Thursday, October 23, 2008 MassKara in Lacson By Marie Anne 'Mymy' Suajico
THROUGHOUT the years, our City has always looked forward to the tenth month of the year. Where milk and honey flows elsewhere, it streams beers in Bacolod's MassKara!
By October 17, Friday, the City officially closed the Lacson Strip (22nd to 6th streets) to make way for 'al fresco' tents and umbrellas transforming it to a promenade stretch of cookouts, eateries, and beer gardens.
While the working class rushed to finish the task left for the last working day of the week, the rest were there as early as 5 p.m. to taste their first drop of ice cold cervezas and chicken inasals.
The establishments lucky enough to be located within set up barbeque grills and cases of coolers underneath their propped up shades to take advantage of the good business revelry brings.
As for the few residential houses, they opened their gates making room for family and friends to enjoy easy access to the MassKara gala.
The MassKara committee has lined up all kinds of hooplas for Lacson Street, from glow in dark electric dancers, coronation of the festival queens, bandstands, sound-offs, henna tattoo artists booths, marathon runs to food, and spirit tasting. Anything & everything capable of making us forget that life will go back to normal by Monday. After all, MassKara was spun from the fighting spirit in every Bacolodnon back late 70's when the province was in recession; a feast - a masquerade to cover the troubled & sad faces behind the masks.
I went around 5 p.m. the next day Saturday to catch the sights and sounds, to taste what MassKara 2008 has to offer. It was relaxing to see most in their shorts and flip flops, great to note that the occasion managed to bring in a lot of tourists and foreigners around.
It was a nice time to walk back & forth in the street and take pictures, watch out for friends and great finds - from food to knickknacks. I got myself a dainty handmade clay necklace from a group of artists vending their pieces from a corner. This was the family hour, the safest time to roam around with your kids without the fear of losing them amongst the sea of people. Several minutes after sees you to the cocktail hour, when all sorts of drinks are put out. From all shapes and sizes and all the colors of margaritas & flavors of mojitos you can imagine. It was almost mockingly funny to see everyone wearing this red glowing devil horns. Worn proudly like a feather in their cap, as if it's the official license to go for the wildest enjoyment.
Apparently, it was good business for everyone; people were coming in from every street nook in throngs. If you long for serious eating, you could always jump from one restaurant or better still from one booth to another.
There were food carts everywhere, from pizza, dimsum hotdogs, and even balot.
I went for Japanese at Kai Sei and enjoyed a California maki & salmon sashimi with my ice-cold beer. There was literally plenty to go around. You can't just simply afford to fill your stomach in one place. The trick was to go walk around, try a little here and there. The long strides never fail to give room for s'mores.
Ginebra San Miguel introduced a fun drink that came in long cylinders containing different flavors of mixed tequila. I tried this "mixkila" served in long stemmed containers with dancing lights underneath and wondered if it was the alcohol that made me dizzy or all the crazy blinking. It was a neat way though to carry your drink around without spilling it.
Sunday 5:30 a.m. saw me at Lacson Street in running jerseys to join the 6 am 5k marathon run. I was deeply amused to see on the way to our provincial lagoon that there were still a lot of drinkers from Saturday that steadfastly partied until the dawn of Sunday. The ones that were still hitting the bottle were so alcohol-loaded that they looked more sleepy than drunk. And of course, along the sidewalks were the usual MassKara "ewe!" sights...drunks semiconscious beside their own barfs.
The 5k Marathon was for the interest of the disabled, organized by doctors and drug companies. It was participated mostly by males, an open category to all ages. A ship full of Ukrainians & Indian seafarers joined in, which made it more challenging. We took off from the lagoon to Lacson unto Lopue's Mandalagan and back. I finished 4th place in the women's division counting 29 to almost 30 minutes. The 1st to 3rd place for both men & women were all garnered by Negrenses. I went home with a massage gift certificate at the Bacolod Spa, a very fitting reward after that grueling ordeal.
Sunday dusk, though still tired, I couldn't keep me away from the call of duty to party to the last day of MassKara 2008. I went back to this haven with my son which I know after a few hours would puff away and disappear until next year.
Bacolod, still smiling amidst the worries, entrusting to the Higher being every next harvest to be much better...
