By Rex Catubig

 

IT’S a question of chronology: Which came first– the Music Warehouse in Perez or the UPS in MH del Pilar? What was certain was they ushered in the revival of the dance club–called disco in those days– at the break of the year 2000, and filled the void in the city’s nightlife  after the 1990 earthquake left Dagupan in shambles.

JG’s Calesa was the last cart standing before that apocalyptic event. Andrea’s was in doldrums, and McAdore’s Electra had been dealt the death sentence following the crime that rocked Dagupan. In their wake, there followed Friends, named after the popular US TV series, which converted the old Boulevard Hotel into a music lounge (which was later reincarnated as Colegio de Dagupan}. But neither that nor Marisse nor Big Box, along Arellano-Dawel, measured up to the star status of the pioneer party crowd-drawers.

Just then, Music Warehouse had its epiphany. It was the Elisa Theater reborn, in the Fernandez compound on Perez Blvd. Thus, it was cavernous: its orchestra section became the dancefloor and its balcony was turned into lounge seating for those who shunned the   dance crowd and preferred more intimate ambience as they watched the featured live band.

Uptown east, along MH del Pilar, beside the Pantranco terminal (now the SM store}, the second floor of an old building became UPS. In comparison to the capacious Warehouse,  UPS was a dungeon. One had to climb up two flights of steep stairs to reach it–which explained the name.  It had a narrow claustrophobic space, with the dancefloor pushed way back. Entrance fee was P75 and did not cover anything. The concept of consumable had not been fashioned yet. But the hefty admission price, jacked up by the P25 for a bottle of cold beer to jumpstart the dance ritual amid the dazzle of mirror ball, prismatic shaft of lights and pulsating techno music, in no way deterred the serpentine queue that sometimes stretched into the corner of AB Fernandez. In fact, one had to assume the guise of entitlement, throw some weight around and pull strings with a Roxas bill just so you could wangle a small table in the sardine-packed room.

At the time, Tequila–Jose Cuervo specifically– was the party alcohol to impress with and validate your being worth your table. At  P50 per shot glass or P600 for the bottle, multiply that by your retinue and it was guaranteed to punch you drunk real hard with the pricey check guaranteed to deliver a double whammy for the kill.

But I kind of miss those days when one tried hard to be one of the boys—disregarding the alcohol tolerance level of our streetwise company with their hard-knocks stamina. Without warning, Viva Zapata’s wild horse would suddenly kick you in the head and the world whirled like a runaway carousel.

The wage of excess taught me this lesson: That crawling up the stairs of my house was nothing compared to the purgatoric trips to the bathroom, where one knelt face down the toilet bowl in an act of contrition, exorcising viscera till kingdom come. It was an absolute (no vodka pun intended) penitential act that came with the penitentiary promise of never again to drinking.

But who makes promises when one is skunk drunk? Years hence, one does not remember.

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