Thursday, April 19, 2007 Manalili traders still struggle after fire By Elisabeth Baumgart STC Mass Comm Intern
ALL that remains of an area that was once bustling with trade and business are charred timber, a gutted building and the marred façade of adjoining buildings on Lincoln and Manalili Sts.
Where guitars, accessories and clothes were once sold is a lonely burned building. Concrete, burned timber and garbage filled the area, where months ago one could buy anything at low prices.
Since the 1960s, Cebu Guitars had been selling guitars to customers from Cebu and to tourists. For years, they made their own guitars and established a name.
Memories
But the fire last Feb. 1 turned everything into ashes and now it seems as if the store never existed.
For Gevi Young, 44, who now runs her grand-father’s guitar store La Filipina, the fire burned everything up—the family business, their home and all the memories that came with both.
“We lived there,” she said. “It’s where we all started.”
Hurt
When her mother’s store, Cebu Guitars, was razed by the fire, the losses they experienced were unimaginable. But nevertheless, life went on for all of them.
“We started from scratch. We just went on with our lives,” recalled Young. “Yes, we were affected financially, but we don’t want to count it all again. Remembering that just hurts too much. In the end, a loss is a loss—it just doesn’t come back,” Lucky for them, they have another store to rely on after their property was destroyed by the fire. Her grandfather owns a guitar store, which Young is now taking care of. However, despite her grandfather’s store, recovering from all their losses still has been difficult.
Crisis
“There aren’t a lot of people who buy things anymore. It’s because of crisis. People don’t have enough money anymore – they’d much rather spend on food and education. You see, what we sell here are luxury items,” she lamented.
Tessie Dagoc of Custom Guitars agrees that business has not been doing well lately.
Customer traffic has been slow and there are times when they would even make no sale at all.
Tougher
Times after the fire were even tougher. Because roads were blocked, and nobody could enter the street, they did not sell anything for several days.
“What we ended up doing was, we would go to people we know and try to sell to them our guitars,” said Dagoc.
For store owner Edwin Ong, recovering from the fire has been difficult as well. It was the clothes store of his parents that was destroyed by the fire.
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“We are still waiting for the building owner to start reconstructing. Right now, there has been no feedback,” said Ong.
For now, he and his parents are sharing a store until they get their own store back up and running.
But despite all the goods and money that went up in flames, what all of them are thankful for is the fact that none of them got hurt.
