Dead Cafés Society redux

Erratum: Last week’s column misquoted Herman Melville’s line from Moby Dick. As pointed out by eagle-eyed Manuel "Noel" Añonuevo of the Plaridel e-group, it should have been "… whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul…"

My quote "When it’s a grey November in my soul" properly refers to the mid-to-late 1960s café cum folkhouse run by Ishmael Bernal and Jorge Arago on A. Mabini St. in Malate, before Betsy Romualdez Francia’s Café Los Indios Bravos complemented it farther up the street (where Hobbit House is now).

Ah, memories. Good memories, bad memories. And in between, there’s faulty memory, heh-heh. As they say, what’s it all about, Alzhei? Gotta start doing crossword puzzles soon, preserve what I can of ye olde noggin’s internal hard disk.

But here’s Noel to help toggle it a bit, with his own recollections of those pre-ML days:

"Read your ‘Mother Earths and Literary Tributes’ posting in Plaridel where I’m currently lurking. You mentioned Melville’s ‘When It’s A Grey November In Your Soul.’ Can’t help but add my singko-mamera’s worth.

"Here’s my take on Grey, Indios, and even Black Angel:

"I wasn’t close to Ishmael (Bernal) and Jorge Arago yet during their Balthazar (magazine) days. Since I was younger (17 at that time), I had a different set of friends altogether. During our sophomore year, from the Basement (of UP Diliman’s A.S. bldg.), we would see the aloof Ishmael in a trench coat, waiting for a car that would take him to Clark, Pampanga to teach French to American servicemen. Since we (Toots Piñon, Flora Medina of the notorious Cleopatra eye makeup, and I) viewed him with equal aloofness, he later dropped his guard (as well as his trench) and started joining us.

"This was the same time (’65) that Betsy Romualdez-Francia put up the very first disco in the Philippines, in their Addams-family-style compound fronting JRC (Jose Rizal College) along Shaw Blvd, called Black Angel.

"Adrian Cristobal was raising a family in one of the houses. Ishmael and a wild-looking, frazzle-haired Jorge, also staying in the compound, were the resident DJs.

"The music: G-L-O-R-I-A, Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones and The Byrds (yata, ha)... ‘This is the evening of the da-aa-y, I sit and watch as children pla-a-aay…’ Ah, now I remember the title: As Tears Go By, which I think is also by the Rolling Stones.

"Since we were the bagets lording over the dance floor all the time, Betsy’s manager/uncle would sneak us in through a side window so we didn’t have to pay cover. The crowd consisted of ad agency types, some artistas, UP studes naturally, a pack of porma Letranites called the Havocs, who had a much-copied, trademark staccato busina…

"When the barumbados like the notorious Boy Golden started hanging out, the fights started erupting regularly, and poor Betsy had to close shop.

"Then along came Grey.

"For those too young to remember, or even know – around 1965 to 66, Ishmael Bernal put up a Malate coffee shop called When It’s A Grey November In Your Soul, a line he borrowed from Moby Dick (‘Whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul...’ Thank you po, Google).

"A watering hole for artistes, intellectwells kuno and folk singers (with songs such as Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan, Puff the Magic Dragon and Blowing in the Wind by Peter, Paul and Mary…), the walls were papered with ‘collage.’ I remember collaging one wall before Grey opened: literally cut and paste ito, mga children... We’d cut magazine pics of models, singers, art chuva, and paste it on the wall, a la wallpaper. This collage rage was what was supposedly happening in Mod London at that time.

"The only other person who collaged his room was the London-obsessed, enfant-hairdresser Miloy Concha of Tiffany’s (owned by the Arcaches) across the street from Grey.

"One afternoon, from the Basement, Betsy drove Toots Piñon and me to Grey to do a cover pictorial for Graphic Magazine (yata, o baka ’yung Philippine Leader na). Dancing to the tune of Well Respected Man (‘He’s a well respected man about town/ doing the best things so conser-vaa-tivv-ly’), we trashed about the small cafe in the afternoon light as if we were back again to the fabled nights of Black Angel.

"But we weren’t hanging out in Grey, really. Grey was too folksong. We bagets were after all into disco, bebeh.

"Then Ishma upped and left for a film scholarship in Poona, India… and when he came back, Betsy’s Black Angel, with its 19th-century tertulia decor dreamed up by Aling Barang, reloaded to become The Ultimate watering hole of hippies, artists and again, intelectwells: Los Indios Bravos, or Indios, as it was called by habitués.

"Music: The Doors… and Low Spark of High Heeled Boys by Traffic."

Noel’s trip down memory lane inexplicably ends there. Well, he says he got sleepy. I would, too, get drowsy, that is, whenever I dig back into Sixties RAM turf.

