Ode to Port Area
MANILA, Philippines — Months before the big move to Sucat, Parañaque, I began taking random snapshots on my cellphone of varied sights and sounds in the original Philippine STAR office in Port Area, where the newspaper was based for 37 years, not only as a way of remembrance and posterity, but in view of the possibility that they can be rolled out for occasions like this present project.
During the time we stayed there, it was as if that part of Manila was the center of the universe, so near Luneta at kilometer zero, where broke promenaders go as in the Rico Puno song, of course to the tune of The Way We Were.
That’s how we were, at any rate, starting with the photo of the last Christmas there with the lobby decked to the rafters, lights twinkling along with the ATM machine in the corner, the three kings and the holy child on the mezzanine leading to the second floor. The lobby would be filled with gifts and goodies from PR outfits and politicians, companies and persons wanting to spread goodwill and cheer for the season. The guards would be in a quandary on how to ease the obstacle course, especially in trying to forward the gifts to columnists who rarely reported on site. It was like juggling where to place cars if we had one, with the limited space in the parking lot.
No regard to Port Area, or what’s left of it, would be complete without a view of Railroad Street, the original newspaper row of Manila that housed a good number of print media during its heyday. Just at the back of STAR was the carinderia run by a copy monitor, ingenuously named Starbacks, with its spread of home-cooked meals. Starbacks was one of several turo-turos on Railroad, which set up shop on the sidewalk and at times dangerously competed for precious space with the passing trailer trucks en route to the pier. These carinderias, at least some of them, doubled as karaoke joints if not outright beer gardens for newspaper staff and BIR employees after dark.
Across the STAR along 13th Street since renamed Roberto Oca, was the Muslim quarter or section where reconditioned washing machines, air conditioners, sound system speakers went for a bargain — in fact, a Maike Orange amplifier-receiver still works more than 20 years after purchase. There were also the usual ambulant vendors trying to pull a fast one or make a deal, whichever came first, selling DVD, assorted tools, shoes and watches at unbelievably low prices, particularly if you were born yesterday.
A shoutout too to the resident wash-your-car man who washed many a STAR employee’s car, from nuclear-powered to all-terrain, with his ubiquitous pail always approaching to entice you of availing yourself of his services. Until one day we heard that he had suffered a stroke, and although he could no longer get back to his old job, his hands at his side would go through a circular motion, as if buffing a vehicle for that fine polish now a distant memory.
During the pandemic, a slew of stray cats also sought comfort at 13th corner Railroad, first at the lobby then later finding their way to the editorial section to help ease the overall isolation and self-imposed quarantine; however mindful of social distancing, the proper use of face masks and face shield while some kibble was spread at the foot of an editor’s desk.
A note on Kwekkwek, the orange tabby that like the newspaper, moved to Doc Santos Parañaque: he was a certified 13th corner Railroad cat, so it took a while for him to adjust to life in Sucat, getting used to wide open spaces suddenly out of reach of the trailer trucks that claimed many of his feline brethren, so we heard how quite a few of the editorial department’s adopted met the sad end to their nine lives.
But Kwekkwek too was special, lasting a year in the drastically new environment, hobbled by ailments not even trips to the vet could cure. The tabby pictured in the Port Area editorial offices was de facto assistant night editor, Kwekkwek’s doppelganger and arch-enemy; they’d exchange blood-curdling sounds on the sidewalks outside fighting for scraps or a mate. But even that doppelganger, too, one day disappeared, lost in the hubbub of the pier and as is the wont of cats, not wanting to burden anyone with their imminent demise.
On a quiet Sunday at work, had the rare chance of taking a photo of the spiral staircase leading to the upper floor offices of the tabloids and the canteen that provided free meals during pandemic, and to the Betty Go Belmonte Hall where many a gathering still rang with raffle delight, the staircase bathed in eerie light as if it knew it would be left behind, a piece of cast iron that would still be serviceable as installation art.
What books to take along then with the valuable move south? Years in Port Area had accumulated a tsundoku or two, books that were gifts from friends or complementary copies for reviews that never got written, a title and then some eventually blending into the pantry library of the new building. There too was an old copy of PTYK newspaper, the broadsheet made up entirely of comics and cartoons and conceived by the unsinkable Nonoy Marcelo aka Bos Myawok at the art department of Manila Chronicle in nearby Daily Express building, the only text being the editorial and thus offering an alternative view of the world when a newspaper without an editorial cartoonist was unthinkable.
Some may say print is dead, but that may be true only in Port Area, the machines and their racket having made the move too, far from the Friday call to prayers, but as long as you can hold a newspaper in your hands, then the news must be real, everything else suspectedly fake or at best a simulation. Of course we’ll still be doing it years from now; that’s the plan, while the lady in the lobby reads the book, as the saying goes, from cover to cover.
