From Coca-Cola to Landers

Years ago, the Urban Roamer has talked about the neighborhood along Paz M. Guanzon Street, the former Otis Street in Manila’s Pandacan/Paco area, and the sights that can be seen there: the auto dealers, the Robinsons mall, the Mapua Malayan High School, and Malacañang South. However, embarrassing as it may be, it seems the Urban Roamer forgot to write what is perhaps the most well-known landmark in this part of the city, the old Coca-Cola bottling plant.

But it may have a stroke of luck as well as the old plant went through some significant developments and was transformed into a retail site of a membership superstore chain called Landers. With that said, it is time to revisit this part of the city as we look at how a softdrink plant transformed into a superstore site.

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Roundup Bits: Things “Going” On This Week

So many things have been going about these past few days around the metropolis that it is proper to do another edition of the Roamer’s Roundup. This edition is packed with many interesting stories around the city; check them out below for the lowdown.

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Mabini150: Mabini and Nagtahan

If there is one place in the metropolis that has a solid association with Apolinario Mabini, it would be the road and the neighborhood called Nagtahan which straddles between the present-day districts of San Miguel and Santa Mesa in the City of Manila.

flyover at Nagtahan, 2014

Nagtahan got its name from a word in Tagalog which means to stop or end. It was named so because in the olden days, Calle Nagtahan was a dead end, ending a few meters before the bank of the Pasig River. Despite that, it grew as a rural suburb of Manila during the late Spanish colonial period as some decided to take residence in the area. One of them happened to be Apolinario Mabini’s brother, Agapito, who married a woman belonging to a somewhat landed family, the Del Rosarios.

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Goodbye For Good, Pandacan Oil Depots?

While so much was going for the past few weeks or so, the Urban Roamer feels so ashamed to miss this news item that came out on April 3.  My apologies for the oversight.

Mayor Estrada with the letter to one of the oil companies asking them to move their oil depots out of Pandacan by 2016 (photo courtesy of GMA News)

That piece of news concerned about a new development in the continuing saga of the Pandacan Oil Depots as former president turned Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada issued an ultimatum to the 3 oil companies (namely Shell, Chevron, and Petron) who have operations in the district that they only have until January 31, 2016 to move out their operations there or else the city government will do the shutting down for them.

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