Back when Cubao was king

Before the now nearly dead CDs took over in the mid-1980s, long-playing records cost P100 and 45-rpm singles went for about P35. For a University of Santo Tomas journalism student, these were not small sums, which was why I sometimes skipped merienda to afford them.

Hunger was temporary, I reckoned, while having the vinyl album you wanted — think of The Cure, Aztec Camera, and Tears for Fears — was forever, or at least until you scratched it.

Stepping off the escalator at National Book Store’s multi-story Cubao Superbranch — which, according to a Radar PH report, is moving to Gateway Mall 2 in 2027 — the record bar greeted you. It was one of those stops that made the place memorable.

For those of us who grew up with it, the building was less a bookstore than a declaration that a child’s imagination should not be limited by the pesos in his pocket.

My mother brought us to Cubao during our elementary school days, usually around Christmas, when the animated holiday display at Manila C.O.D. was part of the ritual. Back then, Christmas was an event, and Cubao was the place to be.

The Araneta Coliseum hosted the big names and Fiesta Carnival made childhood seem like an endless weekend. In college, Ali Mall would become my favorite place to watch movies. Every trip ended, one way or another, at National Book Store.

Coming from Cainta, we took a jeepney that dropped us off beside Automatic Center. I would linger there, staring at the stereos behind the glass, their gleaming knobs and dials promising a world of sound I could only dream of owning.

I couldn’t afford them, but that hardly stopped me from imagining what it would be like to have one. Decades later, I am still chasing that sound, though I have since become a rehabilitated audiophile.

Back at National, the store seemed to contain the entire world, stacked floor upon floor. There were toys, school supplies (on the ground floor, I think), textbooks, reference books, and things with no obvious business in a bookstore but somehow belonged there.

The medical equipment section fascinated me. The microscopes suggested you could peer into another world without leaving Quezon City.

Yes, it was a business, and that glorious sprawl surely sold plenty. But it never felt like being herded into something, unlike today’s retailers that talk about customer journeys and market segmentation.

National Book Store simply let us wander. We walked in looking for notebooks and walked out dreaming of becoming scientists, musicians or, if the toy section held sway, masters of the universe. Perhaps that was the real merchandise: possibilities.

Memory, of course, applies a flattering filter. The jeepneys were hardly luxurious, and the AKAIs, Kenwoods, and Pioneers stayed stubbornly out of reach. But there was a thrill in discovering something you didn’t know you wanted — which is hard to reproduce today in a world where we can order almost anything without leaving our bed.

But for those of us who grew up in its shadow, National Book Store was never just about books. It was where we learned to want things, save for them, and imagine our lives beyond our circumstances.

We have since outgrown the textbooks and outspent our allowances. But somewhere inside — at least in the realm of nostalgia — is still that kid, if only in heart.