. I felt like a ghost visiting a lost town, eating my crummy Chuckwagon from Sizzling Plate.
Despite my own personal drama, Cubao did move on for everyone else. Now, there's the well-air-conditioned Gatewall Mall and the loud, imposing supermarkets. I also counted about four different branches of Book Sale.
But the best surprise is the Marikina Shoe Expo.
I do remember going there once or twice long ago. My mother and my sisters would shop for shoes, while I get bored in the car. Nowadays, it is the Marikina Hip Expo (Cubao X, they call it), with art galleries, a bookstore, cool gift stores, and an exalted Italian restaurant.
The shoe stores, of course, are still there, providing a convenient backdrop to all this hip-ness.
My meeting was at the Black Soup Project (owned by Neil Daza and Robert Quebral), an art gallery of sorts, just a stone's throw from Booklines bookstore and the Bellini's restaurant. If you have a good arm, you can even reach The Chunky Far Flung Gallery on the other side. This brings to mind one major question: how much is rent in this place?
The meeting lasted for an hour, presided by an old friend (and teacher) from my long-lost Mowelfund days, Ricky Orellana (who might be another owner of Black Soup Project, dunno). He's now a professional film archivist and he's looking for a few film lovers to help catalog about a hundred titles, mostly those that were confiscated by MTRCB in the 1970s and 1980s. (Bomba films, I suppose.)
"Film is like people," he said. "The moment you are born, you start getting older, you start dying. It's the same thing with film. The moment it is made, it starts decomposing. All we can hope for is to prolong its life."
After the meeting, I beelined for Booklines and picked up a book (The Globalization of Poverty), a CD (The Brockas), and two documentaries on VCDS (one one child labor, by Ditsi Carolino, and another on globalization). I was also tempted to buy some High Chair Chapbooks, featuring poets from UST and UP. Maybe next time.
Then I hopped across the street to the building formerly called Rustan's Superstore (now just Superstore) to continue my Book Sale shopping. I quickly got two books, one about William Turner and another about a book design exhibit. As I lined up at the cashier, I saw a friend from high school leave the store.
"Dennis!"--I nearly shouted across the room, but he disappeared quickly. When I got out of the store, there was no trace of him. Could I have imagined him?
Cubao is still full of ghosts like me.