InnerViews: THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE... MALATE

BEFORE I became a resident, Malate was to me merely a passive host to rowdy bars and restaurants stretching into the nearby Ermita district. It seemed like a place reserved solely for people looking to chill out, hang out, and seek casual encounters.

During my first year in the metropolis in the early '90s, I only knew of the area through news reports about its famous mayor, Alfredo Lim. The former police chief turned city mayor—who later became a senator before returning to the mayoral seat—made headlines by padlocking bars and restaurants across the Malate-Ermita area. The city council at the time believed these establishments were havens for prostitution and lewd shows. Years later, the Supreme Court ruled that the mayor and his council had exceeded their authority by shutting down legitimate businesses. By then, however, many bar owners, entertainers, and patrons had already migrated to other nightlife districts in the metropolis.

Mayor Lito Atienza, who succeeded Lim, initiated a grand revitalization of Manila’s old districts, including Malate, sprucing up city squares and mini-plazas. New resto-bars and KTV joints—many of them Korean-owned—began to crop up. A diverse cluster of new businesses breathed life back into the Nakpil-Adriatico-Orosa stretch, an area just a few blocks south of Robinsons Place that had sat deserted during Lim's first term.

I first saw Malate up close when I started frequenting the area to visit my girlfriend. Her family lived in one of the remaining pre-war wooden houses along Remedios Street, just about 500 meters from Malate Church. It was 1996, three years after I had moved from Ilocos. At the time, I was working as a proofreader for a publishing house and renting a bed space in an old house in Quezon City.

That very same year, I married my girlfriend at Malate Church. From January 1997 until late 2001, when my family relocated to Bulacan, I was a proud resident of Barangay 697, Malate District. I registered to vote there a year later and have maintained my voter registration in that same barangay through every succeeding election up to this day.

Even though we now reside in Marilao, Bulacan, the old district of Malate will always be home to my family. My three children were all born at the nearby Philippine General Hospital in Ermita and baptized at Malate Church. When they were babies, we would bring them to the barangay health center near San Andres Market for their free medical checkups.

We still return to Malate every third Sunday of November to celebrate the feast day of its patron, Our Lady of Remedies. We go back whenever my wife or one of the kids falls ill and needs a checkup with their doctor in Singalong, or whenever my wife has important business to conduct in the city. Malate is our permanent anchor—a reliable stopover and a familiar watering hole.

Above all, the one event that gravitates our family back to Malate is our annual New Year’s Eve celebration. It serves as the grand reunion for the Gundran clan, bringing together my mother-in-law, my wife’s brothers and sisters, their children, in-laws, and grandchildren. We welcome the New Year watching fireworks just outside the front gate on Remedios Street, later feasting on spaghetti, ham, and pork or hotdog barbecue. Remarkably, we exchange our holiday gifts on the 31st of December rather than on Christmas Day.

For the past twelve years, with the sole exception of 1999 when we visited my hometown in Ilocos Sur, I have spent every New Year’s Eve in Malate. The first day of the year is traditionally spent strolling and taking family pictures along the Manila Baywalk on Roxas Boulevard. Other times, we attend Mass at Malate Church, visit the Manila Zoo, play arcade games at Harrison Plaza or Robinsons Place, or watch our children run around the open spaces of Remedios Circle and the Paraiso ng Batang Maynila park, sharing the space with local street kids playing half-naked in the sun.

Whenever the holiday season wraps up and we leave for Bulacan, we carry the comforting certainty that we will be back soon. We will return to old Malate to be with family, to revisit my wife’s birthplace, and to walk the streets of the city she first called home. No matter where life takes us or how far we drift, we always find our way back to Malate. There truly is no place like this district, a place I have happily considered my home for the past 12 years.