Mallture à la SM

This Thursday, I’d like to be first in line for the initial screening of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince at the IMAX Theater at SM City North-EDSA. Of course it would be in the company of the star-apple of my eye — a 19-year-old daughter, most likely with her boyfriend.

They’ve made it a crusade to watch Harry Potter films on the first day, and have also been regulars at the IMAX Theater in Mall of Asia. But now the drive won’t be that long from our part of town, so that I must thank SM management for bringing the mountain closer to this mostly homebound prophet.

It’s been many years since I last stepped inside SM North, such that I haven’t been privy to its many additions that have now reportedly made it the second largest mall in Asia, next only to Beijing’s so-called “Great Mall of China.” All the extensions down the years — The Block, a renovated Annex said to have the largest Cyberzone among SM malls, and the freshly opened Skygarden — have zipped past my ken due to the constraints of enclave-living in Mega Manila. But this week I look forward to reacquainting myself with the granddaddy of MM malls.

Nostalgia and déja vu are likely to contend for the errant pulse of my sciatic nerve when the daughter and I walk across the parking lot to relive those days in the early ’90s when I’d take her as a toddler to her first-ever mall. That was when we still stayed in Q.C., when urban flow was yet a breeze, and the drive from Teachers’ Village with the family took no more than 10 minutes.   

Now that part of town bids to turn into Grand Central Station, or so land developers envision. As usual, SM hasn’t been caught napping, staving off whatever competition threatens to throw a spanner in the direction of ye olde alarum: There goes the neighborhood.

I look forward to re-bonding time, then, to HP on IMAX, and to plant my carbon footprint on the Skygarden — the new feature I’ve only seen in photos, but which promises to be as meditative an experience as one may achieve in a shopping arena.

There’s something to be admired in edifice complex developers who recognize the aesthetic, environmental and spiritual value of placing greenery on rooftops, decks and atriums. In fact there should soon be a law requiring every building that goes beyond three floors to adorn rooftops with flora, especially if it’s short of bougainvilla-ed balconies à la San Miguel building at Ortigas Center. Or the parking floors’ window spaces at SM Megamall in the same area.

When we moved to the more civilized (read: less congested) fringe of Pasig City in the mid-’90s, it was goodbye to SM North, but hello to “Megamol.” Our family was among the first to traverse Bldg. A to B and back, and develop a mnemonic device whenever we had to decide in which block to go up and park. Bldg. A. was next to the ADB; simple.

This came in handy when traffic eventually built up in the area, impelling a rethink of the streets’ directional flow. Now it’s become easier to use the open parking lot by Podium and simply cross over to the end of Bldg. A. Or in a pinch at Christmastime or Midnight Madness sales, endure the steep rate for valet parking at Shangri-La EDSA hotel to dash over to Bldg. B.

It’s been another decade and then some, and much as competition tends to cluster in the vicinity of yet another SM, all the time spent solo or en famille at SM Megamall would fill a tome of memories: from the early sorties at Toy Kingdom through adolescent graduation to Power Books; all the times we hunted for school supplies or a specific item at either National Book Store or Comic Quest, and watched the skaters at the ice rink while getting a whiff of extra cold; weekend Cineplex attendance and resto dining, as well as beer binges with fellow writers at Tia Maria’s after the Manila Critics Circle’s National Book Awards rites at the Manila International Bookfair at Megatrade Hall; friends’ exhibit openings at Art Walk and gizmo hunts at Cyberzone, where we picked up new PCs for the kids and had our glitch-y CPs reformatted at the Nokia service center, or complained to Smart how our MyTV feature was off again, and the nice lady couldn’t test her rebooting proficiency unless we de-escalated all the way down to and out the ground floor, because it wasn’t so smart to have their service center right at a dead zone on the fifth floor...

Oh, yes, one could write a book... But wait, there is such a book already: The Milflores Guide to Philippine Shopping Malls, edited by Antonio A. Hidalgo, which came out in 2000 (and likely needs an update).

