CebuAsia.com

The sidewalk is always a learning experience for any curiouser. Take for instance, if you are a photographer or a traveler drifting into a locale’s now of the past.

Perhaps, I am one of over 2,000,000 citizens in Cebu City who has noticed the subtle bygones of this city’s rich cultural heritage.

Somebody’s apt quotation comes to mind. It goes like this: “You won’t realize the distance you’ve walked until you take a look around and realize how far you’ve been.”

(Click the photo to view its large pop-in size.)

The mid-day of the second day of March (this Sunday of course), there was the usual bustle of traffic, across the streets in Colon (the oldest street in the Philippines, named after Cristobal Colon, a.k.a. Christopher Columbus, the Italian explorer, and thank God to him for his hindsight — that the world IS round!): men, women and children have passed by it. Few may have actually noticed it. Probably why people were just too tired of the routine there, or even during the yesterdays that beckon them, as if they have looked upon this special inscription with a blind eye, whoever has seen it should go look again.

When I read it, there was no remedy for a loss of words…

The Imprenta Avila is one of those marble markers teeming in our Queen City of the South. Raised and schooled in Dumaguete City for almost two decades, I’ve learned to love Cebu City as my own.

But at that very moment, stopping by innocently at the facade of Colonnade Mall, with another Cebu photographer and friend, Melvin Tezon (after a respite of taking photos with Giovanni Omega, Aldo Nelbert Banaynal and Kenn Tan from Pasil to elsewhere)… to have actually read this snippet of the distant days, it was both a relief and a thrill, and that I have took a picture of it.

The inscription reads:

IMPRENTA AVILA

To print his two-publications, “THE CEBU ADVERTISER”
and “TIGMANTALA”, DON JOSE AVILA purchased
the Imprenta Avila in 1922.

It was in the Visayan paper “ANG TIGMANTALA” that
PAUL GULLAS, PEDRO LOPEZ, RAMON ABELLANOSA
and other noted journalists honed their writing skills.
Editor was GAUDENCIO PEÑA.

This was in the 1920’s up to the 30’s, considered the
Golden Age of the Philippine Journalism.

The IMPRENTA was located on Calle Colon where most
Cebuano writers worked, as several printing
presses were located nearby.

Soon, when I start going to other places, under sea sickness and the atrocity of jet lags, and knowing for a long time that in an era of technological advances, it is very difficult to even stop and ponder on the humble things that started a city’s all, the photos I took will remind me. Historical markers, like these after installed several years later, are like movie flashbacks or dream-vignette for our children’s children.

I wasn’t able to take a good vantage point. It was just to high for me to ogle at it, upfront. Was the positioning of this site marker’s installation a reason to discourage vandalism or theft?

But what the heck! Yes, go and certainly, read it. It’s not too late to come back and be reminded of Cebu’s glorious old days.

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