I’m replaying vignettes from my own memory from when I started writing professionally for the Gold Ore--Benjamin Salvosa's legendary weekly city paper.
The year was 1980, I was 16 and fresh out of Baguio City High School. Our Baguio Correspondents and Broadcasters Club (BCBC) president was Oswald N. Alvaro.
There was a second “rival” group of press people back then, called the Baguio Press Club, headed by City Tourism Director Narciso “Nars” Padilla.
The “rivalry” was a friendly one and was dictated mostly by work affiliation. Most of Baguio Press Club’s members were journalists connected with the government—PIO’s of the different line agencies.
The reason they wanted to have their own press club was practical. It was the height of martial law and while “red-tagging” in our present day is just a name-calling issue, back then it threatened your tenure if you were working for the government.
BCBC was a “looser” organization that admitted anyone of any political stripe. So we had guys like Peppot Ilagan, Gerry “Boo” Evangelista, Jr., Domecio “Dom-C” Cimatu (Frank’s big brother), Freddie Conchu, Carol Brady de Raedt, Nathan Alcantara, Steve Hamada—all student activists back in their college days in the University of the Philippines.
If you were from UP, it was PRESUMED you once belonged to the militant 1970s Kabataang Makabayan (KM) with leftist leanings. Government writers would be wise NOT to be in the same group!
As Groucho Marx famously said, “military intelligence is a contradiction in terms” and nobody wanted to test the theory. Why risk being labeled “anti-government” when you can just separate the chaff from the grain by having TWO press clubs?
Anyway, believe me, these guys all loved one another and it didn’t matter which press club they belonged to. At the end of a working day we all ended up in the same big round table, sometimes two, at Session Café owned by Jimmy Tong.
Luisa’s Café was a daytime (especially lunch) hangout then, while the breakfast crowd convened at Dainty Restaurant.
But evenings—no question about it—was the sole jurisdiction of Session Café.
If you had something of public interest to spread, you didn’t need to organize a “presscon.” You just showed up there, said “Ta-daah!!” and you were the next morning’s radio headline news and the weekend’s frontpage story on all local weeklies.
Ever wonder WHERE the OTHER press club hang out?
The answer is on the SAME table at Session Cafe at exactly the SAME time.
In the socialization part, club affiliation became irrelevant. You faced the legendary “Baguio Media” as one monolith of independent-minded journalists—genuine, authentic dyed-in-the-wool Baguio boys and girls—and they counted some of the best writers to never be recognized in their lifetimes.
Nobody dared to compare himself or herself with anyone else. But the primal instinct to beat one another to a bloody pulp was always ever present in the back of everyone’s mind—and it cried for a medium, a venue, and a nice set of rules to go by which to objectively compare everyone’s physical deftness and mental acumen.
Ergo—now you’re getting it—DARTS (physical) and CHESS (mental) became those two proxy battlegrounds.
(This is for the younger ones so they would have an idea of the roots of this twin obssession.)
Darts became such a big thing with us, it even spun off its own club. The “Session Café 01 Club” was so named in reference to the "701-501-301" perfect 'Killers' game scores—as well as the qualifying score you need to gain acceptance.
Those who “bogeyed” of course (like moi) were still press club members, just not quite part of that elite "Ow-One “ circle.
Jimmy Tong built a mezzanine floor over the main dining area just to accommodate the games. Manny Salenga, Baguio Toastmasters International guru and Benguet Corporation PRO, got the mining company to cut up some lengths of heavy duty rubber conveyor belt, which were glued to the floor to catch wayward darts that ricocheted off the four world-class professional Unicorn genuine woodcork dartboards mounted on the wall.
Having your own dart set was a status symbol. Although the house darts were fine (they were offered to walk-in guests), we all mostly brought our own personal sets of “competition darts” that had to weigh 18-23 grams when using brass or 23-26 grams when using tungsten darts.
Back in the day, everybody seemed to have a relative in the States who would send them a set of darts you couldn’t buy anywhere in Baguio. The more exotic and “rare” your darts were, the higher you clung up on the proverbial monkey tree.
