Baguio-Quezon

Bonifacio Street is by far one of the busiest thoroughfares in Baguio City, primarily because it is home to schools and students. Magsaysay Avenue also meets Bonifacio Street at the Baguio Center Mall, so traffic to and from La Trinidad adds to the buildup.

Saint Louis University also has its main gate at this street, so we frequent this road. We usually just walk from the gate all the way to Session Road when we were students. After doing it again some time back, I realized that it was quite a long walk! But back then, it was, shall we say, a more pleasant thing to do. These days, Bonifacio Street is so congested with people and vehicular traffic. Times are indeed changing.

My wife and I walked from SLU to Session Road. Along the way is another school, the Baguio Central University.
And then comes the Baguio Center Mall. In the 70s, this was a huge, vacant lot and was a jeepney terminal. It was not cemented and was of course, dusty on sunny days and muddy on the rainy season. But it had a character all its own. Street shows would be performed here with snakes and eggs and demonstrations of the effectiveness of herbal medicines they would be selling to the crowd, with their loudspeakers blaring and attracting quite a crowd. Today, this mall features a bowling alley at the top level. We played there a couple of times. I don't play bowling actually, but I do to humor my friends and I always end up with the lowest score. Oh well.

See the blackened building beyond? That's the University of Baguio campus. It had an unfortunate fire accident recently.

Our walk brings us to Malcolm Square, now commonly known as People's Park. Assemblies are done here.

The peach-colored building beyond was once a cinema. It's now a place for second-hand items. U-Need Grocery is one of the older stores in Baguio, though it was much bigger on the 70s and 80s. They even had a bakery where we bought our streamline cake, a favorite on birthdays. Today, the bakery is gone and half of the grocery store with it.

Not all businesses are falling on hard times, though. Pang Hoi, for example, had considerably increased its store space.

Technorati tags: Baguio

Posted in: Bonifacio Street on Friday, May 02, 2008 at at 5:11 PM