By: E Lambert Laiz
Every morning, before the city fully shook off its drowsiness, Elsa would step off the JD Transit bus in front of Plaza Lacson and make her way down Escolta. It was the quickest path from her house in Tondo to the insurance office where she worked as a clerk on the 5th floor of a building in Binondo. But more than that, it was a route that comforted her, familiar and dignified, even as the city around it slowly changed.
Escolta still had its air of old prestige in those years, though some would say it was starting to lose its shine. To Elsa, it felt like walking through the corridors of a dream, the kind her parents used to talk about. She remembered her mother describing the avenue in the 1950s, when women wore gloves and carried parasols, and the men never went out without a pressed camisa de chino under their Americana.
Now it was the 1980s. Marcos was still in Malacañang, FM radio was full of American soft rock, and the buses were louder and more chaotic. But Escolta still stood, flanked by buildings with names like Regina, Calvo, and First United, grandeur slowly crumbling, but still noble, like an aging beauty queen.
Elsa liked to walk slowly, especially when she wasn’t late. She’d pass by Botica Boie, which was already looking tired, its wooden counters gathering more dust than customers. The Lyric Theater still played movies, but mostly second-run Tagalog films. A poster for a Nora Aunor drama was fading in the sun. The marquee's bulbs had gone dim, but Elsa liked how the letters flickered at night, trying to stay alive.
The street vendors were always there, selling fish balls, cigarettes, and those little plastic toys that chirped when you blew into them. Some sold pirated cassette tapes, laid out neatly on blankets. One guy always had a radio blasting Hotdog or VST & Co., and it gave Escolta a strange, catchy rhythm. A blend of disco and decay.
She often stopped by a small stall near Burke Building to buy a cup of lukewarm Nescafé. The old man who ran it always called her "Ineng," even though she was already 27. He had been on that corner since the 1960s, he once told her. "Dito pa ako noong sikat ang Heacock's. Aba, ang mamahalin ng tinda roon!"
As she sipped her coffee, she would glance up at the First United Building. The elevators there still worked, and she wondered what it must have been like when it opened, air-conditioned, sleek, modern. Now the windows were streaked with dust, and the marble floor was dulled by years of footsteps.
Some days, she’d take her lunch break there, wandering into a small bookstore that still carried imported magazines... Time, Reader’s Digest, and sometimes Seventeen, if the shipment wasn’t late. She would flip through the glossy pages, dreaming of clothes she couldn’t afford and places she might never see.
But she never pitied herself. She liked her life, especially the quiet ritual of passing through Escolta. It felt like her own secret museum, open to anyone but only truly seen by a few. The past whispered to her from the bricks, the iron balconies, the faded signage. A world gone, but not quite lost.
One evening in December, as she walked back to the bus stop under the pink-orange glow of a Manila sunset, she heard an old man say to another, “Wala na 'yan, pare. Patay na ang Escolta.”
Elsa glanced at the street, the glow of a sari-sari store’s fluorescent light, the laughing barkers, the tricycles darting around like dragonflies... and smiled to herself.
“Not dead,” she whispered. “Just dreaming.”
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