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Friday, September 12, 2003
The Ilustre Experience
By Rene Lizada
ILUSTRE was the "in" place in the 70's. The place where everything was.
When you turned right from San Pedro the first thing you notice is the green house of the Garcia family. Their house is now where Jollibee stands. Inside the complex was a pelota court. As you go on farther down, on you see on your left the Dona Milagros building that housed many establishments. My parents opened their first Peter Pan in that building.
On Peter Pan's left was Eduardian, a tailoring shop. On Peter Pan's right was Davao Bearings. The Milagros building had a hidden parking lot behind it. When you entered it you would find the exits of Golden and Garmon theaters.
Garmon Theater was adjacent to Peter Pan. Beside it was a small coffee shop that served paklay. Beside Garmon theater was Chevalier's, the barbershop.
In front of the Milagros Building was a shopping complex and for the life of me I cannot remember its name. What I do remember is that there was this shop that rented out books and I used to spend a lot of time there.
Galaxy Theater was beside that shopping complex. The one thing that I liked about Galaxy was its Orchestra lobby, it was spacious and the comfort rooms of Galaxy were some of the biggest I have ever seen.
It was in Galaxy Theater that I had one of the biggest laughs of my life.
Some friends and I were watching some forgotten film at the balcony. There were about four people at our back. One of them stood and started walking down the stairs.
Suddenly she tripped and fell along the stairs. It was quite noisy because a body falling down the stairs isn't exactly quiet. We all looked at the unfortunate figure tumbling. Some people laughed, others were surprised. But the people at my back who were the person's companions simply said, "Wa na, si Mama na pud to." She must have fallen so many times already that this was just one of those times. Then of the companions stood and helped their acrobatic mother.
Beside Galaxy was Aming Bahay, a restaurant owned by family. It used to have an open terrace and an air-conditioned room. It specializes in home-cooked food and Superstar halo-halo. It used to be the favorite hangout of two of my uncles. It also was the preferred place of Twiggy, Boyet and Lillibeth, the hairdressers!
Were they noisy and fun! Sometime later we opened a Peter Pan in front of Aming Bahay. I remember that it sold Pantastic, pan de sal with cheese. In later years, the front of Aming Bahay was where Coney Island had its branch. In case you forgot, Coney Island sold ice cream.
Right beside Aming Bahay was the place to be in the 70's, the Galaxy Arcade. The shops that aligned the place where varied but the shops were not the reason for the teenagers coming to that place. The Galaxy Arcade was where you made "paduding." It was there where we Ateneo guys would walk around endlessly pretending to look at the shops but we would be actually ogling at the girls from PWC and ICC. It was juvenile fun at its best.
Every Saturday afternoon, the guys with their bellbottom pants would go sauntering along the arcade looking for their crushes. The girls with their flared pants would also pretend to go shopping.
Eyes would meet and would dart away. Giggles would be smothered and hearts would go a beating. Then the process would be repeated until we got dizzy from going around. Grabe, ka baduy talaga dati. Pero kasarap! Kababaw ng kaligayahan dati.
Then in Ilustre was this shop that was the forerunner of pirated music! It was this cool place, which copied music to reel tapes. They had all the hits. I remember when "Machine Gun" by the Commodores was such a big hit and almost everyone wanted to have a copy of that song. I spent so many Saturday mornings in that shop.
Somewhere near that music shop was a bookshop owned by the Borbon family. It was a cozy place if you liked books.
In front of the arcade was GT Waffles. They really had good waffles. My favorite was the one with the hotdog. I would take the syrup and really pour. The waffle was piping hot and the hotdog tasted good.
Then I would wash it down with cold Coke. Happy na ako! Then of course there was Pik n Eat. At the edge of San Pedro was La Suerte. They had the their famous milk bread and those vendo machines that magically gave softdrinks in papercups!
Ilustre has changed so much. And so have we. The times have come and gone and the times have stayed.
(September 12, 2003 issue) |
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