Signs of the Times By A.M.B. Apalisok
It may just be the gathering strength of the peso and not the gathering storm of power and politics. A strange sign, though, is that the price of goods hasn’t gone down. Yet when the peso weakens, the rise of the price of goods is easily explained away.
We need only look around and be beset by signs or portents. Fast moving dark clouds may mean a storm about to strike in all its fury. But why bother with the unstoppable when we can always turn around and look at other signs that are laughable?
No, I do not mean the strengthening peso that seems to have the same effect of pussyfooting, crawling, quiet rise on the price of goods. I mean those more blatant commercial signs of services and stores. They who announce their presence announce it in style, regardless of the strength of the peso.
Consider these creative clones right within our creative country where the US dollar is weakening against the local currency. These signs show the risk of big store chains to have copycats, of their names at least. There’s the drugstore Memory Drug, the food bars Macdonuts, Mang Donalds, and Pizza Hot, and the barbershop Scissors Palace. Take that, Mercury Drug, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Caesar’s Palace.
One cannot mistake Goldirocks for Goldilocks, naturally. The former is a gravel and sand business while the latter is a bakery and restaurant chain whose name in turn was taken from the fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears. And, out of respect, perhaps, for a feline friend, specifically one as popular as Garfield, is a barbershop named Felix the Cut.
Other names are clones of pop culture titles and personalities. Petal Attraction is obviously a flower shop while Mane Attraction is a beauty parlor. Maruya Carey is a potato snack bar, The Way We Wear is a boutique, and Mat and Jeep is a store for jeep accessories, thanks to the likes of singers Mariah Carey and Barbra Streisand and the cartoon characters Mutt and Jeff.
Will I buy medicine from Farmacia With Love? Certainly, given the chance. I hold respect for creativity. No harm if it has shades of James Bond. And, take note, Bread Pitt is the name of a bakery. Cheers, Brangelina!
I won’t dare to take dinner though at LBM Restaurant. I have nothing against initials and the respectable names of people they represent. It’s just that, well, this one just seems, you know...
But I won’t hesitate to try it out at TapSi TurBi if I could, even if its imagery is that of mayhem. It is a restaurant that sells tapa, sinangag, turon and bibingka, an all-Filipino fare up to my liking. Johnny’s, The Fried of Marikina, sells fried chicken in Marikina. I wouldn’t mind reading a marquee that goes Johnny’s, the Fried of Maribojoc or Johnny’s, the Fried of Marigondon, if it expands and turns into a chain one day.
A store that sells second hand watches has the to-the-point name of Second Time Around, and Common Cents Store may not sell common sense, but it surely sounds like having some sense. Pardon me, but the sign that says Lito, Lapida Maker, is another act all together.
Cinavon as a name for an existing laundromat reminds me of all things clean and soapy. Your Best Vet as the name of a veterinary clinic tells me once more that there’s something fun and creative about veterinarians. Perhaps, I could share with the vet my pains over the cost of cat food. In times past, when a dollar was worth fifty pesos, a big sack of cat food cost 750 pesos. Now that it’s 42 pesos to the dollar, the same sack costs almost a thousand pesos!
Yet just by judging from how we coin names, there’s no denying that Filipinos are a happy, creative lot. Even this sign seen outside a construction site, Now showing – The Carpenters, shows one-upmanship; that, despite the strengthening peso and its unusual dance partner of rising cost of goods.
Who can say if a creative economic bureaucrat could think of changing the name of our currency one day? Dollsos (for dollars and pesos) sounds contrite and contrived. It’s other option, pellars, sounds too grave, too near the Pillars of Fire and wholly irreverent to the Scourging at the Pillar. But what a scourge, indeed, are some signs of the times, like the partnered stronger peso and risen price of goods.
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