Cheery Angst

This wasn’t her grandparents’ angst, but Emma Koenig, author of the book F*ck! I’m in My Twenties has accomplished what novelists and poets have done for generations: use existential angst to make a living and improve their love lives.

And Man Swooned

I've been reading a lot of Jane Austen lately, and the notion of young heroines using their beguiling manners to make a "conquest" which in those days simply meant a young, eligible bachelor falling madly and deeply, head over heels in love has been around since the Victorian era. Proust makes use of the term as well.

The "marriage plot" made popular by Ms Austin's novels was something that the women's movement was supposed to have retired long ago (hat tip to Jeffrey Eugenides). That the whole purpose of a woman's existence was to marry well was supplanted by feminism. Unfortunately, it's not the women who seem hooked on that notion in today's world, but the men. 

Muttley: poster dog for the post-post-modern age

Here at the Scenester, we always pride ourselves with over-thinking things through to excess. It is, after all, what makes the absurdities of life in the urban jungle a bit more sensible. "Traffic isn't traffic," as one notable person once said, "It's just an illusion." Perhaps that's framing things a little too transcendentally. As the philosopher once famously said, and I am merely paraphrasing him here, "Shit happens." Which is why this discussion is about something a little bit closer to Earth.

So what's on the menu

Conclusion: Hizon’s Bakery: Where it all began

The final part of the series Nostalgic in Ermita

Down the road from the Midtown Inn is the old Hizon’s bakery on Jorge Bocobo. Now of all the places in Ermita, this one is the most successful, having branched out to other places and having become a somewhat commercial venture.

Hizon’s was the place where I would occasionally get French bread from in the morning if I felt like biking a few blocks down from Malate. That was when I rode an old Japanese messenger bike with a little basket in front. I would take the bike down through this elevator in my building with an accordion steel door. Ride out in the early morning traffic and grab a loaf of bread.

Nostalgic in Ermita Part 4: Midtown Inn Diner

Nostalgic in Ermita 

Part 4: Midtown Inn Diner: The Place for a Strong Brew

Feeling a bit down trodden at this point (after seeing the Aroma Café in such a state), I decided to inspect another place where I used to go for straight-black coffee. The Midtown Inn Diner on Padre Faura was still open for business.

These days however I have stopped drinking coffee due to heart burn and acid reflux so all I ordered was an ice tea. The refreshment lifted my spirits and helped me cool down after enduring the heat and the traffic outside.

Nostalgic in Ermita Part 3: Aroma Café: An Independent Coffee Shop

Read the  rest of the series: Nostalgic in Ermita 

The second spot I visited was an independent café operated by a spunky lady called Yolly, the Aroma Café. But before I got there, I had to cross the street. I noticed the toxic fumes from the Jeepneys plying their route were twice as noxious as before. Perhaps it is the increased congestion that has occurred since all around towering buildings that once were not there had emerged, or perhaps it is the relatively pristine conditions that I have gotten used to that made me perceive it that way.

Asian cities are known to be crowded and polluted for the most part, and the smell of diesel never seemed to bother me before. But as I was experiencing things once again after a long hiatus, I was sensing everything as if for the first time in a heightened sort of way.

Nostalgic in Ermita Part 2: Solidaridad—a literary Mecca

Read the intro to Nostalgic in Ermita

My first stop was the old book store on the corner of Jorge Bocobo and Padre Faura. Solidaridad (Soli) was where I went to feed my intellectual appetite. I was glad to grace its premises once again. It was here where I stocked my bookshelf with books on literary criticism and poetry, my favorite topics at the time (so much so that I audited courses on them after graduating from college). Only one or two bookstores in Manila carried such titles. All the rest had become Borders-type operations.

Nostalgic in Ermita (Intro)

The district of Malate-Ermita two boroughs adjacent to the walled city of Intramuros Manila was where I spent a good part of my youth in during the late 70s to late 90s. The fortunes of these twin neighborhoods would take different trajectories. Malate became sort of a hipster place to live in for a time, while Ermita retained a lot of quaint and interesting places that slipped beneath the radar of the trendy-set.

Hipster Apocalypse: The Dangers of Going Out

The popular Australian show Rockwiz airs on Saturday nights. To get people to say home and watch it, it plays on the fears and frustrations of many, namely of running into a bunch of hipsters, when going out in a novel way. It calls today's scene the Hipster Apocalypse.


Rockwiz (hipster apocalypse) promo from Sean Bell on Vimeo.