I recall having written something once, "Dead Cafés Society," where I listed all the defunct watering holes that had previously drawn us like a Garci to a myriad of cell phones, in those times of "innocence… of confidences… (Simon & Garfunkel; hey, wait, they came later).

Like Noel and his barkada, I too stomped on the dance floor of Black Angel Discotheque, at 17, with no less than my UP Diliman Humanities professor at the time, the Aling Barang Noel mentions, a.k.a. iconic poet-muse Virginia R. Moreno.

Black Angel was a spit away from the "Crossing," or what Eman Lacaba referred to in a poem as "the bedlam belly of Mandaluyong" – where San Juan’s Blumenttritt St. (Nick Joaquin’s home turf) met up with Shaw Blvd.

We haven’t met, Manuel Añonuevo and I, but I corroborate his account of the presence of the Havocs and the notorious Boy Golden, who it was I think shot poet Willybog Sanchez in the knee one raucous night at Black Angel. And yes, that led to its closure.

I’d forgotten about Adrian occupying a house in that compound, but yes, now it comes back. Forty years later, this gentleman is due to be conferred a Doctor in Humanities degree (honoris causa) by the University of the East at the PICC. Why, that happens this week, on Wednesday, Dec. 7, a few hours before Writers Night transpires equally famously at the Hardin ng Mga Rosas in UP Diliman. Tingnan mo nga naman: how charm flies; er, I mean time. In any case, roses and kudos to Dr. Cristobal.

And yes, with Black Angel’s shutdown, our UP writers’ group of Willybog (once his kneecap healed, albeit giving Wilfredo Pascua Sanchez a gimp that’s since been straightened out by Chicago’s windchill factor), Erwin Castillo, Frankie Osorio, and occasionally Jun Tera (before he became Terra), Jolico Cuadra (before he became Jolicco), and Jun Lansang (before and after his lyric genius) would occasionally abandon our gin and corned beef haunt that was Hong Ning in Cubao to make the long trip by cab to A. Mabini, there to catch Erwin’s Beta Sigman brod Mel Gulfin at Grey November.

Then it was Indios, as peripheral company ogling Jose Garcia Villa, Joaquin, Moreno, Cristobal, Kit Tatad, and the enfant terrible Florentino Dauz whom Nonoy Marcelo turned into his Tisoy comic strip’s Caligula. Bencab had his first exhibit next door, was introed to Betsy’s London friend Caroline Kennedy, and the rest is part of Anglo-Philippine history.

Another roomer at Indios’ upstairs warren was the dancer Delia Javier, who we hear passed away in Los Angeles a few months ago. Mabuhay ka, Delia. Mother Earth din siya, often giving Eman and me her last banana to tide away our pulutan blues. Or her last roach.

Grey went defunct, and so did Indios after a few halcyon years. But then it had turned into the ’70s, and on the wrong side of the tracks, past Taft Avenue, rose a pretender as bohemia haven: Café Hurri-manna. It was named after King and Tikoy Aguiluz’s lola’s version of what she suspected we smoked in the den at the Aguiluzes’ Panay Ave. digs. How could we, when Tikoy, Eman and I had such Jesuit-trained scholars as Freddie Salanga and Linggoy Alcuaz for overnight company? Man, it was Heidegger, Sartre, Teilhard de Chardin et al. we tranced on.

Then Hurri-manna with its weekend Black Masses (with Mago Eman as high priest tending to the occasional virgin) also closed down after a wild season. And all was quiet on the hippie front off Taft but the Jai-Alai fronton, till Iskho Lopez, who had managed Hurrri-manna, came up with his Kape Talismo on what was then Kansas St., way back of Women’s.

Celebrity chefs were featured, but the exclusive clientele couldn’t pay in cash or have plastic cards swiped. They had to exchange their lucre for Kape Talismo dollars, if I recall right.

But there’s no recalling right, or wrong or left, when one traipses down deja voodoo country. Suffice it to say that a deeper flashback should take us all along Taft and past Vito Cruz, to the mother of ’em all as far as Malate-to-Pasay café society goes. And that was the Cock-n-Bull nightspot opened by fiction writer and ingénue Lilia Amansec, whose early story "Demon Lover" won a Palanca way back in the early ’60s.

She had a fine ivory tinkler named Ernie Donida in that piano bar frequented by journalists and artists. Ely Santiago did caricatures of the habitués, and some of these were posted on the walls. It might have been the first watering hole where we heard Nick Joaquin caterwauling with his own boom-box version of Cole Porter ditties.

And now we hear that Penguin Café Gallery, which took over in the ’80s, camping out in serial places off Remedios Circle, has been having a tough time of late. Why, where have all the flowers gone? Greenbelt? Sayang naman if it goes defunct and joins the Dead Cafés Society. Carpe diem, et noctem! Even when it turns a damp, drizzly December in our truth-telling souls; oh, all right, make that lie-detector gizmos.