THESE ARE Dickensian times: the best, and the worst as well.
First the best.
Parking is one hell of an experience at SM Pampanga on weekends, something of a purgatory on weekdays. For sheer volume of vehicles, from imposing SUVs, shiny Hondas and Toyotas, to dilapidated PUJs and decrepit PUBs sporting lines as far apart as Cabcaben-Mariveles, Vigan-San Fernando-Pozzorubio, Tarlac-Maliwalu-Zaragoza, and San Jose-Munoz-Cabanatuan.
Now, if each body at the mall spent but P100 on a weekend, the sales volume would easily rocket to millions. And nary a mall-goer comes out without even a wee blue or yellow plastic bag. Why, even the venerable Pidiong Mendoza, once Pampanga’s foremost political strategist, spends way beyond P100 just for his daily espresso at the Old Manila coffeeshop.
SM City Pampanga is a negation of the economic crisis supposed to be obtaining in the country.
So is the Pampanga Coliseum some way out front of Pepsi-Cola along MacArthur Highway. One sultada (cockfight) generating bets to hundred thousands is by no means any sign of a constricted economy. Sure, money burners Melchor and Marga do their thing there. So do thousands of wage-earners in their ubiquitous slippers, puruntung (knee-length shorts) and sando or sleeveless tees.
So, who says the ordinary folk don’t have the money? If they can go malling and bet in sabong, they most surely can pay for life’s essentials.
Now the worst.
One surefire indicator of a failing economy is the number of flesh peddlers. Lahat tumataas, panty lang ang bumababa (Everything rises, only panties fall). That’s no idle, if not ribald, wisecrack but an established fact.
I remember the folksy wisdom of a relative, Uncle Pununuk – bless his soul – once a casador (brothel overseer) at the Area (Angeles City’s flesh market that dates back to pre-WW II).
He imparted to me his “law of economics” thus: When the prices of prime commodities go up, the price of a pound of flesh at the Area goes down. Sex as a commodity takes the backseat to the essentials of food, house rental, power and water bills, etc. And with daily wage-earners making the bulk of Area customers, the base price for sex had to be slashed further.
Good friend Deng Pangilinan makes a very interesting point: “My libido wanes whenever I earn money in these trying times. Thinking of what I can already bring home to my family for whatever I can spend for transactional sex.” Touchè.
The demand for sex – paid sex, that is – decreases with the rise in prices of commodities, to iterate our point. Inversely, the supply side increases as the need to earn more becomes imperative, if only to cope with the hard times. Thus, the upsurge in the number of commercial sex workers. The resultant glut depressing prices further.
Aside from the Area, a socio-economic barometer of sex-in-hard-times is the frontage of Rajah and Sultan motels in Balibago. In ordinary times, business hours start by eight in the evening, the better to camouflage in darkness the faded charms of jaded veterans who have seen better days. These days, transactions get to start at noontime, the better to see more and younger options.
The bored, mini-skirted girls by the neoned gates of karaoke and videoke joints as well as those in massage parlors indicate business slowdown too. The girls won’t be out on display if there were customers inside.
So we have the best of times and the worst of times. So what do we do?
E di, enjoy both. As only we, Filipinos, can. Don’t we just love self-flagellation and self-mockery? Ain’t we masters at laughing? Even when the joke is on us? This makes the essential Pinoy. That which other cultures deem SM. And that does not stand for Henry Sy’s mall, dummy.
(NO new mintage is this piece. It came out in my old Zona Libre column in The Voice, August 12-18, 2001. Over seven years since, we are in the same rut.)
First the best.
Parking is one hell of an experience at SM Pampanga on weekends, something of a purgatory on weekdays. For sheer volume of vehicles, from imposing SUVs, shiny Hondas and Toyotas, to dilapidated PUJs and decrepit PUBs sporting lines as far apart as Cabcaben-Mariveles, Vigan-San Fernando-Pozzorubio, Tarlac-Maliwalu-Zaragoza, and San Jose-Munoz-Cabanatuan.
Now, if each body at the mall spent but P100 on a weekend, the sales volume would easily rocket to millions. And nary a mall-goer comes out without even a wee blue or yellow plastic bag. Why, even the venerable Pidiong Mendoza, once Pampanga’s foremost political strategist, spends way beyond P100 just for his daily espresso at the Old Manila coffeeshop.
SM City Pampanga is a negation of the economic crisis supposed to be obtaining in the country.
So is the Pampanga Coliseum some way out front of Pepsi-Cola along MacArthur Highway. One sultada (cockfight) generating bets to hundred thousands is by no means any sign of a constricted economy. Sure, money burners Melchor and Marga do their thing there. So do thousands of wage-earners in their ubiquitous slippers, puruntung (knee-length shorts) and sando or sleeveless tees.
So, who says the ordinary folk don’t have the money? If they can go malling and bet in sabong, they most surely can pay for life’s essentials.
Now the worst.
One surefire indicator of a failing economy is the number of flesh peddlers. Lahat tumataas, panty lang ang bumababa (Everything rises, only panties fall). That’s no idle, if not ribald, wisecrack but an established fact.
I remember the folksy wisdom of a relative, Uncle Pununuk – bless his soul – once a casador (brothel overseer) at the Area (Angeles City’s flesh market that dates back to pre-WW II).
He imparted to me his “law of economics” thus: When the prices of prime commodities go up, the price of a pound of flesh at the Area goes down. Sex as a commodity takes the backseat to the essentials of food, house rental, power and water bills, etc. And with daily wage-earners making the bulk of Area customers, the base price for sex had to be slashed further.
Good friend Deng Pangilinan makes a very interesting point: “My libido wanes whenever I earn money in these trying times. Thinking of what I can already bring home to my family for whatever I can spend for transactional sex.” Touchè.
The demand for sex – paid sex, that is – decreases with the rise in prices of commodities, to iterate our point. Inversely, the supply side increases as the need to earn more becomes imperative, if only to cope with the hard times. Thus, the upsurge in the number of commercial sex workers. The resultant glut depressing prices further.
Aside from the Area, a socio-economic barometer of sex-in-hard-times is the frontage of Rajah and Sultan motels in Balibago. In ordinary times, business hours start by eight in the evening, the better to camouflage in darkness the faded charms of jaded veterans who have seen better days. These days, transactions get to start at noontime, the better to see more and younger options.
The bored, mini-skirted girls by the neoned gates of karaoke and videoke joints as well as those in massage parlors indicate business slowdown too. The girls won’t be out on display if there were customers inside.
So we have the best of times and the worst of times. So what do we do?
E di, enjoy both. As only we, Filipinos, can. Don’t we just love self-flagellation and self-mockery? Ain’t we masters at laughing? Even when the joke is on us? This makes the essential Pinoy. That which other cultures deem SM. And that does not stand for Henry Sy’s mall, dummy.
(NO new mintage is this piece. It came out in my old Zona Libre column in The Voice, August 12-18, 2001. Over seven years since, we are in the same rut.)
