Native New Yorkers - WHY AND WHY NOT by Nelson A. Navarro

New York – My good friend Michael Dadap wanted to meet at Barneys. I was gung-ho.

Never shopping or fashion freaks, we faced a common challenge: To get some decent clothing for one of those snooty affairs we simply couldn’t miss for patriotic and other reasons.

Barneys, we agreed, was just the best place for such compulsory expeditions. Long before it became as famous and expensive as Bloomingdale’s, it was known as this friendly establishment on Seventh Avenue near 17th Street that sold nice men’s clothes at affordable prices.

Michael and I are proud UP Diliman promdis (he from Leyte and I from Bukidnon) and New York transplants (he more than I) who have known each other for 30 years. He’s the classical guitarist from the musical Dadap clan who’s rather well-connected in the New York music scene. .

Apart from concretizing, Michael and his Chinese-American wife Yeau-cheng Ma run the Children’s Orchestra Society of New York, of which I have been an absentee board member for many years. The COSNY was founded in the 1950s by YC’s father, the late Dr. Ma, a well-known music pedagogue from Shanghai and Paris, whose only other child happens to be Yo-Yo Ma, the world-famous cellist.

On this visit to the Big Apple, Michael and I spoke on the phone one fine morning and found out we were invited to the same party that night. Hence, the shopping emergency.

"You know where it’s located, right?" he asked.

"But of course," I shot back, as if to remind him that although I had relocated back to Manila some 12 years ago, I still knew my way around like a Native New Yorker.

"Get there ahead of me," he jokingly said. "Allow sometime for getting lost."

After doing my daily e-mail and running some errands, I was soon marching in the direction of Barneys. Another friend had come over and decided to kill time with me.

We froze on our tracks as soon as we got to the corner of Seventh and 17th.. There was no Barneys in sight, just a strange women’s department store.

Embarrassed before my companion who has long teased me as "the quintessential New Yorker", I quickly remarked that the store might be two blocks farther up. So off we went. Still no Barneys.

"Perhaps it’s the other way down," I muttered as we switched gears and headed downtown. Still no Barneys.

In desperation, I dove into the nearest magazine store and pleaded for directions. "Yes, yes," said the Indian cashier, "It’s there between on 17th between 7th and 8th Avenue."

Against my better judgment, I decided to follow the guy’s firm instructions. A well-known store trading location from a prominent corner to a side street didn’t make sense.

Up and down the street we walked. There was nothing there except a firehouse, a high school and some nondescript storefronts. We barged into the school for help. "It’s right there, two doors down, the one with the green flags," said the lady principal who coolly stepped out to point the way there.

Lo and behold, the green flags fluttering above us indeed had microscopic letters saying "Barneys." Practically bare of merchandise, the place was all that remained of the store’s factory outlet. "We closed that old store a long time ago," volunteered one smart-looking salesgirl.

What she did not mention, I found out later, was that Barneys had gone bankrupt and was on some kind of terminal receivership. Sometime in the 1990s when it became New York’s hottest fashion emporium, the original store in the quiet neighborhood Michael and I and thousands of other New Yorkers knew so well was abandoned in favor of prime locations elsewhere. A few high-flying years later, the "new" Barneys lost so much money it came crashing to the ground.

And, of course, I had been blissfully oblivious of this earthshaking blip in Manhattan history.

The long and short of this failed expedition was I headed back to the apartment to sulk. I never saw Michael.

If I was chastened by this experience, my friend was apoplectic. "I felt like a fool driving around and around that block." Michael told me over cocktails a few hours later at the party, both of us trying to look confident in our old ratty suits. "You’re excused because you live in Manila, but I feel terrible because I live in Queens, just across the East River."

"Precisely, Michael," purred this Pasay-born Manhattan chauvinist in fire-engine red who drifted by to make beso-beso. "If you live in Queens, you might as well be living in Leyte."

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Nelson A. Navarro’s e-mail address: <[email protected]>