Of the 30 essays on specific brand malls in Luzon and the Visayas, 11 are on SM malls (Cubao, Megamall, Fairview, North EDSA, Bacoor, Southmall, Harrison Plaza, Manila, Sta. Mesa, Cebu and Iloilo City), by such distinguished writers as soon-to-be-party-list-Congressman Danton Remoto, Ronald Baytan, Rolando Tolentino, Sylvia Mendez Ventura, the editor Tony Hidalgo, Tara Sering, Wendell Capili, Luis Katigbak, Hidalgo again, Isolde Amante, and the editor’s daughter Anna Hidalgo, respectively.  

Why, that’s roughly 36 percent of the number of specific subject-venues outside the few in Mindanao. And come to think of it, I also contributed to that anthology, a general essay titled “I Mall, Therefore I Am.” Excerpts:

“Mall plus culture equal... Mall plus vulture equal...

“I am a proud, listed, card-carrying, dues-paying member of the mallturati. 

“I am a mallture. Mall plus fixture equal...

“I consume. I am a top-class mallster.

“I do expert cartwheels in the supermarket... I thrill to a growing collection of coupons and raffle tickets.

“I haunt all floors. I am a phantom mallster.

“I kill an hour for photo prints... have shoes and watches repaired, bookbinding done... neurons stimulated, adrenaline upped — all in an afternoon of mod-day paseo.

“I mall, therefore I am.”

Since that turn of the milenyo, we have all been aware that SM has proliferated even more, to as many as 30 regular malls as of last count, plus Hypermarkets and whatnot.

Urban legend or apocrypha has it (but then it’s also likely true), that Henry Sy used to hover above the teeming metropolis in a chopper and exercise the divining rod of pragmatism before pointing to a busy crossroads and announcing, “There, that’s where the next SM should rise; let’s acquire that property.”

By such visionary strategy has he spearheaded in defining the mall culture that’s dominated our urban centers, so that these days SM’s slogan of “Always there to serve you” can only be a truism.    

When MOA opened, our family just had to spend a day there and conduct photo-ops (me posing with LeBron at the Nike glass window) to send digitally to relations abroad. “Hey, our MOA is larger than yours in LA or Chicago.”

Despite the distance, MOA still beckons for special events like New Year’s Eve pyrotechnics, SMEX conferences and trade exhibits, and the best chocolate cake in town (at buddy Ding Reyes’ Chocolat: the Deep Dark Kahlua). 

In our own Valle Verde turf, the local sari-sari store has become SM Hypermarket on C-5 beside Tiendesitas, an eight-minute stroll from our front door, and where I go to be amused by ersatz-Japanese work ethics when the supermarket attendants all clap their hands in unison, upon cue. That, too, imposes culture on us Pinoy shoppers, as does the big-screen offering of a PBA game while you dine at the food court. 

Last summer, a weekend at Punta Fuego led to a day’s jaunt further up the road at Pico de Loro, where three condominiums are on the rise by a humongous lagoon-to-be, all within stone’s throw of a very pleasant beach cove. I had a swim in the warm and clear waters. Pesky fish came to nibble at my love handles. No one can stay overnight just yet, but day-trippers blessed with membership cards can enjoy the elegantly designed clubhouse with Cobonpue furniture, plus infinity pools right before the creamish sandy beach.

The road to Ternate thence Coastal Road will find completion in the near future, cutting travel time while avoiding Tagaytay. Then there are plans to have hydrofoil service from MOA that would have Pico de Loro residents begin to revel in a seaside weekend in an hour’s time.

The future for Pinoy yuppies is bright. They can look up to the parrot’s beak of a mountain crest in Batangas while laving in the sea on Saturday and Sunday, and be back on Roxas Blvd. for the week’s hostilities in a jiffy.   

That future, too, should be well served by the expansionist culture of SM. As I told my kids years ago, when we first realized that Mass and bingo games were being offered at Megamall, “Hey, mark my words, this can’t fail; it’s so Pinoy.”  

And hey, I’m getting old, so pardon the luxurious quirk of having to quote myself all the time. But my essay’s closure in Hidalgo’s book remains a heraldic opening for the environment that we have all come to treasure as a second home: 

“Oh give me a mall, where you can have it all. Where laser beams and dinosaurs play. Where seldom is felt the brownouts that melt. And the lights keep on shining all day. Home, home in the mall. Where Pinoy shares his horror vacui. Where the sikyu are polite, kidnappers contrite, and malltures not just you and me.”