The big mall has arrived. The streets have been rerouted. A long strip divides the Panganiban Street and the word “coding” is introduced. People recalled the opening day: it was as if a blast has create a vacuum somewhere and people have been sucked into the chaos and crowd. The other department stores, they say, looked like abandoned lovers.
This is not the first time that a mall is introduced in the city. But no mall is ever bigger than the one that is now across Panganiban. And that mall never passes the stage of being an acquired taste; it is always an accepted taste – by the majority. It is a natural dominant center of commodity. With it comes a set of behavior, a particular aesthetics, a clustering of values.
In many provinces and in the greater Manila area, anyway, malls signal always the birth of new ways of consumption and merchandizing. One does not expect to haggle in malls and in stores that are in them. With haggling gone, “Buena mano”, or the notion of the “Good hand”, the first buyer, the lucky soul that will augur the make or break of the store for that day, loses its power. There are two ways to face the Buena mano of old. You either give him the best price or you plead with him that he will not haggle because he is the first buyer, and they do not want to lose that streak of good luck.
The thousands of customers entering the mall will remain faceless. Not the promise of good service and the metaphor of a store that offers more than just commodities can ever assure that the notion of “suki” will ever apply to malls. The suki is a unique creature. He gets to see the new merchandize and, in some stores, the owner would even allow him to bring some products and pay them later.
Malls also signal the death of many things: the unique stores, the bazaars that face the street, out into the social world, the idea of crossing the open street, the unique logic of a store standing side by side with a drug store, while out on the sidewalk sits an old woman with her ibus and suman arroyo. Most of us, especially those who have never left the city and the towns around it, have gotten used to these acts and processes. Interesting for me and, perhaps, baffling for some, that our way of thinking and way of doing are altered because a huge mall is now open and operating in our midst. I have nothing against mall. They are ultimate signs of progress in business. But some malls are jus t way too big and they need big space for themselves. Sometimes, they get these spaces from those who are already there. That’s why things disappear when huge malls come.
I was talking with my friend and high school batchmate, Atty. James Jacob. We were in a mall in Manila and we were regaling each other with stories about this new mall in the city, and how our fellow Nagueños were reacting and responding to it. “You know what it reminds me of? The trimobile!
No magical metaphor here. We were not saying the trimobile is like a mall. We were actually comparing the excitement about the opening of the mall to that day the first trimobiles were introduced in Naga.
Jems recounted how, as high school student, he was embarrassed when the trimobile took him right up the Four Pillars of Ateneo de Naga. “Yudi man ay…”He could hear them.
I told Jems how Pempe, my brother, and I would run to catch the trimobile. People seem to get it always ahead of us. When finally we were able to ride one, we savored the rush of wind on our faces. It was the fastest means of transportation in the city. We wanted it more than the calesa. Soon, after that, calesas were banned on major streets. Sabang and Dayangdang got to kept the calesas until the 90s. But now, they are postcard memory.
The embarrassment of the trimobile bringing you at the doorstep your school waned. The trimobile became ordinary.
During the days of the calesa, you would not be embarrassed being deposited by the cochero at the steps leading to the Four Pillars. Calesas were not allowed in the campus then, except when raining.