An ode to Cubao

Last Tuesday, over a celebratory lunch at Le Souffle in Rockwell, we met the winners of this year’s “My Favorite Book” contest (sponsored by the Philippine STAR, National Book Store, and Globe), and I was asked as one of the judges to say a few words. There were just two things I thought I’d share with the audience then and with you today:

First, a book is only as good as its reader. An interesting, intelligent book comes alive only in the hands of an interested, intelligent reader. Of course authors like me also have much to do with what goes into that experience, but it’s the reader’s imagination that ultimately shapes and defines the outcome. Reading is a skill as much to be developed and recognized as writing.

Second, the great thing about books is that they never lose their value. Indeed, a book is just about the only thing whose price can have very little to do with its worth. A P50 book can be just as good as, if not better than, a P500 one; the fifth reader of a book can derive as much from it as its first one. In these recessionary times, I can’t think of a better investment than a book; one of them could even change your life, as it did for some of our “My Favorite Book” winners.

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Speaking of books, and also last week, my fellow columnist Krip Yuson published a very short excerpt from an essay I wrote for the new coffee table book on the Araneta Center in Cubao, Quezon City, which Krip and Paulo Alcazaren put together for the J. Amado Araneta Foundation. Since most of you won’t ever see that book, let me share a longer excerpt from my piece, which recalls Cubao as I knew it from the 1960s and 1970s:

Cubao has always figured in my life, which is something of a surprise, considering that I’ve never lived there. But then, very few people probably did decades ago, among the many thousands who thronged daily to its stores, markets, restaurants, and moviehouses. Cubao was the commercial heart of Quezon City, and people went out of their way — from as far as Pasig, in my case — to lose themselves in Cubao’s myriad offerings and its promise of immediate and affordable satisfaction.

Indeed, in the 1960s, it was possible to suggest that the growing metropolis converged in that intersection between what was still Highway 54 (now EDSA) and Aurora Boulevard — from Pasay-Makati to the south, Caloocan to the north, Manila to the West, and Marikina to the east. It was more than a geographical convergence; the old and the new met in Quezon City, and Cubao stood at the very crux of all these changes.

Tradition and old-fashioned charm held sway in the district’s older corners — such as the Benitez mansion on Mariposa Street and the LVN studios nearby — but it was around the coliseum where the present was happening and the future was taking shape, big time: in Farmers Market, in the theaters sprouting up on both sides of Aurora, in the swanky New Frontier supermarket and its Matsuzakaya shopping annex. Highbrow and lowbrow also stood cheek-by-jowl in Cubao, which boasted a Rustan’s, a Soriente Santos, and a D’Marks (which, long before Shakey’s, brought pizza to the Pinoy on the corner of P. Tuazon and EDSA), even while it offered a Little Quiapo, a Ma Mon Luk, and the poor man’s balut and siopao stands at the Farmers bus stop.

This was the Cubao I felt intimately familiar with, the Cubao I haunted whenever I had the chance — and I created my chances, knowing the good times when I saw them, and knowing even then that they couldn’t possibly last forever. The cusp between the ’60s and the ‘70s was my generation’s age of awakening — intellectually, politically, emotionally, and sexually — and Cubao had something for all these needs.

My earliest memories of Cubao were formed by the Araneta Coliseum, a veritable eighth wonder of the world in my boy’s eyes, made even more wondrous by the sight of dancers pirouetting on sheer white ice in the perennial “Holiday on Ice” tours that visited the Philippines come Christmas time. This marvel was exceeded only by the thrill of being brought to the only store that truly mattered to a child: Arcega’s, that multi-storeyed mecca of toys on the far side of Aurora.

A few more years brought us to high school and hijinks: billiards instead of biology at the Fun Center, enervating encounters with Rosanna Podesta and Jane Fonda (as Barbarella) at the New Frontier.

Meanwhile, we had learned something about politics and revolution, and encamped as freshman activists in an apartment on Arayat Street. This would be raided come martial law, and as a general darkness fell on life and society and as I found myself transported to realms afar and underground, I sought Cubao’s comforts with a furtive longing. The day after New Year, 1973, I watched Robert Redford play a crusty “Jeremiah Johnson” at a theater in Cubao before taking a late bus ride home to Diliman; hours later, I would be arrested, yet 18, to spend the next seven months in prison.

Release and freedom inspired the urge to get married quick, and once I had found the right girl and gotten a paying job, I took Beng out for lunch at Skorpios (where Gateway Mall now stands), did some figuring on a napkin, and announced, by way of a proposal, that it was now possible for us to live together and forever as man and wife. Our first major purchase as a married couple was a portable cassette player, from the radio shops at Farmers; when our daughter Demi began to walk, we also began to feed her kiddie lunches at Yum-Yum Tree in Rustan’s. We watched the low-tech but high-fun Christmas manikin shows at C.O.D., bought shoes for everyone at the Marikina Shoe Fair, and gave Demi the run of the 50-centavo rides at Fiesta Carnival.

Even today, many years later, and even with the glossier and snazzier attractions of Ortigas, Ayala, Rockwell, and Eastwood to compete for my attention and disposable income, I keep a soft spot for Cubao and still go there at least once a week, to scour the Book Sale bins at Rustan’s and Ali Mall, the Surplus Shop at the SM basement, and the tubs and of fresh crab and prawns at Farmers. When my dentures break, I drop in on my dentist at 15th Avenue, then try out my refurbished chompers on Lydia’s Lechon at the Ali Mall food court.

I’ve realized that Cubao has survived — as well as my affections — by continuing to reinvent itself and to keep pace with my needs, but never too suddenly nor too much, like one big comfort zone. I still don’t sleep in Cubao, but now I think I’ve lived there longer than anywhere else on earth.

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com, and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.