I walked past the new Memento one evening and saw no one inside.
An empty bar has always been an open invitation for me. I have never needed company to enjoy a beer. Sometimes the best conversations are the ones you have with your own thoughts.
It was my first visit since Memento moved a few doors away from its old home on Bautista Street. It was also my first visit since I last wrote about the place a few years ago.
The new place is brighter. Cleaner. More contemporary. I dare say, even a little swanky.
For a few moments, it felt unfamiliar.
Then I saw familiar faces. Roxy was behind the bar. Yong was still in the kitchen. Outside, Lakay was at his usual spot watching over the parking area. There was a new face, too. Mac had joined the staff since my last visit.
It was Memento after all.
Keeping a neighborhood bar alive for three decades is no small accomplishment.
Bars come and go with astonishing speed. Many don’t survive two years. Running one has never been easy. Rent goes up. Wages go up. Food and liquor cost more than they used to. City Hall still wants its permits and fees. Then comes the monthly electricity bill-in a country with the highest power rates in Southeast Asia.
And those are only the predictable problems. There are also pandemics. Floods. Road closures. Changing tastes. Nights when customers simply don’t come.
Yet here was Memento.
Not continuously under the same ownership, admittedly. The name changed. The caretakers changed. But someone always chose to keep the doors open. Each owner inherited something worth preserving and left something for the next.
Long before it became Memento, the place was Porch.
I first wandered into Porch sometime in the 1990s when I was in my twenties. On many nights, every stool at the bar was already taken. I’d simply cross the street to Kilovoltz, have a beer there, then wander back later to see if a seat had opened up.
There was always somebody dropping in for one beer that became three; somebody celebrating a promotion, somebody getting over a heartbreak, somebody simply delaying the trip home.
Back then, none of us imagined we were making memories. We were only trying to get through another day.
Bautista was a very different street then. Palanan itself has always had a nightlife of its own. Those who know the neighborhood know what I mean. Amid bars where the drinks are sometimes only part of the business are places like Memento and the newer Noona Neena, where conversations have always been as important as the beer, and where you never pay for the company.
Kilovoltz has been gone for decades. Porch, now Memento, endured much longer.
These days, I often walk past the old Porch house. It is already being stripped away. Before long, the property will give way to a residential high-rise.
Whenever I pass by, I’m reminded that I was younger during the Porch years than my own children are today. You don’t notice time passing while you’re busy living your life. You don’t notice a neighborhood changing while you’re busy being part of it. Sometimes it takes the slow disappearance of an old house to make you realize how much time has gone by.
Buildings come and go. The harder thing is keeping a place alive.
Len Aquino, one of Memento’s owners, told me they never seriously considered leaving Bautista.
‘We decided to stay in Bautista because of the support we continuously receive from our customers. Even after Memento closed, many of our regulars kept asking when and where we would reopen. That made us realize that the community we built was here in Bautista.’
That, more than anything else, explains why some places endure. They are more than businesses. They quietly become part of people’s lives.
When I walked in that evening, the bar was empty. By the time I closed my laptop, it wasn’t.
An old friend, Abac Cordero of the Philippine Star, walked in with Dottie Pulido, owner of Noona Neena. Before long, we found ourselves talking about the neighborhood, the places that had disappeared, and the ones that somehow refused to.
Perhaps that’s the best measure of a neighborhood bar-not the building or house where it stands, but the community that refuses to let it disappear. ###