Favorite places: Nuyok, Nuyok

By Eric S. Caruncho, Staff Writer
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

WHEN the Puerto Rican dealer asked us if we wanted coke, smack or a loose joint, I knew this must be the place. Filipinos feel right at home in New York City, maybe because parts of it resemble the Third World.

It wasn’t just the preponderance of fellow brown-skinned people, the greasy cooking and the shoddy Chinese goods for sale on the sidewalks that remind one of Manila, it was also the potholed streets, crazed taxi drivers, street hookers, and homeless bums sleeping on the sidewalks.

The big thing for Pinoys visiting the Big Apple that year was to secure tickets to “Miss Saigon,” which Lea was still headlining.

F— that.

I craved some cheap New York thrills, so first chance I got I decided to get on the subway and pay a visit to some friends who were doing the “New York thing,” living la vie boheme in the City That Never Sleeps, doing bad drugs, attending obscure art happenings, auditioning for parts in “Rent” (the big Broadway musical that year) or trying to achieve spiritual breakthroughs, before eventually coming home to settle down to jobs, marriages and families, i.e. “real life.”

Amazingly, all of them were crammed in a tiny apartment on Avenue C, in the notoriously seedy part of the Lower East Side known as “Alphabet City,” where the rents were cheap, at least by New York standards.

By day, the street outside resembled nothing so much as the album cover for Savoy Brown’s “Street Corner Talkin,’” a golden oldie, with dealers, pimps and hookers hanging out while Latinos shouted at each other from their apartment windows in gutter Spanish. A real slice of low life.

By night, well, there were better things to do than hang out on Avenue C.

Of course, I had to make the obligatory pilgrimage to the Bowery to CBGB, the birthplace of punk (it has since closed its doors), where legendary bands like Television, Blondie, Patti Smith and the Ramones once held sway.

Much to my surprise, it wasn’t much bigger than Mayric’s, my old Manila hangout, and the sound was just as crappy.

Somebody knew somebody in the band which happened to be playing that night, so we managed to get in. The music wasn’t happening, however, so we found ourselves club hopping, eventually ending up packed in the tiny bathroom of a tiny club for one final toot before calling it a night.

As we filed out, the locals gave us dirty looks and shook their heads, as if to say, “Bloody tourists!”

For more stories, check out the Sunday Inquirer Magazine’s Favorite Places issue this Sunday, April 13.