But Peppot beat them all. He discovered that he could write his signature on the margins of the page layout “paste-ups” of the Gold Ore before it went in the camera room at the printing press.
When it emerged from the darkroom, you got a whole “negative” film sheet 18 by 22 inches big, bearing the image of the whole page (this is photographic offset printing technology before the advent of “computer-to-plate” software).
The film’s edges were always trimmed off and discarded anyway—except this time they bore an image of Peppot’s signature! He then used a pair of scissors to cut out of them what he called “special limited-edition personalized signature fletchings for competition darts.”
It was a big hit! It was made of the same plastic material, very light and very flexible, and totally matched the specs of those “designer flights” on some of the top-level darts. But Peppot could put ANYTHING on them—your signature, your company logo, your photo…
Guys were lining up, begging him to make some for them--and although Peppot was only joking when he said the “production cost” of a set of six flights was P1,000 there were just enough gullible people on earth that believed him. No wonder the Gold Ore staff could afford all those lavish meals ON HIM!
If we weren’t throwing darts, we were “pushing wood”—the sportswriters term for playing chess. Little known fact is that many of Baguio’s practising mediamen were unsung masters. Guys like Gold Ore’s Gerry “Boo" Evangelista, DZWT station manager Atty. Dometilo “Domi” Pineda, City Hall PIO’s Freddie Mayo, Andy Hernandez (Leslie’s old man), Ramon “Mondax” Dacawi and his older brother City Hall HR head Joe Dacawi, Midland Courier’s Steve Hamada, Gaudencio “G-Bert” Floresca, Associated Press’ Abe Belena, and many more. And Peppot, of course.
How good were these guys? They were given “ELO ratings” (I don’t even know what THAT is) by the Philippine Chess Confederation whose national President Florencio Campomanes was a bosom buddy of Midland columnist Des Bautista.
This meant they were good enough to compete in open invitationals. So whenever Eugene Torre, the Philippines’ first Grandmaster and Des Bautista’s perennial house guest, needed to hone his skills in preparation for a tournament, Des would call these media colleagues to sit in a row and play Eugere Torre in a “time-forfeit simul” pitting the fierce and merciless grandmaster against twenty boards. I think Boo was the only one who ever beat him in one unpublished event.
The only problem with darts and chess is that both were INDIVIDUAL games that didn’t really foster teamwork, or provide opportunity for friendly team competition.
Mondax, when he was BCBC President, solved this problem. He used to say that as a true Baguio boy, he was a “former everything.” He used to be a former pony boy, news boy, shine boy, kumboy—and pinboy at the old Aurora Olympian bowling lanes in Upper Mabini street.
So he organized an inter-outfit bowling competition in 1988, each media outfit would comprise one team that can field three bowlers and two substitutes to try to bowl a perfect 300.
Whoever was the head of the outfit—who was either an editor or a station manager—was automatically the team coach.
The Gold Ore team was made up of Peppot, Chris Bartolo (now of DZWT), Nathan Alcantara, Catalina “Kit” Tolentino (now a journalism professor at UP Diliman), Bernard Okubo (our photographer) and myself.
We were a great team, coached by the elaborate tactician Peppot who barked out play strategy like, “Chris, take out the 3-pin thick on the left, to send it flying to take out the 9-and 10-pin for a spare!”
Even Kit, who looked so frail you wouldn’t think she could lift, let alone hurl, a 3-pound (1.7-kg) duckpin bowling ball, could follow Peppot’s order. “Kit, you're right-handed, try to sweep the kingpin on a late curl from the right for a strike.”
Kit said, “Yes, kuya” and did exactly that.
I, of course, could always be counted on to carry out some of Peppot’s most difficult game instructions: “Joel, for the love of God, hit SOMETHING!!!”
On nice, beautiful, warm and sunny summers, we were off to the briddle paths at Wright Park, riding horses—but I’ll reserve that story for another time.*
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